Swing in Thailand

As Jon's post says it so well, when in Thailand it is best to adapt the attitude of Mai ben lai (meaning in this matter- no problem).
Normally, I am opposed to Golfing. I have an issue with the fertilizers and the obscene amounts of water that go into creating and maintaining a golf course and therefore want nothing to do with the game (it is a game by the way, not a sport).

Well, when Jonathan Siegrest (who is also opposed to golf) suggested that we give it a shot while in Thailand, I first turned my head the other way. "I'm not wasting my time here doing that." But then Jon kept pushing saying how much of a crack up it would be for two people who have pretty much never swung a club before to ride up to a course on a little scooter and make the best out of nine holes, I finally gave with a mai ben lai.

We found the cheapest course that was decent. Nine holes will set you back 120 Baht (4 dollars) with a mandatory caddy (2.5 dollars) and golf club rental (7 dollars). We split the rental.
So with clubs thrown over the shoulder we strut outside to find our caddy's- two thai women- smiling and unsuspecting of what they were about to get into.
We looked around and saw that other people were swinging their clubs around while waiting to hit the ball at the first hole so we grab a big club and start to do the same. Then we see a guy actually drive his first ball, and immediately start to have second thoughts.
"I can't do that," I say. Jon looks a little red in the face and also feels discomfort at having to go up to the tee and swing the club around.
Up we go, the caddy hands us the right club and we have to joke around with them for a while so that they let us drive the ball from the furthest forward tee.
They give in and instantly realize after our performance (see the video below) that this was going to be a different sort of caddy experience.

9 holes later we manage to improve our skills. After many instances of fishing the ball out of the water, slicing our ways out of sandtraps, putting our way from one side of the green to the other, and letting faster parties pass us, we finished up being able to hit the ball in about the direction we wanted to and with a big smile on our face. A little fried pork with basil and some vegetarian fried rice back at club house allowed us to reflecton the new experience.

I think it was something we had a really good time doing. I hadn't laughed so hard for such a long period of time in a while. We were happy that we were forced to get caddies. At first we didn't want to, but we had to. Let me tell you that this made the experience much richer. Not only did we get to play a new game, we had a great cultural interaction while doing it. We pushed our Thai as far as we could and learned quite a bit about always smiling no matter what happens. Well worth 10 bucks spent on the day.

On this video, the green is across the water. We had an ants nest chance in Thailand (Thai people go crazy for ants nests because of the eggs inside) of keeping our balls out of the water. Splash!