Me and my brother-in-law Geoff have been threatening to do a proper golf trip for about ten years. This spring we finally did it: six days around Saigon and Vung Tau, four rounds on four different courses, and I came home with a sunburnt neck and some firm new opinions about water hazards. We are both the wrong side of 55 and our handicaps are our own business. If you are thinking about the same trip, here are the five things I wish somebody had told me before we flew.

Our first round was Vietnam Golf & Country Club out in Thu Duc, and we teed off at 8:40, which we thought was early. It was not early. By the 13th I was wringing out my glove and Geoff had gone very quiet, which for Geoff is a medical event. Ask for the earliest tee time they can get you, drink whatever electrolyte thing the caddie offers, and take the buggy. This is not a walking climate. The course itself is a lovely old thing though, two full 18s, huge trees, and greens a good deal quicker than they look.

Vietnam Golf & Country Club, Thu Duc. The palms give you shade for about three holes, then you are on your own.

Nobody tells you this: the good courses are all out of town. Song Be is up in Binh Duong, and Long Thanh is a good hour and twenty from the hotel, out in Dong Nai past all the roadworks. We had booked the whole thing as one package through TGROUP, so the same driver, Mr Thanh, was outside the hotel every morning with cold water and the air con already running, and by day three I would cheerfully have adopted him. If your plan is to sort taxis yourself each morning, I would rethink that plan.

Long Thanh, by the way, is the flash one of the bunch. Island greens, water left, water right, everything manicured to within an inch of its life. Bring more balls than you think you need. I am not going to tell you how many I lost, but the number has two digits in it.

Long Thanh from above. Water down the left, water down the right. My ball found both, occasionally on the same hole.

You will notice there is not a single photo of Song Be Golf Resort in this post. That is because I was too busy playing out of trouble to take any. It is the old boy of the region, tight fairways, big mature trees, water exactly where you least want it, and a veranda where the after-round beer feels properly earned. Geoff shot 92 there and has mentioned it roughly forty times since. I shot 98 and we do not talk about mine. If you only remember one thing from this whole post: club down off the tee at Song Be and play boring golf. The course rewards boring golf.

The reason you make the drive to Vung Tau: links golf with the sea sitting right behind the green.

Round four was the best of the lot and it is the one nobody seems to know about. Vung Tau Paradise is 27 holes of links strung along three kilometres of beach, and hardly anyone plays it. On a Thursday we more or less had the place to ourselves. Sea air, proper wind, take a club and a half extra and keep it low, or the breeze will post your ball straight to the sand. It is a touch rough around the edges in places, it is an older course, and I did not care one bit. With that setting you could charge me double.

We stayed that night at the Imperial in Vung Tau, ate grilled seafood near the front beach for about a tenth of what it would cost at home, and took the boat back up the river to Saigon the next day, which beats sitting in traffic by a comfortable margin.

Waiting our turn at Paradise behind a Korean fourball who, for the record, all outdrove us.

The package had the lot: car and driver, green fees, caddies, both hotels, the boat ticket. All we did was turn up and swing badly. Worth saying how we found them, too. TGROUP runs a lot of golf trips for Korean groups, and a colleague of Geoff’s in Seoul has used them for years. While we were dithering, he showed us his chat with them from his last trip, all thank-yous and rebooking for next season, and that did more convincing than any brochure would have.

Verdict from the pair of us: Geoff says 9 out of 10, I say 8.5, and the missing half is the heat, which is nobody’s fault but the sun’s. The damage was about 28 million dong each plus flights, which for four rounds, five nights and a man like Mr Thanh felt fair to me. If you fancy the same trip, look TGROUP up and tell them which courses you want to play. That is the whole tip. Take sunscreen.