Mark Siegel has a warning,
“If you come to SE Asia to
play once, you may not
be able to resist coming
back”
Twenty Six Hydroelectric dams were built
in Thailand by the British Corp of Engineers
in the 60’s and 70’s. How is that related to
golf, one might ask? They all required that
a golf course be built for the construction
and engineering staff. Every one of them
still exists today in very remote areas,
mostly in the mountainous regions. With
the corresponding dam for their namesake,
many are barely maintained and have a green
fee box, “honor system.” They are real golf
courses in a land that has a lot of good ones.
You would have to go pretty far off the
beaten path to get to play one, and the most
rewarding part of the experience would likely
be the adventure of getting there, but this
perfectly illustrates the often outstanding,
sometimes quirky, and regularly humorous
history of golf in the land of smiles.
Curiously, if you didn’t know the back story,
one might wonder how the Thailand Electric
Authority became what is probably, the
largest single owner of golf courses in SE Asia.
This was but one of the interesting, funny,
serious, and insightful observations I had the
pleasure of absorbing while in Bangkok talking
with the ever thoughtful and often surprising
American expat Mark Siegel, owner of Golf
Asian, SE Asia’s largest golf travel operator last
week.
It was an idea worth pursuing. Mostly retired
(early), looking forward to a lot of golf, and
recently settled in Thailand; having a side
business booking golf tours and selling golf
lessons to tourists would be an interesting
way to fill in the gap between tee times and
Pad Thai noodles. Mark wasn’t going to be
doing the teaching, with a low double digit
handicap, far from it, but he would be a
Volume 3 • Issue 39
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