My golf friends: Kuching Golf Tour

Kuching - we come again...

After waiting for almost 1 year, which is well worth the waiting since the return air ticket prices are even lower than the taxi fare from home to LCCT; we finally made the yearly trip once again. The trip was originally planned for 8 pax, but unfortunately 3 of our flight mates (captain Gan, Alex and John Chen) cannot go for personal reasons although we found a replacement in John Lu.

Day1. March 25, Sarawak Golf Club.
After checking into PenView Hotel, we had a quick lunch at the food court behind the hotel and proceed to KGS (Kelab Golf Sarawak) with much excitement. We played Santubong and Demak course under searing hot sun. It must be around 37C when we tee-off at about 12noon. The course had not changed much compared to our last trip a year ago, the greens were slow though. We were disappointed that we could not play the Matang and Soil courses again. It seems that Matang is always closed on Monday for maintenance. Have to take note of this for our next trip!
Dennes could not join us in the game because he was having a meeting in Sibu. He also had to miss our dinner as his flight was delayed for almost an hour plus because the plane could not land due to thunder storm coupled with a very strong wind. Anyway, we will not recommend having dinner at the TOPs (multi storey car park in town) again...food lousy la.

Malaysian-5-O on day1

That was a good chip...Mr Khoo. Must be the orange ball!

Day2. March 26 - Damai Golf and Country Club

Top right hand corner.. the lady who can cook

We were told that looking for a kopitiam for breakfast at 6.30 in the morning will not be easy, even the hotel serves breakfast at 7am. But we found one just around the corner near the hotel. Although only 3 stalls inside the shop, they serve good variety of noodles, porridge and toasted bread that were totally Sarawak style. It was amazing how one lady who managed her stall on her own can cooked about 10 variety of noodles.

Toasted bread with kaya and butter...yummy

It was a week day, so the course was quite deserted except for 6 of us and another flight. There were temporary greens on 3 holes, although we can see the original greens were almost ready for re-play. Strange thing happened at Hole3, which is a par-3 with its temporary green reduced from 140m to about 80m. Dennes put his tee shot about 4 ft to the hole, Lim's ball is at the edge. Somehow, I cut the ball and everyone saw it going into the ravine on the right.The moment I hit the shot, I knew where it was going as well. As we walk towards the green, suddenly Lim shouted and said he had found 2 balls on the slope about 20ft from the pin. One ball has a distinctive red "G-string"(we always joke about this) , which all of them know it was the way I marked all my golf balls. Sure enough it was mine, but we just could not figure out how it had landed there when all 3 of us were certain it had gone into the ravine. Amidst the puzzling thought, I offered my thanks to the mystical hand. Hey, the story has not ended yet because suddenly Lim was so excited that he found a 20 cent coin on the green. It had never occurred to him that it could be someone's marker. True enough, James made the claim. Deep inside, we know some unexplainable things had just happened. Anyway, Dennes missed his birdie and I had a double on that hole.

At the end of the day, most of us did not play well at this course. I guess we were all thinking about going to a nice massage instead. Although it took us a bit of driving around to find one, we did not complain because we finally found one which is truly good and cheap too. At RM 28/hr for a body and 18/hr for foot against the first outlet which tried to charge us 78/hr!! The operator must be in shock when we walked out of his spa center not wanting to waste our time bargaining.

Do we look like visitors from foreign land???

Ball in hazard, resting on small stone ledge....he pitched the ball back to fairway

Day3. March 27 - Sarawak Club Golf Resort (Unimas Branch)

The name is certainly confusing for many of us since it sounds almost the same as the Sarawak Golf Club. Why cant they just call it Unimas Golf Resort? Maybe because the local would refer the first as KGS..well can never understand this lo??

Of course, the first thing to do in the morning is to go back to the kopitiam to try out other Sarawak noodles that we could not eat yesterday. But for our love hunger Lim, surely he has other things in mind. Yesterday, we were alerted by him to look at the t-shirt worn by the lady (remember?Top right hand corner.. the lady who can cook!), which has big letters "Love, Love,Love" printed on it. She must have sensed that these bunch of DOM (Dirty Old Men) were watching her and now check out what she wore today..it is "LOVE, OUT OF ORDER". Is she sending out a message?? Of course, unless you are only interested in the noodles..For Lim who has years of sales background, he will have no problem fulfilling the orders!! As for the others, fall back into the Q,,la.

I must say the course condition at Unimas, is much better than KGS and Damai, especially the greens. They are in perfect condition with green speed at least 9.0. Although some of the Par-4s are rather short; less than 320m, nevertheless it calls for great accuracy from your tee box. We thoroughly enjoy playing here, the only setback is that the green fees has gone up almost 100%.
Most of us played well especially Lim who scotched the first nine with a gross score of 39 and finished the 18th at -5. A happy winner at the end but I cannot said the same for James though. His ball was not behaving on that faithful day. What can you say, Tiger Wood had similar experience too.

Since our departure time is 5.30pm, we went back to the same massage center for another 1 1/2 hrs of rubbing down the tired body before saying goodbye to Kuching. But I am sure, we will be back again.