We left Melaka and flew to Vietnam where we met up with Debbie and Neil in Ho Chi Min City to start the South Vietnam Golfing Excursion.
Our first game of golf was at Tan Son Nhat Golf course. As you can see, we all wore the team golf shirt, sponsored by Margaret House.
This was a very good golf course, though everyone found the greens a bit hard (ball bounced too much on landing). Bruce started off very well with a 44 for the first nine, then his foot started to hurt a lot constantly walking up and down to the golf cart. He did 52 on the second nine, but still enjoyed the game. Rosie was consistent, but still hit 51/52, which wasn’t too good. At the end of the game, we got a very good, free, lunch and after a couple of beers everyone forgot about their golf game.
The next day, we went on a tour of the Mekong Delta. Tho picked us up early along with our tour guide Mai, who was very funny and great English skills.
As usual, we had the obligatory stop on the drive at a factory, which also had toilet facilities. This time it was a silk and bamboo factory and after a couple of brief demonstrations of the process we were taken into a lecture room to try to sell us their products. The girl giving the demonstration was amazing and very funny, it was like watching an infomercial in fast motion. We laughed all the way through it and then many people (not in our private group) bought quite a few products.
After this we went to the river to hop on our private junk to be taken across to the island where we were going to go through the canals.
It was a bit rough going over, but the sights on the water were interesting. Then we got onto smaller boats powered by a girl skulling and we drifted through the waterways with lots of bamboo and water coconuts.
A really good lunch finished off our tour and then back to the hotel for a rest.
The final day of our stay saw us playing golf at the Vietnam Golf and Country Club. This is one of the older courses and as such had a bit more jungle and narrower fairways. We unexpectingly were given lunch on arrival, which was only a couple of hours after breakfast. We still tried to do it justice.
Our scores were not that good, we all had some good holes and bad holes, but we could only blame ourselves. All up, it was a very pleasant day.
As usual the highlight of any stay is finding a laundry for Neil and Rosie to bond in. This one was very interesting, it was situated on the top floor of a four story restaurant. You could either do the washing yourself or get someone to do it for you. Then you had a drink and a snack at the bar while waiting for it to be finished.
