Bintan, Again

For some strange reason, every year, no matter what grand plans I make, I always seem to find myself in Bintan. At least twice. It's getting really exasperating since I can probably now find my way around the resort blindfolded.

Still, this was the first time I had been on a golfing holiday to Bintan. That is to say, me playing a lot of golf in a very short space of time outside of Singapore. So now, in addition to being very familiar with the layout of Bintan Lagoon Resort, I can safely say I am also very familiar with the layout of the 36-hole golf course affiliated with Bintan Lagoon Resort. How sad.

Actually I only played 3 rounds of golf over 3 days, which isn't all that bad. My dad was still raring to go and would probably have played 4 rounds if I'd asked him to (which I didn't, thankfully enough). Anyway it was great fun and the course was pretty empty over the weekday period, so we could relax and play at our own pace.

The first day we played on the Jack Nicklaus course. It's called the "sea-view" course, which is a bit of a joke since you're only next to the sea for about two holes, and you can only actually see it from four. The clubhouse provides caddies, which is nice and saves you a lot of work and the trouble of reading putts by yourself. :) I shot a +26 off the white tee, which was my best so far. It's generally a very beginner-friendly course, if you can avoid the water.

The second day we started at about 8am playing the Baker-Finch course. This one is called the "woodlands" course - quite appropriately so, since Mr. Baker-Finch was obviously very lazy and failed to excavate more of the tall trees surrounding the area. It was like an oven. Nonetheless the holes were very short (a welcome relief after having to use 3-woods a lot of the time at Seletar par-4 holes). I did better than the previous day and shot a +25. This means, of course, that I have yet to actually reach my handicap of +24, but I am working towards it.

In the afternoon we went to the beach, since it would have been a waste of our money and time if we visited Bintan without going to the beach. It was nice, as usual, but no huge waves like there were in December. Then we had a buffet dinner at the hotel. The theme was Mexican and thus there was a lot of heavy food and copious amounts of cheese, along with a great assortment of desserts. I ate American cheesecake, strawberry and chocolate ice-cream, mixed fruit and cinnamon crumble, and this cold mango/watermelon thing. This made me feel very bad about myself - I'm still recovering now, I could barely eat anything yesterday.

Yesterday was the last day of our trip - we woke up early to play the Nicklaus course again, since some sea-view is better than no sea-view in any case. I was doing pretty well until about hole #13, after which my body just forgot how to make a golf swing and I bungled my way to about +36 (I lost count). My dad, on the other hand, was just getting into the swing of things and created tons of birdie chances for himself with magnificent approach shots. Hmph.

I forgot to mention that this time we were staying in the chalet opposite the one we had stayed at for the past, I dunno, 4 times we had been to Bintan. This means everything was reversed and I was really confused for awhile.

So yeah. That was a fun trip to take and I'm happy I did that before NS. Now I can concentrate on properly slogging it out for the next 2 years. o_O