Designed by Nick Faldo, the 6,746-yard, par 72 Ocean Dunes course is arguably the most spectacular in Vietnam - in every sense of the word. Situated in an outstandingly beautiful setting combining stunning ocean views, rolling dunes, tropical beach vegetation and bracing sea breezes, the course is certainly spectacular in an aesthetic sense.

Ocean Dunes is also a demanding links-style course, those same sea breezes determining play on a day-to-day basis. The design has the course running between sand dunes which determine the natural routing of the course.

Common consent has it that the par 3, 148-yard ninth is the course's most challenging hole, featuring an elevated green guarded by those ever-present dunes and trees on one side, a grassy mound on the other. This hole has in fact been selected as one of the "Best 500 Holes in the World" by Golf Magazine (USA). More unusual hazards on the course include a Buddhist temple and a Vietnamese tomb.

As with the Dalat Palace Golf Club, the course is the brainchild of Larry Hillblom of DHL fame, although the entrepreneur died a year before the course opened in 1996. Located just a short distance from the traditional fishing village of Phan Thiet, about 200 kilometres from Ho Chi Minh City, Ocean Dunes is Vietnam's only 100 per cent foreign owned golf club.

And the Novotel Coralia Ocean Dunes Phan Thiet is surrounded on three sides by an adjacent championship golf course with a private beach fronting the property, making it a choice destination for today's leisure travellers.