Heaven's gate

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Trip Start May 01, 2002 Previous
Entry Trip End May 01, 2009

  Vang vieng, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Friday, June 15, 2007

About an hour's drive north of Vientiane through rice3 fields and then mountains with quaint little villages consisting of houses on stilts and close to the town of Vang Vieng is the last thing on earth that one would expect to find there. Way up there, nestled in mountaintops carpeted with dense rainforest, is a casino, a hotel, a golf course, and several excellent restaurants and bars. It's called Dansavanh which I am told is Lao for Heaven's Gate. It was put there by Thai investors who presumably subscribe to Thai economic theory. This theory holds as follows: Marketing and sales forecasts are for sissies. Just go ahead and build the sucker and let's see what evolves.

What evolved was that two very determined tourists from Cha-am came all the way up lugging golf bags and after a few dead-ends, actually found this place thinking at first that they had stumbled upon a forgotten fairytale castle.

We walked up the stairs to the giant cavernous clubhouse. There were a couple of pretty young ladies at the helm but no golfers were to be seen. The green fee was 600 baht earh. She wanted Thai Bahts. Of course. Who is going to complain about currency when it's this cheap. Out we went to hole number one and two more pretty young ladies showed up. They were our caddies. So there we were. Four people all alone in a giant 18-hole golf course surrounded by mountains and dense (I mean dense!) rainforest and majestic mountains.

How mountainous is it? The very first tee, hole number one, is a daunting thing. In front of you is a giant mountain and your tee lands on the side of this mountain and everything is so big that your drive looks like a squirrel pissing. We climbed that mountain to our balls and over to the right further up the mountain and backed by jungle was a long and narrow green. I made it to that green feeling proud. Two-on and putting for birdie. Wow. But wait, there is more.
(more to come)

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