A gem of a place...

Wednesday 1st April

Today we played at Emerald golf course and what a contrast to the one we played on Monday. Admittedly the green fees were 800B instead of 200 but it was more than 4 times better. The fairways were grassy and the greens were much better and more consistent.

A lot of the holes had rolling fairways and the greens also had a lot of slopes. They were, however, more consistent than those from Monday so you could actually start to judge the breaks rather than just guessing. There were also a lot of water hazards and bunkers.

My front 9 was fairly ordinary and I wasn't keeping my drives on the fairway. I lost 4 balls for the round - 2 of them on the same hole which had 2 lakes on it. The back 9 I played very well with 4 pars and a birdie. The birdie was particularly satisfying, as my pitch shot hit the green 15m to the right of the pin, dribbled to the edge of the ridge and then rolled down hill to 6ft past the hole. Just like Tiger, except of course, he means to do those shots rather than just being lucky.

In the end I was 3 over my handicap (13 out and 20 in) but it won the day by a stroke and this puts me 3 shots behind the current leader after 2 rounds. I also won one of the Nearest-to-pins.

The course also had a nice clubhouse and we all had showers afterwards. We then drove to the nearby town, Ban Chang, for a late lunch. It was already after 4pm. We stayed there an hour and then headed back to Pattaya. After dropping off our bags we met at the bar for presentations and so forth. Most of the group were planning to go to the Blue Lagoon to celebrate the owner's birthday. I intended to go but I spent a few hours answering emails and updating web pages. Also my private email account got cancelled because my credit card expired, or at least because I didn't give them a new expiry date in time. I did join the rest if the crew at the bar about 10pm which was a bit late for the BBQ.

I used my free spin on the wheel from the raffle yesterday and won a "free" beer. I'm not usually a beer drinker but I had a San Mig light and then another. Ed then bought me a 3rd but after that I changed back to Iced tea. Dane was singing karaoke, which he does fairly well and Kiky was pole dancing at one stage and everyone was generally carrying on and having a good time. I also caught up with some of the other people from the boat trip and found out that the Norwegian girl was in fact 30. I left about 11-30 but the others were still there.