By DAMIEN CAVE
The NYT : March 9, 2008
The NYT : March 9, 2008
Capitalist R & R has returned to the Dalat Palace Golf Club,
in a city that was peaceful even during the Vietnam War.
Josef Polleross for The New York Times
IT felt a little odd, even a touch irreverent, swinging a Callaway driver in the land of “Apocalypse Now,” Khe Sahn and Ho Chi Minh. And yet there I stood on a carpet of manicured grass outside Hanoi, looking toward a small flag in the distance.
My wife, Diana, and I needed a break from the traffic-choked cities of Vietnam, where we were spending a few days last October, and so we had booked a round of golf with a tour company and hopped into the back of an S.U.V. with a driver partial to symphonies. With soaring violins to soothe us, we drove from the capital’s cacophonous streets to its outskirts, where Vietnam’s rural past and booming present stand side by side.
First, we saw a towering glass apartment complex shadowing a field of grazing cows; then a factory belching smoke over neighboring rice fields; and, finally, Kings’ Island Golf Club — northern Vietnam’s first course, opened in 1993, when the country began to trade communism for managed capitalism.
The club’s 36 holes are wonderfully remote, accessible only by a boat ride from the club’s main parking lot. Surrounded by misty mountains with poetic names, the area felt at times like a Buddhist retreat.
Until, that is, we reached the clubhouse, which was painted peach. Not just any peach — the peach usually reserved for posters of Florida. A “monster burger” also stared up at us from the lunch menu, and our caddy, though she wore a classic Vietnamese cone-shaped hat, seemed perfectly trained in the English of American duffers.
When my drive sliced right over the trees, she said “sit, sit” — a phrase that became far too familiar during our time together. Or my favorite, when the ball splashed into the water: “What-a-pity.”
We visited three golf courses in Vietnam on this trip, and at each we found varying degrees of the same American-Vietnamese mix. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised. Golf there has always been an import.
The French built a handful of small courses in the 1920s and 1930s for colonial leaders near Saigon. Only a portion of the Vietnamese elite followed their lead — none perhaps more than the Francophile emperor Bao Dai, who famously picked up the game while studying in France. So much did he love the game (and his French patrons) that he even built a small eight-hole course in Da Lat, a mountain retreat favored for its temperate weather.
And when the Americans arrived a few decades later, this was where they often played. Da Lat was the Switzerland of the war; it mostly remained peaceful because of an agreement among the warring sides to set the area aside for rest and relaxation.
Perhaps as a result, many Vietnamese came to see golf as a mark of imperialism, a pastime of the idle or exploitive rich. Ho Chi Minh was reportedly not a fan. Indeed, when the last American officials left in 1975, his followers — Vietnam’s victorious Communists — effectively banned the sport, making it clear that such bourgeois pursuits were no longer acceptable. Golf essentially disappeared. Weeds grew over holes. Nine irons rusted.
It took the collapse of the Soviet Union to revive the game. As the country opened to international commerce in the early 90s, a trickle of foreign businessmen began flowing into Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Demand for the links came with them, leading to the reopening of a few old courses and the construction of new ones. But Vietnam was still a long way from becoming a golf destination on par with Indonesia or other Pacific countries where the game had taken off.
Part of the problem was infrastructure. Arrivals to the nascent golf scene recall flying to places like Da Lat on old Russian Yak-40s or driving on roads with potholes the size of coffins.
Then, just as improvements were beginning to appear, the Asian financial crisis hit.
“For a while, there were a lot of going-away parties,” said Jeff Puchalski, a former golf pro at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles, who has been managing golf courses in Vietnam for more than a decade.
Eventually though, he said, golf seemed to reach critical mass. Nick Faldo visited and in 2001 Congress ratified the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement, normalizing relations with its former enemy. And while the SARS outbreak in Asia in 2003 once again threw the golf industry for a loop, this time it recovered and kept growing.
Today, there are at least a dozen clubs or courses and as many as 30 more are being planned or built, according to the country’s newly formed golf association.
And once again, foreigners are heavily involved. Most golf in Vietnam is played by visitors from Japan, South Korea, Australia and, increasingly, the United States. Many Americans have also assumed the role of investors and managers.
The Dalat Palace Golf Club, Vietnam’s oldest and best-known course, reopened in 1994 with a sizable infusion of money from Larry Hillblom, a founder of DHL (the “H” is for Hillblom). Mr. Hillblom, who was killed in a plane crash in 1995, also built an 18-hole course along the coast, Ocean Dunes.
Both courses are now managed by Mr. Puchalski. Like the other Americans running courses whom we spoke to, he told us that Americans were in demand because they brought expertise unavailable within Vietnam. The result is a form of golf that’s both familiar and foreign.
In Da Lat, it was easy to understand what caught Mr. Hillblom’s eye. The Dalat Palace course sits in the center of the small, old city, which at 5,000 feet above sea level has temperate weather year round and views on some days all the way to the coast.
We arrived during the rainy season, so the course was particularly green, squishy and empty. On our first day, we appeared around 10 a.m. at the clubhouse, an old stone mansion that looks straight out of “The Great Gatsby.” After paying ($75 for 18 holes on weekends, the rate for guests at the Sofitel or Novitel hotels there, plus $25 for clubs and $10 for shoes), we asked the only other golfer in sight to join us: Mr. Kagawa, 70, a retired Exxon executive from Tokyo who was also playing in Vietnam for the first time.
The first hole was a par 3, with a soft downward slope, which gave us a little extra distance on shots otherwise hindered by the wet conditions. We all finished relatively proud, with bogeys.
As we moved along, the course became more and more intricate, even whimsical. The third hole, for example, was a sharp dogleg right, with the pin in a small valley about 100 yards below where the fairway turned. It was clearly meant to be a surprise, and a challenge. Without a soft approach shot, the ball would end up in the lake behind the green.
Mr. Kagawa was impressed. “Very beautiful,” he said.
As we walked to the next hole, I asked him to compare Dalat Palace to other courses in Asia and the United States. “The courses here, and in Japan too, they are more like gardens,” he said.
First, we saw a towering glass apartment complex shadowing a field of grazing cows; then a factory belching smoke over neighboring rice fields; and, finally, Kings’ Island Golf Club — northern Vietnam’s first course, opened in 1993, when the country began to trade communism for managed capitalism.
The club’s 36 holes are wonderfully remote, accessible only by a boat ride from the club’s main parking lot. Surrounded by misty mountains with poetic names, the area felt at times like a Buddhist retreat.
Until, that is, we reached the clubhouse, which was painted peach. Not just any peach — the peach usually reserved for posters of Florida. A “monster burger” also stared up at us from the lunch menu, and our caddy, though she wore a classic Vietnamese cone-shaped hat, seemed perfectly trained in the English of American duffers.
When my drive sliced right over the trees, she said “sit, sit” — a phrase that became far too familiar during our time together. Or my favorite, when the ball splashed into the water: “What-a-pity.”
We visited three golf courses in Vietnam on this trip, and at each we found varying degrees of the same American-Vietnamese mix. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised. Golf there has always been an import.
The French built a handful of small courses in the 1920s and 1930s for colonial leaders near Saigon. Only a portion of the Vietnamese elite followed their lead — none perhaps more than the Francophile emperor Bao Dai, who famously picked up the game while studying in France. So much did he love the game (and his French patrons) that he even built a small eight-hole course in Da Lat, a mountain retreat favored for its temperate weather.
And when the Americans arrived a few decades later, this was where they often played. Da Lat was the Switzerland of the war; it mostly remained peaceful because of an agreement among the warring sides to set the area aside for rest and relaxation.
Perhaps as a result, many Vietnamese came to see golf as a mark of imperialism, a pastime of the idle or exploitive rich. Ho Chi Minh was reportedly not a fan. Indeed, when the last American officials left in 1975, his followers — Vietnam’s victorious Communists — effectively banned the sport, making it clear that such bourgeois pursuits were no longer acceptable. Golf essentially disappeared. Weeds grew over holes. Nine irons rusted.
It took the collapse of the Soviet Union to revive the game. As the country opened to international commerce in the early 90s, a trickle of foreign businessmen began flowing into Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Demand for the links came with them, leading to the reopening of a few old courses and the construction of new ones. But Vietnam was still a long way from becoming a golf destination on par with Indonesia or other Pacific countries where the game had taken off.
Part of the problem was infrastructure. Arrivals to the nascent golf scene recall flying to places like Da Lat on old Russian Yak-40s or driving on roads with potholes the size of coffins.
Then, just as improvements were beginning to appear, the Asian financial crisis hit.
“For a while, there were a lot of going-away parties,” said Jeff Puchalski, a former golf pro at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles, who has been managing golf courses in Vietnam for more than a decade.
Eventually though, he said, golf seemed to reach critical mass. Nick Faldo visited and in 2001 Congress ratified the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement, normalizing relations with its former enemy. And while the SARS outbreak in Asia in 2003 once again threw the golf industry for a loop, this time it recovered and kept growing.
Today, there are at least a dozen clubs or courses and as many as 30 more are being planned or built, according to the country’s newly formed golf association.
And once again, foreigners are heavily involved. Most golf in Vietnam is played by visitors from Japan, South Korea, Australia and, increasingly, the United States. Many Americans have also assumed the role of investors and managers.
The Dalat Palace Golf Club, Vietnam’s oldest and best-known course, reopened in 1994 with a sizable infusion of money from Larry Hillblom, a founder of DHL (the “H” is for Hillblom). Mr. Hillblom, who was killed in a plane crash in 1995, also built an 18-hole course along the coast, Ocean Dunes.
Both courses are now managed by Mr. Puchalski. Like the other Americans running courses whom we spoke to, he told us that Americans were in demand because they brought expertise unavailable within Vietnam. The result is a form of golf that’s both familiar and foreign.
In Da Lat, it was easy to understand what caught Mr. Hillblom’s eye. The Dalat Palace course sits in the center of the small, old city, which at 5,000 feet above sea level has temperate weather year round and views on some days all the way to the coast.
We arrived during the rainy season, so the course was particularly green, squishy and empty. On our first day, we appeared around 10 a.m. at the clubhouse, an old stone mansion that looks straight out of “The Great Gatsby.” After paying ($75 for 18 holes on weekends, the rate for guests at the Sofitel or Novitel hotels there, plus $25 for clubs and $10 for shoes), we asked the only other golfer in sight to join us: Mr. Kagawa, 70, a retired Exxon executive from Tokyo who was also playing in Vietnam for the first time.
The first hole was a par 3, with a soft downward slope, which gave us a little extra distance on shots otherwise hindered by the wet conditions. We all finished relatively proud, with bogeys.
As we moved along, the course became more and more intricate, even whimsical. The third hole, for example, was a sharp dogleg right, with the pin in a small valley about 100 yards below where the fairway turned. It was clearly meant to be a surprise, and a challenge. Without a soft approach shot, the ball would end up in the lake behind the green.
Mr. Kagawa was impressed. “Very beautiful,” he said.
As we walked to the next hole, I asked him to compare Dalat Palace to other courses in Asia and the United States. “The courses here, and in Japan too, they are more like gardens,” he said.
At the Dalat Palace, there was clearly a deep appreciation for flowers. Behind many holes, volleyball-sized peonies stood three feet high; red flowers as bright as chili peppers and luxurious multiflower displays dotted the course. The grass, because of the rain, was not in perfect shape, but that could be excused.
The course had once been among Vietnam’s most popular, and during the war, American officials relished time in Da Lat. Today, signs of a more contemporary American presence are confined to the golf shirts and umbrellas for sale at the clubhouse, with words and prices in English, and the menu, which included American bar food alongside local favorites like pho, the traditional beef noodle soup.
The main hotel attached to the course, the Sofitel Dalat Palace, seemed to be aiming for a romanticized version of a French colony in the 1920s. Our room had a claw-foot tub. The main restaurant was French, and a constant stream of jazz poured into the lobby.
The building is in fact a refurbished palace of Bao Dai’s, with stunning views over the lake that abuts the golf course. But the wide hallways, cavernous lobby and quiet staff outfitted like French maids added an air of formality. It was the kind of place where whispering seemed most appropriate.
We preferred Larry’s Bar in the basement, named after Mr. Hillblom, because it was far less stuffy, featuring a pool table, a simpler menu and enough stone and wood for an Alpine ski lodge.
Ocean Dunes, by contrast, felt far more Floridian. Squeezed between the South China Sea and the largely unimpressive southern city of Phan Thiet, a slow, four-hour drive from Ho Chi Minh City, Ocean Dunes is essentially a renovated 1980s Russian beach hotel with a golf course out back. Tiger Woods’s father, Earl, was stationed in the area during one of his two tours in Vietnam, and he called his son Tiger after a close Vietnamese friend from the area.
When we were there, most of the guests were Australian retirees on a group tour. There were also quite a few families.
The 18-hole course was designed by Nick Faldo, and it held a few surprises. The ninth hole is downright gorgeous. I don’t even remember what I shot (must not have been a birdie) because it didn’t matter. Rated one of the 500 best holes in the world by Golf Magazine in 2000, this par 3 is a narrow corridor of palm trees ending on a green with stunning views of the water.
Unfortunately, the rest was far more ordinary, dominated by predictable fairways and average greens. For about $250, we got two nights’ lodging, club rental and one round on a ho-hum course with only a handful of ocean views and sightlines dominated mainly by a large red and white cellphone tower nearby. The noises of modern Vietnam also repeatedly intruded: horns from motorbikes and trucks, dogs barking and children playing.
On the fifth and seventh holes, I could see what appeared to be the local Communist Party building on the course’s edge, marked by a gold star surrounded by red.
I wondered what the Vietnamese today thought of all this leisure. Our caddies demurred, responding to my questions with giggles and a shrug. So I asked Mr. Puchalski.
As a bunch of Australians gathered over a barbecue nearby, he told me that teaching the Vietnamese about golf has been perhaps the industry’s greatest challenge. The Vietnamese, he said, are still getting used to the idea of conspicuous consumption.
“Ten years ago, no one knew what golf was,” Mr. Puchalski said. “Ten years ago, you’d be arrested for talking about your money.”
LIKE other American golf industry veterans in Vietnam, Mr. Puchalski has done his best to bring the game and Vietnam together. Several years ago, Dalat Palace and Ocean Dunes began giving free lessons and rounds to dozens of Communist Party officials at the provincial level. In 1997, Mr. Puchalski even put on a golf clinic at Da Lat, paying to bring senior leaders from Hanoi.
As a result, the government seems to have developed a greater appreciation for the game. Mr. Puchalski said that many leaders now play regularly.
Last year, officials also agreed to let a group of Americans associated with Mr. Puchalski begin using the name of their supreme leader to market a Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail. Since the name can only be used on products or services that benefit the Vietnamese people, it was essentially a high-profile vote of approval.
Interest in the game has also spread to the nouveau riche of Vietnam. Several caddies told me that they sometimes work for Vietnamese barons and officials who bet hundreds of dollars on each round and become furious when they lose.
The main hotel attached to the course, the Sofitel Dalat Palace, seemed to be aiming for a romanticized version of a French colony in the 1920s. Our room had a claw-foot tub. The main restaurant was French, and a constant stream of jazz poured into the lobby.
The building is in fact a refurbished palace of Bao Dai’s, with stunning views over the lake that abuts the golf course. But the wide hallways, cavernous lobby and quiet staff outfitted like French maids added an air of formality. It was the kind of place where whispering seemed most appropriate.
We preferred Larry’s Bar in the basement, named after Mr. Hillblom, because it was far less stuffy, featuring a pool table, a simpler menu and enough stone and wood for an Alpine ski lodge.
Ocean Dunes, by contrast, felt far more Floridian. Squeezed between the South China Sea and the largely unimpressive southern city of Phan Thiet, a slow, four-hour drive from Ho Chi Minh City, Ocean Dunes is essentially a renovated 1980s Russian beach hotel with a golf course out back. Tiger Woods’s father, Earl, was stationed in the area during one of his two tours in Vietnam, and he called his son Tiger after a close Vietnamese friend from the area.
When we were there, most of the guests were Australian retirees on a group tour. There were also quite a few families.
The 18-hole course was designed by Nick Faldo, and it held a few surprises. The ninth hole is downright gorgeous. I don’t even remember what I shot (must not have been a birdie) because it didn’t matter. Rated one of the 500 best holes in the world by Golf Magazine in 2000, this par 3 is a narrow corridor of palm trees ending on a green with stunning views of the water.
Unfortunately, the rest was far more ordinary, dominated by predictable fairways and average greens. For about $250, we got two nights’ lodging, club rental and one round on a ho-hum course with only a handful of ocean views and sightlines dominated mainly by a large red and white cellphone tower nearby. The noises of modern Vietnam also repeatedly intruded: horns from motorbikes and trucks, dogs barking and children playing.
On the fifth and seventh holes, I could see what appeared to be the local Communist Party building on the course’s edge, marked by a gold star surrounded by red.
I wondered what the Vietnamese today thought of all this leisure. Our caddies demurred, responding to my questions with giggles and a shrug. So I asked Mr. Puchalski.
As a bunch of Australians gathered over a barbecue nearby, he told me that teaching the Vietnamese about golf has been perhaps the industry’s greatest challenge. The Vietnamese, he said, are still getting used to the idea of conspicuous consumption.
“Ten years ago, no one knew what golf was,” Mr. Puchalski said. “Ten years ago, you’d be arrested for talking about your money.”
LIKE other American golf industry veterans in Vietnam, Mr. Puchalski has done his best to bring the game and Vietnam together. Several years ago, Dalat Palace and Ocean Dunes began giving free lessons and rounds to dozens of Communist Party officials at the provincial level. In 1997, Mr. Puchalski even put on a golf clinic at Da Lat, paying to bring senior leaders from Hanoi.
As a result, the government seems to have developed a greater appreciation for the game. Mr. Puchalski said that many leaders now play regularly.
Last year, officials also agreed to let a group of Americans associated with Mr. Puchalski begin using the name of their supreme leader to market a Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail. Since the name can only be used on products or services that benefit the Vietnamese people, it was essentially a high-profile vote of approval.
Interest in the game has also spread to the nouveau riche of Vietnam. Several caddies told me that they sometimes work for Vietnamese barons and officials who bet hundreds of dollars on each round and become furious when they lose.
Mr. Puchalski acknowledged that betting was a common problem. He said he did his best to discourage it, and that it was just one of many things he has had to impart to first-time students of the game. Other unofficial lessons have included: why you shouldn’t laugh when someone slices into the rough; the value of silence while putting; and the nature of tipping.
At Kings’ Island, outside Hanoi, our caddies seemed to have learned all they needed to know. Diana and I played nine holes on the Lakeview course and nine on the Mountainview course with our caddies, Nguyen Thi Tuyet and Le Thi Lien. Petite women under 35 who grew up nearby and spoke a diligent brand of overarticulated English, they managed to repeatedly save us from ourselves. On every hole, they gave us a summary of what to watch out for and where to aim.
Each Kings’ Island course held subtle differences. Mountainview was more open, allowing for more mistakes with overlapping fairways, fewer trees and less water. Lakeview was shorter and required more accuracy. The greens were smaller, the rough a little thicker.
Compared with Dalat Palace, the landscape of Kings’ Island seemed less exotic but more natural. There were fewer designed flower beds but more trees, including Vietnamese birches that stood like sentinels, and what our caddies called “tram trees” of medium height, with bursts of scented yellow flowers.
For most of our round, we could soak in the scenery without rushing. Only once did we see another group of golfers, an invigorating reminder of golf’s origins as a battle between man and nature.
On the seventh hole of the Lakeview course, a 340-yard par 4 with a ribbon of a fairway, my caddy, Ms. Thi Tuyet, pointed to a pair of mountains side by side in the distance, shrouded in haze. She explained that the peaks had always offered solace to people in the area because one represented a woman, the other a man.
Minutes later, a small military plane flew overhead. Ms. Thi Tuyet said that during the war, the area had been bombed heavily by the Americans, who sought to knock out several North Vietnamese military bases nearby. The American campaign had killed many people, but Ms. Thi Tuyet was too young to remember that time. And like so many Vietnamese, she didn’t seem particularly interested in our questions about that period.
After all, it was time to move on. It was time to play another hole.
“The golf course,” she said, laughing at her silly American customers. “Very safe.”
RECULTIVATING GREEN SWATHS OF A COLONIAL PAST
GETTING THERE
Visas are required of all American citizens to enter Vietnam and can be ordered by mail or in person at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington (1233 20th Street NW, Suite 400; 202-861-0737 or 202-861-0694; http://www.vietnamembassy-usa.org/). A one-month single-entry visa costs $65, or $85 for expedited service. Vietnamese embassies in Asia work faster and cheaper, and many tourist hotels in Siem Reap, Cambodia, secure visas in a day or two for about $75.
Several companies like TraveltoVietnam.com (in Ho Chi Minh City) also offer visa processing that takes from one ($38) to three days ($28). You then collect your visa in Vietnam at the immigration desk at the airport, for an additional charge of $25.
There are no direct flights to Vietnam from the United States. Most visitors fly to Hanoi on Vietnam Airlines (http://www.vietnamairlines.com/) from Hong Kong, Siem Reap, Seoul, Tokyo or Bangkok. A recent Web search for flights from New York in early April yielded round trips with one stop each way from $1,411 on Vietnam Airlines and $1,413 on Delta.
The Vietnamese currency is the dong. The exchange rate in late February was about 16,400 dong to the dollar, but most transactions in Vietnam can be conducted in dollars. United States-based credit cards are accepted at almost all hotels and restaurants. A.T.M.’s are also easy to find.
GETTING A TEE TIME
Package tours that include rounds at several courses and lodging at some of Vietnam’s best hotels can be arranged through the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail (http://www.hochiminhgolftrail.com/; 84-54-931-090). Prices vary depending on courses and hotels.
Individually, a round of 18 holes at a course in Vietnam will cost about $65 to $75 for those who stay with partnered hotels and $85 to $100 for those who stay elsewhere. Most clubs rent clubs and shoes. Caddies cost about $15 plus a tip.
WHERE TO STAY
In Hanoi, the Sofitel Metropole Hanoi (15 Ngo Quyen Street; 84-4-826-6919; http://www.sofitel.com/) is an Old World oasis amid the bustle of North Vietnam’s largest city. This landmark hotel features wooden ceiling fans, marble floors in the lobby and 363 rooms that combine flat-screen TVs with artistic antique décor. The interior garden has a pool bordered by lounge chairs — each adorned with a conical hat to shield sunbathers — and a bar where Champagne tastings are common. There are two restaurants (one French, one Vietnamese) and a health club on the property. When we visited, work on rooms in the newer Opera wing was still going on; it is supposed to be finished in the next few weeks. A double starts at $259 in the Opera wing, and $289 a night in the historic wing.
The Sofitel Dalat Palace (12 Tran Phu Street, Da Lat; 84-63-825-444; www.sofitel.com) is a majestic, Jazz Age, 43-room hotel with sweeping corridors, a grand French restaurant, and a cozy bar with pool tables in the basement. The rooms are lavish with high ceilings, wood shutters and claw-foot tubs. Doubles from $201.
WHERE TO EAT
Green Tangerine (48 Hang Be, Hanoi; 84-4-825-1286) offers a menu of innovative and delicious French and Asian fare. Set back from the busy streets in a restored 1928 colonial home in the Old Quarter, Green Tangerine is a great spot for lunch or a drink. The desserts — especially the banana spring rolls — make it worth seeking out. Lunch with drinks, about $40.
Club Opera (59 Ly Thai To Street, Hanoi; 84-4-824-6950) is housed in a grand villa across the street from the Metropole. Decorated with bright paint and silks, this elegant restaurant serves well-prepared Thai and Vietnamese dishes, focusing on seafood. Dinner for two with wine, $70.
At the golf courses we visited, the food was typical counter fare of both the United States and Vietnam. Burgers and Vietnamese staples like pho could be had for about $5.
Each Kings’ Island course held subtle differences. Mountainview was more open, allowing for more mistakes with overlapping fairways, fewer trees and less water. Lakeview was shorter and required more accuracy. The greens were smaller, the rough a little thicker.
Compared with Dalat Palace, the landscape of Kings’ Island seemed less exotic but more natural. There were fewer designed flower beds but more trees, including Vietnamese birches that stood like sentinels, and what our caddies called “tram trees” of medium height, with bursts of scented yellow flowers.
For most of our round, we could soak in the scenery without rushing. Only once did we see another group of golfers, an invigorating reminder of golf’s origins as a battle between man and nature.
On the seventh hole of the Lakeview course, a 340-yard par 4 with a ribbon of a fairway, my caddy, Ms. Thi Tuyet, pointed to a pair of mountains side by side in the distance, shrouded in haze. She explained that the peaks had always offered solace to people in the area because one represented a woman, the other a man.
Minutes later, a small military plane flew overhead. Ms. Thi Tuyet said that during the war, the area had been bombed heavily by the Americans, who sought to knock out several North Vietnamese military bases nearby. The American campaign had killed many people, but Ms. Thi Tuyet was too young to remember that time. And like so many Vietnamese, she didn’t seem particularly interested in our questions about that period.
After all, it was time to move on. It was time to play another hole.
“The golf course,” she said, laughing at her silly American customers. “Very safe.”
RECULTIVATING GREEN SWATHS OF A COLONIAL PAST
GETTING THERE
Visas are required of all American citizens to enter Vietnam and can be ordered by mail or in person at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington (1233 20th Street NW, Suite 400; 202-861-0737 or 202-861-0694; http://www.vietnamembassy-usa.org/). A one-month single-entry visa costs $65, or $85 for expedited service. Vietnamese embassies in Asia work faster and cheaper, and many tourist hotels in Siem Reap, Cambodia, secure visas in a day or two for about $75.
Several companies like TraveltoVietnam.com (in Ho Chi Minh City) also offer visa processing that takes from one ($38) to three days ($28). You then collect your visa in Vietnam at the immigration desk at the airport, for an additional charge of $25.
There are no direct flights to Vietnam from the United States. Most visitors fly to Hanoi on Vietnam Airlines (http://www.vietnamairlines.com/) from Hong Kong, Siem Reap, Seoul, Tokyo or Bangkok. A recent Web search for flights from New York in early April yielded round trips with one stop each way from $1,411 on Vietnam Airlines and $1,413 on Delta.
The Vietnamese currency is the dong. The exchange rate in late February was about 16,400 dong to the dollar, but most transactions in Vietnam can be conducted in dollars. United States-based credit cards are accepted at almost all hotels and restaurants. A.T.M.’s are also easy to find.
GETTING A TEE TIME
Package tours that include rounds at several courses and lodging at some of Vietnam’s best hotels can be arranged through the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail (http://www.hochiminhgolftrail.com/; 84-54-931-090). Prices vary depending on courses and hotels.
Individually, a round of 18 holes at a course in Vietnam will cost about $65 to $75 for those who stay with partnered hotels and $85 to $100 for those who stay elsewhere. Most clubs rent clubs and shoes. Caddies cost about $15 plus a tip.
WHERE TO STAY
In Hanoi, the Sofitel Metropole Hanoi (15 Ngo Quyen Street; 84-4-826-6919; http://www.sofitel.com/) is an Old World oasis amid the bustle of North Vietnam’s largest city. This landmark hotel features wooden ceiling fans, marble floors in the lobby and 363 rooms that combine flat-screen TVs with artistic antique décor. The interior garden has a pool bordered by lounge chairs — each adorned with a conical hat to shield sunbathers — and a bar where Champagne tastings are common. There are two restaurants (one French, one Vietnamese) and a health club on the property. When we visited, work on rooms in the newer Opera wing was still going on; it is supposed to be finished in the next few weeks. A double starts at $259 in the Opera wing, and $289 a night in the historic wing.
The Sofitel Dalat Palace (12 Tran Phu Street, Da Lat; 84-63-825-444; www.sofitel.com) is a majestic, Jazz Age, 43-room hotel with sweeping corridors, a grand French restaurant, and a cozy bar with pool tables in the basement. The rooms are lavish with high ceilings, wood shutters and claw-foot tubs. Doubles from $201.
WHERE TO EAT
Green Tangerine (48 Hang Be, Hanoi; 84-4-825-1286) offers a menu of innovative and delicious French and Asian fare. Set back from the busy streets in a restored 1928 colonial home in the Old Quarter, Green Tangerine is a great spot for lunch or a drink. The desserts — especially the banana spring rolls — make it worth seeking out. Lunch with drinks, about $40.
Club Opera (59 Ly Thai To Street, Hanoi; 84-4-824-6950) is housed in a grand villa across the street from the Metropole. Decorated with bright paint and silks, this elegant restaurant serves well-prepared Thai and Vietnamese dishes, focusing on seafood. Dinner for two with wine, $70.
At the golf courses we visited, the food was typical counter fare of both the United States and Vietnam. Burgers and Vietnamese staples like pho could be had for about $5.
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