No Stars today

Friday 3rd

Today's course was Eastern Star. This is not that far from Emerald, where we played on Wednesday - Slightly closer to Ban Chang but on the West rather than the East side and closer to the coast. It was again a much better course and was 1200B for green fees, cart and caddie. With the arrival of Peter, we had 9 players so we split into 3 groups and had one of Danny's players join each group. On the other days we have played 2 groups of 4 and they have followed after us in their own group. Fortunately, Danny is not part of our competition, since his scores of 37 and 32 would have beaten our best by 7 and 4 points the first and last days although his middle round was a shocker.

The start of our route to the course was the same as the last but this time we stopped when we passed the huge image of Buddha on the mountain side. On Wednesday we just drove right past. We could see this from one o9f the courses we played 2 years ago.

The course had a similar feel in that the fairways were quite hilly, and there were lots of lakes and bunkers around. The bunkers had a lot of sand in them and 2 of my shots were buried. The course was also suffering from the dry spell but not as badly as Monday's course. This time there were also houses along some of the holes. As usual there were refreshment stops every 4 or 5 holes.

One unusual feature was the distance markers. These were Blue, yellow and red for 200, 150 and100 yards as usual but instead of just being posts they were bird houses. Several of them even had birds in them although it was tricky to get close enough to photograph them.

I played well enough but did not score as well as Wednesday with 28 points. This was still the best score for the day for our group and again I picked up a nearest to the pin prize. There were quite a few out of bounds on the course and I put 2 out on 1 hole and 1 on another and lost a couple of balls in lakes. One was particularly annoying as it was a dogleg par 5. My caddie said straight over the bunker and assuming she was giving me the line I hit the drive exactly where I wanted. I then realised she was telling me there was a hidden lake behind the bunker. Bye Bye ball.

It wasn't really a difficult course and I feel if we had a chance to play it again there would be a good chance we could play close to our handicap. This is the downside of playing a lot of different courses. Today all the par 3s were around 170 yards. The hole in one prize was a physical check up at the local hospital valued at 15,000B or around $600. I wonder what you get for that? Nobody it won it so we won't find out.

The club house was also very nice and we all had showers. There is a resort at this course with a swimming pool, a water area with slides etc and tennis courts as well as the golf.

One bus was heading for Ban Chang with the idea they'd stay 3 hours. The other was supposed to go long enough for a meal there as well, before heading back but one of the guys wasn't feeling too well so we went straight back.

ASfter checking email and updating blogs I left the room around 6-30. We were supposed to meet up at the bar about 7 for the presentation and no one else had arrived yet. I hadn't eaten other than some apples, since breakfast so wandered down the street and found a street stall selling BBQ corn. That helped. I met TVL on the way abck and he decided he wanted some too. The bus arrived back just after 7 and we did our presentations. My nearest to the pin prize (300B) covered my transport and comp fees.

Kevein had been talking about how Pad Thai was hard to find here although I'd had some at Lotus. Last night he said he'd found a place just around the corner - one of many basic eating places. I went there and had a nice Pad thai for 30B - a bit over a dollar. The exchange rate has jumped slightly in our favour, now around 24.7 compared with just under 24 recently and 22 some thing when I arrived. Unfortunately this reflects a jump against the US so my work payment will drip significantly in return.

I picked up and ice cream and some drinks and so forth and after dropping them in my room rejoined the guys. At one stage I did the cryptic, getting all bar 2 clues out - a big improvement on the last attempt. I headed to my room about 10.