WENCY LEUNG
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Dec. 03, 2008 11:02AM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009 9:19PM EDT
At the end of a bumpy red-dirt road lies Cambodia's Angkor Golf Resort. Between the rice paddies and rustic wood houses of the countryside, the manicured fairways look out of place, like an oasis.
Which makes sense, since most tourists come to Cambodia to see ancient Khmer temples and the harrowing killing fields. But if resort developers and government planners have their way - along with the country's golf-mad Prime Minister - Cambodia will join a golf boom that is bringing high-end resorts and professional events to the region.
The Angkor Golf Resort opened last year here in the country's north, within a short drive of the Angkor Wat temple complex. Past the air-conditioned steel-and-glass clubhouse, the golfers on the links follow the club dress code with collared shirts and tailored shorts, unlike the casual trousers and billowing floral skirts worn by locals. And the course itself, with a design by Nick Faldo and super-smooth greens, snakes picturesquely between rice fields.
And this isn't the only PGA-rated course in the area. The year-old Phokeethra Country Club, also close to Angkor Wat, will host professional players when the second instalment of the Johnnie Walker Cambodia Open begins next week. Last year, American Bryan Saltus, Australian Adam Groom and Thai Prom Meesawat took home the lion's share of the $300,000 purse.
Some of these pros - and other golfers - will presumably be drawn to the 800-year-old sandstone temple at Angkor Wat, Cambodia's biggest attraction. The country's tourism planners hope this will be a winning combination. "Golf is a complement to Cambodia's cultural tourism," says Suos Yara, the head of Cambodia's national tourism authority. He notes that the new courses are winning over foreign travellers - many from South Korea, Japan and Thailand.
Cambodia's golf scene still pales compared with that of its neighbours, which is hardly surprising given its struggle to rebuild after decades of war and instability. The countryside here is still strewn with land mines laid between the 1970s and 1990s. Yet golf is now one of the fastest-growing sports in Asia and countries throughout the region are jockeying for a piece of the market. Last year, Cambodia's neighbour, Vietnam, was dubbed the "Undiscovered Golf Destination of the Year" by a travel-industry group. That country now has 15 golf courses, with more than 30 under construction. Meanwhile, Thailand has become a regional golf hot spot, with hundreds of courses throughout the kingdom, many designed by the likes of Faldo, Greg Norman and Jack Nicklaus.
Developers are banking that many more of Cambodia's two million visitors a year will also want to do some golfing. There are only four courses in the country right now, but four more courses are expected to be completed by 2011.
Golf courses in the planning stages include a 36-hole Arnold Palmer-designed course, part of a $1-billion project by the country's Sokha Hotels & Resorts. Construction also began this year on a $250-million, French-financed resort that will include a golf course near Cambodia's port city of Sihanoukville, and on a "Cambodia-Vietnam Friendship Golf Resort" that straddles the international border.
Among the high-profile golfers who have tested Cambodia's new courses are former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and members of Malaysia's royal family. Then there is Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, a huge golf fan who posts his scores on the Internet. (According to his online biography, his average score is 77.)
Despite Hun Sen's endorsement of the sport, the vast majority of Cambodians know little or nothing about golf. So far, only foreigners and the upper echelon of Cambodian society can afford to play. That means local caddies and resort employees need extensive training. "Golf is a completely new concept to a lot of the staff we have here," says Adam Robertson, golf operations manager for Angkor Golf Resort. "It's really starting from the grassroots and showing them what a golf club is, what a golf
ball is."
A round at the resort costs about $100, plus caddy and cart-rental fees. Meanwhile, caddies Chheoung Samreth, 24, and Loeum Srey Som, 19, say they earn $50 a month. Neither caddie says she plays golf herself. But smiling broadly, they eagerly demonstrate their golf vocabulary in English: "Yards, bunker"; "Line, water, club."
At the town's Ministry of Tourism office, deputy director Kong Soeun notes that hundreds of local jobs are created with every golf course that is built. But he adds that most Cambodians are more concerned with making ends meet than learning about a foreign sport.
"I don't understand how they play," he says. "This is only for the rich people."
This cultural and economic gap means that the new courses are still wide open to foreign visitors. At Angkor Golf, only about 40 players a day play the 7,200-yard course. The numbers at Phokeethra are similar right now. Yet when Calgary tourists Bob Schiesser, 46, and Tracy Sasyniuk, 42,
visited in May, they were impressed with the experience. "It's a beautiful course," Schiesser says, noting that the links were comparable to
luxury courses he has played in the West.
Visitors like these already have places to stay; high-end hotels and restaurants (including a Raffles property) have sprung up in Cambodia. Such facilities can provide a base for a thriving golf industry, says Maximilian Kaendler, manager of the Phokeethra Country Club.
"Once people find out that ... we have spas, we have the
temples, we have five-star hotels with swimming pools ... and forget about the land
mines," Kaendler says, "then we can definitely surpass
Thailand."
*****
Pack your bags
GETTING THERE
Both Bangkok Airways (www.
bangkokair.com) and Siem Reap Airways International (www.
siemreapairways.com) fly from Bangkok to Siem Reap Airport.
WHERE TO STAY
SOFITEL PHOKEETHRA
ROYAL ANGKOR 855 (63) 964 600; http://www.sofitel.com.
The closest hotel to the Angkor temples, it also offers golf discounts and packages for Phokheethra Country Club. From $180.
WHERE TO GOLF
ANGKOR GOLF RESORT
855 (63) 392 288 227;
Green fees $124.
PHOKEETHRA COUNTRY CLUB 855 (63) 964 600;
http://www.phokeethragolf.com.
Green fees $150.
MORE INFORMATION
Tourism Cambodia:
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