Monday, May 16, 2011

Wedding & Golf Trip to the Hawaii of the East

In the wee hour of Sun, 17 April 2011, 10 homo-sapiens of the modern world descended on the Lion City budget terminal tugging along with them all the tools needed to strike a ball into 18 different unique holes. They were heading to the ‘Hawaii of the East’, an island of the Hainanese people, famous for its Wenchang chicken which is comparable to our Hainanese chicken (not those at Geylang, hor). First to attend the matrimonial celebration of their good buddy, Covette Ong and then challenging the golf courses of Hainan Island.

This trip offered many intriguing experiences and unusual discoveries. I thought all the Singapore leaders we have are down at the constituencies shaking voter’s hand not knowing we do have some among us shaking their heads with their rally speeches. Speeches and conversations were conducted in bird language, those blue macaws. Hehe, funny right but this made the trip so fun and enjoyable.

With a large group, inevitably there was conflict of opinions. When it come to taking a vote, they will be reminded they had ‘5 days to live and repent’ for choosing the wrong decision. Somehow, the Goofy spirit always prevails and thing goes back to normal.

Believe me, you find strange people doing strange things. Robert armed with his 'new' camera went around taking all kinds of photos - Covette smoking, Jonas taking 40 winks, people squatting at the market, roads, somebody's head, somebody's chest, shopping centres to name a few. Albert taking photo of lamp posts. And not forgetting playing card games using the most innovative method in the bus and plane.

Well, I guess largely it has to do with Shakespear's theory on the different phases of life.

We arrived on time at Meilan Airport on a bright sunny morning. Transportation is a 20-seater mini bus. We had our lunch somewhere in between Haikou and Qionghai, a town close to Xinglong (where the wedding was) and Sanya.

After lunch we checked into a hotel in Qionghai. There she stood in the doorway uttering 'Welcome to the Hotel California, such a lovely place'. Yes, somebody heard girls screaming down the aisle. Jonas and Billy got stuck in the lift; somehow it refused to go down. There were comments about the eerie feeling in their room. What a nice surprise!!! So how? Relax.

Our tour guide, Little Wu acted super fast like my Taylor Made driver. He found a better and more decent hotel for us. After the wedding dinner, we moved out of "Hotel California' (actually is Wei Jia Int’l Hotel) to another at NO extra cost. Wow, this is tip top service from our good friend, Martin Zhao. Impress, not only that he also provided a photographer too with a CD of photos taken for each of us.



The wedding dinner was held in a hotel restaurant. There were 2 tables with 10 of us taking up 1 table and the other occupied by Covette’s relatives. It was a sumptuous meal served with Chinese wine and about 12 different dishes of meat, fish and veggie. We did not finish the food as it’s impolite to do so. The dinner ended with toasts and wishes extended to the wedding couple and of course photo taking before we headed back to the hotel.



We had our first game at BOAO BFA, a very forgivable and beautiful course I had played a couple of times before, for some their first time. There were 11 of us, including Covette. I played on the 3-men flight with Eddie and Billy. I played my best game but the best was not good enough as I still lost to both of them.


Followings are the photos of the courses we played.



This is a beautiful course built entirely with volcanic rocks. Poor Albert distracted by the ‘attractive’ marshal hit his buggy on the rock fence. The damage Rmb 800 (actually was 1,800 but he blamed the club for employing such an ‘attractive’ ……haha I guess you know).





The last day of our game at Meilan Golf Club in Haikou. Goodbye Hainan Island for the week of wonderful weather.

1 comment:

pitchmark said...

wa...so exciting. Sad to miss the trip man...