Golfers travel from thousands of miles away everyday to enjoy Thailand golf courses, tourist attractions and cultural experiences. Tour guides can answer many questions and provide necessary insights regarding the sights. Likewise, golfers in Thailand benefit from the help they get from the delightful caddies at all Thai golf courses. Still, there are some things all golfers should learn about golf in Thailand, which will make their rounds more enjoyable.
Thailand is in the tropics and while that affords all year golfing weather, the heat, especially in the sun, can be quite taxing. Drink lots of water before you play and keep drinking during the round. Isotonic drinks, such as Gatorade, M Sport and the locally made B-Ing are available at drink huts every 3-4 holes on all Thailand golf courses. They are quite helpful for keeping up your stamina. For food, bananas and boiled eggs are good choices on the Thai golf courses as they will replenish many of the minerals that your body looses during the round. Beers and fatty meats will do the opposite and should be avoided, at least until the end of the round.
Make sure you bring a clean hand towel and an umbrella in your golf bag when you golf in Thailand. The hand towel is useful to dry the sweat before gripping the club and the umbrella, while made for the rain, will be as important to protect golfers from the sun. The best umbrella is a silver sun type to reflect the sun and heat. A bottle of sunscreen should also be in your golf bag and remember to reapply it, especially to your face, as you will no doubt wipe some away with the towel when you sweat during the round.
A couple of language tips can be useful on the Thailand golf courses as well. While most Thai caddies are trained to know some English, a little golf Thai goes a long way. For instance, ‘mai’ is wood and ‘lek’, which means small, is used for iron. Learning Thai numbers 3-9 will be helpful so, here they are: 3=sam, 4=sii, 5=haa, 6=hok, 7=jet, 8=bat, 9=kow. Thus, ‘mai sam’ and ‘lek haa’ is is three wood and five iron, reaspectively. Driver and putter are understood, as are sand and pitching wedge. Right is ‘kwa’, left is ‘sai’ and straight is ‘trong’, which will be helpful in putting. Wind is ‘lom’, down wind is ‘tom lom’ and against the wind is ‘tuan lom’. Rain is ‘fon tok’, water hazard is ‘nam’ and OB is OB!
On second thoughts many you can just forget these last two! Just go out hit well and have a great time golfing in Thailand.
Good post!
Posted by: Craig Green | November 03, 2009 at 04:49 PM
And for those us still playing with an old set of blades , One = Neung , and Two = Sawng !
Pitching wedge , always seems to come out more like ching .
I have sometimes heard Sand wedge being a Wedge Sai .
Also missed out a few phrases that I hear others caddies using like Tok Sai (bunkered and Tok Nam (wet).
Also worth heeding is Ngoo (snake) !
And not to nitpik Marks fine column , you will have more success saying Gow , than Kow for Nine .
Posted by: Bangkok Jock | November 05, 2009 at 10:22 AM