A tropical dream trip

My heart starts to sink as Singapore Airline’s 747 jet slowing descending into the murky skies of JFK Airport. Like rude awakening, I realize that this familiarly bleak, lifelessly depressing scene is where I belong. That hangover by its cruelty will surely stay with me after the jetlag is long gone.
 
The fantastic journey started nine days earlier, when I landed in Singapore, and routinely did a last-minute check on things to do in the area. Accidentally, I noticed the neighboring Johor, Malaysia has over 40 golf courses. I happened to be no stranger to the great golf courses built by Malaysians, especially after playing in their Chang An Long Island club in my Grandfather's hometown Dongguan.
 
The following day, I traveled deep into the remote country of Johor. Desperate to play, I managed to borrow a set of clubs from a local. Opening the bag was enough to make me speechless: these things were supposed to be preserved by the Malaysian Museum of Golfing Equipments (if there is one at all): the #2 and #3 woods were, well, made of REAL wood, the irons were so worn and rusty that the word “Guthrie’s” was barely recognizable. It turns out this mutual friend of mine inherited those ancient sticks from his father, who received them from his British bosses as a gift when they sold (or fled?) the plantation. Up until today, I am still kicking myself for not ‘stealing’ one of these woods as a collection piece. Maybe I would be able to auction it out at the Sotheby’s for some serious money. After all, the Brits invented golf, didn’t they? (Second thought: who knows, maybe someday, our historians will find a way to prove that we Chinese also invented the game of golf. After all, didn’t we proudly declare that Chinese invented the game of football (=soccer) a couple thousand years ago and discovered America in 1421?)

Getting to the golf course was at least ¼ of the fun. After a gated entrance, we bumped through a dirt road where beautiful unnamed tropical plants surrounded us. I could see from a distance a few colonial styled houses that appeared to be so outlandish with the local settings. A huge four-legged lizard would pop out of nowhere and scared the shit out of me. In some areas, we got entirely buried by shades of the endless palm trees. After ten minutes’ drive, here we were: a gravel pavement lot with a wooden sign “President” in front of my parked spot. I took that spot with no shame: there were no other vehicles in sight anyway.

A chunky dark-skinned lady came out to greet us. You could tell she’s Indian by the red dot on her forehead, just like the stuff we put on our steamed buns. She was a little shocked when I asked to rent a gas cart or ‘buggy’ as it’s called locally: because there were none. The fee to play 18 holes? A jaws-dropping $5.25 with a bag carrying cart included!
 
Despite the shabby ‘clubhouse’ or whatever you want to call it, the course was superbly maintained and the view was nothing but magnificent. This Brit must have gotten so bored in his plantation that he decided to turn the airplane runway into a gigantic fairway. I had no doubt he did a hell of a job.
 
I walked with the caddy over the so-called cow cut grass, until my sneakers (sorry, no golf shoes) were totally soaked by the morning dew. The caddy would tell me about a tree that smells fragrantly only in the afternoons. In the meantime, I was getting more and more proficient with these rusty sticks---meaning hitting a #5 iron while I should have used a #8 back home. And the breathing of the morning air? “Priceless”.

The following day, I continued my adventure at a formal course at Desairu, a beach facing the South China Sea. This time, the monkeys jumped onto my buggy and ate my lunch. On one of the holes, we witnessed a wild boar with her baby walked leisurely through our green and screwed up my birdie. A Singaporean who I played with asked if I had seen anything wilder. To make him feel good, I didn’t tell him that I sighted alligators taking a sun bath by the ponds of a course in South Carolina's Kiawah Island.

(This was written a few years back)

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