Phase one of the The Estates at Montgomerie Links in Vietnam has just been launched at the Park Hyatt in Ho Chi Minh City.

The first phase of sales has already been completed and project agents CB Richard Ellis Vietnam Co. Ltd. and Indochina Land are planning release of the second phase, scheduled for the middle of the second quarter 2008.

The Estates at Montgomerie Links is the third development in the central Vietnam coast region to be carried out by Indochina Land, a branch of the Indochina Capital investment fund, and the 50-70 year leaseholds on property available to foreigners has proved a big draw.

The property is made up of 54 luxurious villas, located between Hoi An and Danang on the Heritage Coast. It is 20 minutes from an international airport within view of the Marble Mountains and the South China Sea.

Investment licences for a five-star resort and golf course have been granted to Indochina Land Holdings, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Indochina Capital.

Chairman of Da Nang People´s Committee, Tran Van Minh presented a license last Friday to Indochina Capital´s managing director, Peter Ryder.

Under the licence, Indochina Land will invest US$80 million to develop a five-star resort on 20ha in Ngu Hanh Son District.

Construction of the resort, which includes a 250-room hotel, 150 apartments, 40 luxurious villas and other facilities, will begin later this year and be completed in mid-2009.

On the same day, Indochina Land received another licence from the provincial authority of Quang Nam for a US$38 million golf course.

VietNamNet Bridge – The Ocean Dunes Golf Club (GC) in the central coastal city of Phan Thiet will host a leg of the first golf tournament series in Asia, named after the six-time major tournament winner Nick Faldo, in September this year. 

The inaugural Faldo Series Asia Vietnam Championship, scheduled on September 27 and 28, will provide talented young golfers aged 11 to 21 with a combination of tournament experience on the winning award course and expert advice off the course.

Younger children from the local community will be invited to watch the action and attend a free golf clinic as part of the tournament leg at the course, which was designed by Faldo and rated by Golf Digest (USA) as among the top two layouts in Vietnam.

Open to players from all Asian countries, the tournament will present new opportunities for young golfers not only in Vietnam, but also in neighboring nations such as Cambodia and Laos.

"All you have to do is look at the sheer number of people in this part of the world to see there is an extraordinary amount of possibility," said Faldo. "There may be dozens of potential superstars in this region, but we'll never know unless their talent is cultivated. I believe this event can be a stepping stone."

Commenting on the Faldo Series tournament, Jeff Puchalski, Ocean Dunes' general manager and director of golf, said just as Faldo was determined to win golf tournaments, he has a burning desire to create access to the sport.

"He displays it again by making another commitment to Vietnam, where interest in the game is growing but events targeting kids have yet to take root. This could be what spurs a youngster here to become a champion like Nick," Puchalski said.

Six players from the Vietnam Championship will qualify for the Faldo Series Asia Grand Final, a world-level amateur golf ranking event to be hosted by Faldo in March 2009 on the Faldo Course at Mission Hills in China.

Sanctioned by the Asian Tour and the Asia Pacific Golf Confederation, the Faldo Series Asia title has been claimed in previous years by Thailand's Nakarin Ratanakul and India's Rashid Khan. Both earned invitations to the Faldo Series Grand Final in Europe and, courtesy of the Asian Tour, a start in the Volvo Masters Asia and a scholarship to stage one of Asian Tour Qualifying School.

Inspired by the decade-long success of the Faldo Series in Europe, Faldo launched the equivalent in Asia in 2006. The Vietnam Championship takes the 2008 schedule to 12 tournaments in nine different nations across the continent.

Opened in 1994, Ocean Dunes has garnered worldwide acclaim for Its windswept dunes and singular holes, including the par-3 9th hole which has been hailed by GOLF (USA) magazine as one of the best 500 holes in the world.

Interested players and spectators should contact the Golfasian Company on +66 (0) 2 714 8470 ,+66 (0) 81 987 3170 or visit the website at http://www.vietnamgolfvacation.com to get more information about the Vietnam Championship.

 

DALAT, Vietnam (Dec. 14, 2006) — High in the south central region of Vietnam, where the morning fog coils like snakes around the green mountains, sits the great nation of Switzerland.

The Vietnamese have named this area Dalat. That may be true technically, but make no mistake: this is Switzerland. Or some other northern alpine European paradise.

Arriving abruptly in Dalat, after driving narrow, pock-marked roads that climb imperceptibly through the endless, dusty villages, is more than a shock to the system; it's a challenge to perception.

It isn't just the geography, or the fact you go from the leaden air of the lowlands to an atmosphere dry as French champagne. The essential nature of the land is transformed, turned upside down, if you will.

The French built this city at the height of their power in Indonesia, when they wanted to show off — and nobody shows off like the French. Now, the French are long gone, officially anyway, and the city is abuzz with Vietnamese on motor scooters careening around the wide boulevards and past buildings right out of France's colonial past.

At the center of the city is the Dalat Palace Hotel, which begs adjectives like opulent, grand and decadent. This is where French aristocrats and diplomats planned their ill-conceived power strategies and the French social elite came to get away from the great unwashed.

And a short walk from the hotel is the hotel's Tres Magnifique golf course, its history as bizarre as the city which it overlooks. It was originally built as a nine-holer in the 1920s as the personal playground for Vietnam's last emperor, Bao Dai, making it one of the oldest golf courses in Asia.

The emperor abdicated in 1945 and the course was left to nature and weeds. A Vietnamese dentist named Dao Huy Hach painstakingly restored it 15 years later.

"There was a caddy from the original course who helped us to find it again," Dr. Hach said in a written history of the course. "The most difficult part was seeing the greens. We had to use aerial photos from the National Geography Institution."

The course was a long way from its current condition — in fact, the greens were made of a mixture of sand and motor oil — not exactly adhering to USGA specs.

The course was abandoned again in 1975 when the Communists took over the country and golf was essentially outlawed as an elitist sport, although club manager Jeff Puchalski pointed out Ho Chi Minh was never on record as opposing the game.

In any case, it sat neglected through the early 1990s when golf management company IMG eventually restored the layout. The result of this long history of neglect and restoration is a beautiful, serene course that overlooks the historic city; almost every hole opens on to views of Dalat and surrounding mountains.

It's a fairly surreal experience, mixed with the fun of playing a terrific golf course in the Vietnam highlands, with dramatic elevation changes and fairways that twist, bend and slope with the mountainous terrain.

"You can't believe you're in Vietnam," Puchalski said. "You kind of get lost out here."

The best part is yet to come: the greens are made of bentgrass, the Cadillac of putting surfaces, and the only such greens in the country.

The verdict
The Dalat Palace golf course is a must-play, if you're in the area or even in the country. Make a point to visit this area if you're in Vietnam: it's quite an experience.

Green fees are in the $60-$80 range and the best packages are in connection with the hotel.

Stay and play
As previously mentioned, the Dalat Palace Hotel is a throwback to France's glory days in Indochina and one of the country's most historically and culturally important buildings.

It was built in 1922 as the centerpiece of the city of Dalat, itself built by the French from the ground up. Dalat and the hotel boomed between the 1920s and 1940s, but the operation then closed in 1945 during the Japanese occupation.

It's undergone a multi-million renovation and it's easy to picture French aristocrats, Vietnamese leaders and even its Japanese occupiers indulging themselves in its luxury. Everything about the place is large in scale, except for the number of rooms: 38 rooms and five suites.

There are more than 2,000 pieces of art, many of them paintings by European masters, painstakingly copied by Vietnamese artists. The oversized rooms are done in period architecture, including original brass telephone handsets, cast-iron bathtubs and handmade carpets.

The view from the hotel of the city is beautiful, the hotel being on a hill — a "hill station," the French called this type of building — and surrounded by a park at the edge of the Xuan Huong Lake.

They've added most of the modern amenities as well, including the Le Rabelais piano bar serving find French food, meeting rooms for up to 300 people, tennis courts and 24-hour room service.