You'd think I would have learnt, after playing Navatanee near Bangkok last year and being thoroughly underwhelmed; but flight timings allowed me a 36 hour stopover at Suvarnabhumi, the main airport serving the city, so I organised a game of golf at another of the country's top ten courses.

Leam Chabang is an hour to 90 minutes south east of the airport and has onsite resort style accom rooms that whilst slightly older are fine. The 27 holes are pretty formulaic resort course golf with the typical compulsory cart and caddie. The one big advantage of this course compared to many in and around the wider Bangkok region, is that it actually has some elevated landforms, some rock outcroppings and some ability to route away from the usual water hazards / drainage ponds designed to cope with tropical downpours common in south-east Asia. It is that repetitive need for water hazards along most holes where fairways have been built up using dirt and consequent drainage ponds where it has been dug from, that are the standard fare. I find such Thai courses boring, usually overwatered and almost an afterthought behind a gaudy or overbearing clubhouse. And usually quite expensive too for mostly mediocre golfing.

Laem Chabang offers much of that, but it is the 'mountain' nine that is the exception in this case and that I enjoyed the most, because of the variety it offered in the shaping and challenge of the holes. Water was still present, but so too were ravine carries, jungle bordering holes, and great mounds rock like marbles stacked by children.

Not a bad course, but not enough to make me want to return.