The final stop on our trip to Vietnam was Hoi An, which is next to Danang – the cutoff point between North and South Vietnam.
Hoi An is famous for its lantern festival, which happens every night but is even bigger once a month, when we have a full moon.
Bruce timed our visit for the Full Moon and we weren’t disappointed with the vibrancy of Hoi An.
Hoi An is situated on a group of islands and canals and the Japanese Bridge is a focal point for many romantic photos and instagram posts.
As usual, we had a game of golf planned the day after we arrived, but unfortunately Bruce got a bit adventurous with his eating the night before so wasn’t well enough to play Bana Hills Golf Course. Rosie, Deb and Neil all went out to play and none of them really enjoyed the superfast greens and hidden greens. They had a good first nine, but then the second nine was very crowded and took a long time.
The next day we had a trip planned to see Bana Hills – Sunworld Theme Park. We mainly wanted to see the Golden Hands Bridge, but since this is inside the park, we had to do both.
Bana Hills was first established as a French holiday resort area to get away from the heat of Hoi An. It was named after the numerous banana plants that were prevalent in the hills. There are 7 gondolas available to get you to different parts of the resort as well as three huge accommodation buildings for the staff. This complex is a little bit like the Epcot Centre in Florida, lots of different cultural areas, rides and food stalls. It was most probably worth a visit, but the bridge is very crowded.
The next day we played golf at BRG Legends GC – Norman Course. Everyone got out to play on this day and although the course was in good condition, none of us really did that well. Bruce was still recovering and got very lethargic. It was also an unbelievably slow game of golf. Bruce got so bored at one point that he had a long rest next to the tee, waiting for the groups in front of clear the way. As you can see above, my caddy thought this was very funny. Rosie finally beat Bruce on points but Bruce still pipped her in the gross scores.
That evening, Bruce went to a barber, that Neil suggested, and had a very thorough manscaping.
It started out as a very good haircut, but then progressed to shaving my shoulders. At this point I asked whether he wanted me to take off my shirt (like his previous customer) and this was an invitation to shave my whole body, I did have to stop when he wanted to do a Brazillian.
Next came a facial shave, followed by a nose and ear hair trim. The he proceeded to get all the wax out of my ears.
To finish off, he gave me a 15 minute head and neck massage. All up it cost $20 for an hour, bargain.
Now that Bruce was looking very clean, we were ready for our last game of golf in Vietnam, this time at Montgomerie Links.
This course was in excellent condition but the greens were a bit slow. It was extremely hot and we all tended to wilt a bit. Fortunately we were given cold towels, which we kept in the ice bucket. Again the game was a bit slow, but not as bad as yesterday. Rosie again beat Bruce in points but this time we got the same gross score, so it was a good way to finish the trip.
We all flew out the next day, on the same plane, to Malaysia. Deb and Neil stayed at the airport for 5 hours before continuing on to Sydney, while Bruce and Rosie did a stopover, staying at the Ibis Styles near the airport. We caught the shuttle to the hotel, which was very convenient and found the hotel to be very comfortable with a fantastic pool and restaurant area.
We booked into Bangi Golf Club again and they were very accomodating. Bruce booked the wrong day but they emailed us asking what went wrong so we got the booking shifted to the next day. They even gave us a few drinks since it cost more on the weekend (which we didn’t turn up to) than on the Monday when we did play. Bangi is a very simple, cheap course and we both had good scores, Rosie getting 40 points and Bruce 38 points, both scoring 86 off the stick. A great way to end our holiday.
