Rising from the shores of Song May (Cloud River) Lake, the Dong Nai Golf Resort trades on a tropically bucolic setting that once attracted big-game hunters on the prowl for gaur and tiger. Today, the resort’s 27 holes make the most of a stimulating topography, barreling along the shore of the lake, vaulting inlets and climbing in terraces to panoramic vistas. Exquisitely landscaped, it’s easy to understand why the Vietnamese refer to golf courses as gardens of golf. Designed by American Ward Northrup, the course is a medley of dog-legs, water carries, peninsular greens and elevated tee-boxes. In play since 1997, it’s water, water everywhere, with five of nine holes on the A course hugging the shores of the lake. The B course is built around the backed-up waters of a dammed stream. In the glens of the hilly C course, the track throws up water challenges on 8 of 9 holes.

• GETTING THERE: Traveling northeast out of Saigon on Highway 1A, the one-hour journey takes you through Bien Hoa City, across the Dong Nai River, and through a vast rubber plantation.

• SIGNATURES: The par-3 challenge at A3 plays over an intrusive finger of Cloud River Lake to a tee that almost qualifies as an island. Similarly, inlets of the lake carve up the fairway of the splendid C7 into several plateaus.

• LAKE EFFECT: Cloud River Lake starts rising in July, filling the otherwise dry inlets through the fall until the annual draining begins in February.

• BIRDIES FOR ALL: Birdlife abounds, with trilling Indian cuckoos, spectacular blue kingfishers and egrets standing like dour sentinels on more than a few fairways.

• LOVE THE LAVA: The course super’s been harvesting the abundant lava rocks (known to the locals as bee’s-nest stone) to line the shores of his lakes.

• SLEEP IT OF: The resort boasts 72 rooms in a villa complex that includes a bar, sauna, steam room, massages facility and billiards.