Fore! Golfing in Bintan

I mentioned in my last post that I was given a fantastic set of golf clubs for my birthday. As part of the deal, Nic from my office had also arranged a golfing day out on Bintan the next weekend. Bintan is an Indonesian island about an hour's ferry ride out of Singapore. It has several resorts and golf courses and is very popular with Sinagporeans for short breaks and golfing days (it's much better value playing there than in Singapore, provided you are willing to travel).




We were meant to be playing with two guys from JLL, a service provider to Deutsche Bank, but after a big night out one of them slept in and missed the ferry. So there was just the three of us.

We played at the Laguna Bintan which is part of the Banyan Tree resort there. It's a very nice course and I was surprised to find that we were virtually the only people playing, even though it was a Saturday. This suited me fine, though, as I played spectactularly awfully and I needed neither an audience nor irritated golfers coming up behind us.

We had two (lady) caddies between the three of us. Nic and I shared one, called Multi. I have decided that I never want to play golf any other way! They were great. They would make club suggestions, tell you which way the green was falling and by how much (rarely getting it wrong) and I swear they can smell balls lost in the scrub!


One of the local hazards are the monkeys - they love to raid the carts whilst you are playing and steal food or whatever they can grab.

It was a great day out, even though I played like shit. Next thing to do is get some lessons .....

Omigod!! I'm 40!!

Well it's been a while since my last posting, but I guess that is probably an indication of how busy I have been lately, as you will see from my next few entries.

The big news is that I am now officially and unequivocally middle-aged. I turned 40 on 4 May. I won't carry on here about how I feel about that, but I will say that rather than dreading the event, I actually ended up looking forward to it.

I had debated with myself and others for months about what I should do to mark the occasion: Should I run away by myself to a spa to fast and detox through the magic of enema in an attempt to deny the fact and somehow wind back the clock? Should I head back to Australia and do something there? Should I keep it low-key and have a small dinner in Singapore? A night on a casino ship in international waters? Hide under the bed and hope it goes away?

I soon came to realise that in the year that I had been in Singapore I had actually built up a band of friends and colleagues with whom I really wanted to celebrate my birthday, and whom in turn really wanted to help me celebrate. And so I planned a party.

A few weeks out from the date, I tossed a number of ideas around on where to hold it, how to cater and whether or not there should be a theme. Following a clever suggestion from a friend at work, I settled on a beach party at a bar called Km8, which is on Tanjong Beach on Sentosa Island. Sentosa is "Singapore's Resort Island" and lies just of the coast of mainland Singapore (which is a pretty small island in itself!). Tanjong, like all the beaches on Sentosa, is man-made, but has a great tropical, south-east Asian feel. Km8 is a very casual, laid-back sort of bar that extends out on to the sands of the beach, has a pool and plays very cool music. It all added up to exactly the sort of venue and scene that I felt was right for the night. My birthday fell on the Friday, but so that we could enjoy a few hours of sunlight at the party, I set the date for Saturday 5 May starting at 4pm.

You can check out the Km8 website at http://www.km8.com.sg

A few weeks beforehand, I had lunch with an old friend and colleague of mine from Sydney, Michele, when she was up in Singapore for a few days. We hatched a plan that maybe she and another old friend, Annette, should come up for the party. I was thrilled a little while later to hear that they had booked and would be here for the weekend. Michele's niece, Ali, was also going to come.

For the first time ever, I took a leave day on my birthday. Annette had arrived the evening before and we spent the morning doing some shopping and having lunch before heading out to the airport to pick up Michele and Ali. We all then traipsed off to Raffles Amrita Spa where we met up with Anke and we indulged ourselves with either a 2 hour massage and facial treatment or massage and body-wrap. This was followed by a few Singapore Slings in the Long Bar at Raffles and then some chilli and black pepper crab down at Boat Quay. With all the shopping, spa-ing, slinging and crabbing it turned out to be a very enjoyable, very Singaporean birthday.

After dinner the Aussie girls headed home whilst Anke and I stayed in Boat Quay for a couple more drinks and a boogie. At BQ Bar, the DJ even played "I Will Survive" for me, which had somehow become my theme song of sorts over the previous 8 months when it had been performed on numerous occassions by different bands, supposedly in honour of my "birthday". If it had actually been my birthday on each of those occasions I would be closer to 50 now than 40! We ended up in this Indian/Arabian bar where we shared a hookah (a Turkish water-pipe). This earned me a few interesting "umms", "errs" and "oh riiight"s the next day when I told people the story: all they heard was that Anke and I had shared a "hooker"!

The day of my party and I went out shopping with the girls (they are really good at it) but back home again to get ready and to get to Km8 to be there before the guests. Well, I needn't have bothered rushing as everybody decided they would be fashionably late!

I was a bit worried for a while. but people did eventually start turning up around 5pm, by which time I had a few G&Ts under my belt. I won't bore you any longer with details of the night, except:

• there were about 60 people turn up


• the food was fantastic


• I received lots of wonderful gifts (including a set of golf clubs from my work colleagues (!!!))


• everyone drank a lot


• there was cake


• the cake was rubbed into my face


• I was thrown in the swimming pool in my undies!


• we danced a lot


• I think it was the most fabulous birthday party I've ever been to!

There are way too many photos to post on here, but you can view a slideshow of the lot if you go to http://adobe.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=17tldbsw.y8h3ny8&x=0&y=-gzyeri

It was worthwhile turning 40 for such a fantastic weekend (doesn't mean I'm looking forward to 50 just yet though!!)

One night in Bangkok

Anke had a friend coming down fom China to visit for about 10 days and so, in looking for something to do on the weekend, booked us on a one night trip to Bangkok. About a week out though, her friend slipped a disc in his back and so cancelled the trip to Singapore. Not to worry, Anke and I would still go. But then, two days out, Anke came down with a dreadful flu (awww) and so the trip was off for her as well! As it happened, a friend of ours, Craig, was heading to Bangkok that same weekend. And so I decided to go anyway and catch up with him. Very fortuitously, Craig's friend in Bangkok, Tony, is a travel agent and is also starting up a tour service and so I was to get a personalised tour!

I was on a 4.00pm flight out of Singapore and landed in Bangkok at 5.20 (BKK is one hour behind SG). Tony met me at the airport and took me into the hotel, where I freshened up and then met Craig. We went for a fantastic Korean BBQ dinner: less than 5 SGD for all the meat and vegies you care to pick out from the buffet which you then cook yourself on a little BBQ on your table.

After dinner we headed across the road to the Asia Hotel and the Calypso cabaret. It was a fantastic show - all ladyboys of course. Lots of colour, dancing and lipsynching. Didn't take my camera with me, unfortunately, so no pics of this I'm afraid. After the show Tony headed home and Craig and I proceeded on a bar crawl around Pat Pong - a few G&Ts and a couple of "lesser" drag shows, but lots of fun. Got back to the hotel around 3.30am.

Up early the next morning and had breakfast in the hotel, then Craig & Tony picked me up about 8.30am to head to the floating markets. The floating markets are about 90km out of town, so a bit of a trip. The markets were incredible - lots and lots of colour and action. I took a boat with Tony for a ride that lasted about 1 hour.

Tony and Craig

I didn't eat any of the meat!

I bought a silly hat off this woman

Snake man!

From the floating markets, we then drove back towards Bangkok and the Samphran Elephant Ground & Zoo. We had a buffet lunch there (which worked out at 50 Baht, or less then 2.50 SGD!!)

As we walked in, there was a sign: "Your photo with tigers within minute. 100 Baht". this was too good to pass up and so I jumped in. They were gorgeous.

We then went to the elephant show, where they tell a story of the elephant in Thai history.

And then we quickly raced over to the crocodile show where these two mad guys somehow manage to keep their limbs intact despite giving the crocs every chance to bite them off.

Back into the car and back towards town. Experienced some famous BKK traffic on the way, so it was a slow journey. But I was in time to go to this huge massage centre where I was luckily able to get straight in for a 1.5 hour oil massage (it's a very nice and reputable place - no happy endings!).

From the massage to the airport. The new BKK airport is huge and very nice, but I am not sure if they really got the functionality quite right. It is a long and circuitous route to get to the gate.

After I passed through immigration I wen to reach for my wallet and found it wasn't in my pocket where it should be. Of course I immediately felt sick, thinking that I may have been pickpocketed. But I rang Craig and discovered that I had left it in Tony's car, so whew! Craig brought it back to Sing with him on the Tuesday.

For a boy from Australia, there is something deliciously decadent about being able to just pop up to Bangkok for 24 hours. Thanks to Craig & Tony I was able to pack a huge amount in.