57. Golf

Yesterday was the last day of Student Led Conferences for all the teachers, so Dane organized a golf excursion to the mainland for 8 of us. Everything here in China seems to be pretty cheap, except for the golf. There are 2 courses here in Macau, Caesar's and The Westin Golf Clubs. Each of these courses is well over $200 CAD/round and that is definitely not in many of our budgets! I complain about the green fees back home being too rich, but here it is even worse. We decided to golf in Zhuhai because it is much cheaper and at $110 CAD/round, Chinese Les thinks this is a deal!

We started out having to exit Macau, took a bus across the river to the China side, then went through immigration in Zhuhai. Once we entered China, there was absolutely nothing around the border crossing, so taxis were not readily available. Through the help of Dan (who knows 100 times more Mandarin than the rest of us), we hired 2 private cars to take us to the Zhuhai Orient Golf Club and also arranged for them to pick us up after the round. Driving to the course was like driving through an apocalyptic war zone with dirt roads and what seemed like abandoned industrial machinery everywhere along the roadside.

Upon our arrival at the course, we pulled up and a bunch of female caddies instantly grabbed our bags and carted them off to some mysterious location. I had no idea what was going on and was honestly confused!

we finally registered with the clubhouse, we bought every beer they had in the cooler and we were ready to roll! The carts were 4 seaters with room for 4 bags and 2 spots for the caddies to ride along with us. The green fee included 1 caddy per 2 golfers.

This was my first caddy experience, and it is definitely the way to go! I rarely had anything in my hands except for a beer, as they give you your club just before you hit, and instantly take it back as soon as you shank it! They marked and cleaned every ball, lined up your putts, took out the pins, raked the traps and looked for stray balls. Our girls were fantastic and we had a blast with them. During many errant drives, the girls would say "OH NO....Dangerous!" They had very limited English, but were competent enough to know how long you hit each of your irons, so you just hit what they gave you....pretty amazing if you ask me! They would even laugh at us if we hit the water or missed a putt. One of the girls even made a fart sound as Dane missed a putt!

After the round, we hit the clubhouse for some grub, and wouldn't you know, they were all out of rice! Really? Out of rice in China? C'mon! So we opted for some clubhouses, awesome spicy calamari and spring rolls.

We determined the day was a success despite the drizzle, cool weather and the number of strokes played. We will definitely be returning for the next Tsing Tao Open! I had to touch up someone's butt crack in order to make the photo below "family friendly".




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