Kantarat is the strangest 18 holes in Thailand and possibly anywhere: a par 72 laid out on the strip of ground between the two parallel runways of Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport, owned and run by the Royal Thai Air Force. Nobody plays it for the architecture. You play it because a low-cost jet rotates over your second shot, because signal lights tell you when to stop swinging, and because your bag is screened before you reach the first tee. It is a curiosity round, priced like one — and its future is genuinely unsettled.
This profile covers what we could verify: how the course ended up wedged between the runways, what the airfield does to a round, how access works, and where the plan to take the land back for airport expansion now stands.
The course itself
Kantarat is an 18-hole par 72 on 360 rai — roughly 58 hectares — inside the Don Mueang airfield. Published lengths differ. The club’s own card gives 6,394 yards off the white tees and 5,576 off the red — though its hole-by-hole yardages actually add up to 6,430 — while most English-language write-ups give 6,366 yards, which Australian Golf Digest prints in metric as 5,821 metres. Either way it is a mid-length, dead-flat layout whose shape is dictated by the site: long, narrow corridors parallel to the runways, holes strung end to end rather than looped around a clubhouse.
Two things you will not find are elevation and tall trees: the land is airfield flat, and the air force keeps planting trimmed so it does not become bird habitat or block controllers’ sightlines. There are no walls or high fences between the golf holes and the runways. A Thai directory credits the design to Air Vice Marshal Dawee Chullasapya, who initiated it as deputy chief of staff of the air force.
From 36 holes to 18: the airport has eaten this course before
It was also the first 18-hole course in Bangkok and the second in the country after Royal Hua Hin, and it had a competitive life: by the club’s own record it staged the Thailand Open seven times — 1965 to 1969, then 1971 and 1972 — when the event was a Far East Circuit stop won by players such as Hsieh Yung-yo and Lu Liang-Huan. The history is better documented than the golf. A Thai course directory citing the book Complete Guide to Golf in Thailand records that construction began in 1952 and the course opened in 1956 as a nine-holer, the Air Force Golf Course. A second nine followed in 1961–62 under ACM Boonchoo Chandrubeksa; a third, added to the south under ACM Kamol Techatunga, opened on 11 November 1966, when it acquired its enduring nickname, Sanam Ngu, the Snake Course; a fourth nine in 1972 took it to 36 holes.
Then the airport won. In 1976 civil aviation wanted the land for a commercial aircraft apron, and ACM Phaniang Kantarat, then air force chief of staff, scrapped the northern holes and reshaped what remained into the 18 that survive today. The work finished around 1980 and the course took his name; the same episode is why the air force built a replacement, Dhupatemiya, opened in 1985.
The holes worth knowing
The club’s own card — archived from its site, where it was last published in 2018 — gives both nines at par 36 and hands stroke index 1 to the 428-yard 15th. The two extremes sit close together on the back nine: the 555-yard 10th, the longest hole on the card, and the 120-yard 14th, the shortest. Four par 3s and four par 5s, and nothing longer than that 10th, which is why the round is short on paper and long in elapsed time.
What playing between the runways actually involves
Golfers’ bags are screened before entering the area — a requirement introduced, along with moving the clubhouse out, after ICAO inspectors examined the site during the 2015–2017 period when Thailand’s aviation oversight was red-flagged. Carts and caddies are mandatory; walking the course is not permitted. Signal lights tell golfers when an aircraft is about to take off or land, at which point play and cart driving stop. Balls hit toward the runway edges are gone: you do not go and look for them.
The air force’s safety case is on the record. In February 2024 its commander-in-chief, ACM Punpakdee Pattanakul, said ICAO had certified the course’s safety standard and that the air force complied strictly with the regulations. He added: “In no way has the golf course caused a problem to the runway [of Don Mueang Airport]. And there has not been a single incident in which a stray golf ball has hit an aircraft.” The counter-case is on the record too: Thai outlet The Standard reported that the air force itself has acknowledged occasions when golfers ignored the warning lights.
Location and getting there
The course sits inside the Don Mueang airfield in Si Kan, Don Mueang district, on the northern edge of Bangkok. The relevant airport code is DMK, not BKK. Central Bangkok is roughly 25 km south; allow well over an hour in traffic. The entrance is at the back of the airport, not off the terminal frontage, and reporting notes that vehicles are not taken through to the clubhouse, so expect to carry your clubs the last stretch.
Practical notes
Book ahead: that is not a courtesy but an airport security requirement, and the air force has said publicly that formal advance booking is the price of entry. A caddie comes with the round, as at every Thai club — our guide to how caddies work in Thailand covers etiquette and tipping. A buggy is compulsory rather than optional, so budget for it. One Thai directory lists Tuesday as the closed day, but that entry is old enough to confirm rather than trust (verify).
On price, Kantarat sits at the very bottom of the Bangkok market — routinely written up as one of the cheapest rounds in the capital, far below resort-course rates, which is much of why it stays busy with local regulars. Treat every figure you read online as indicative (verify current rates before you travel); our Thailand golf cost guide explains how the charges stack up elsewhere. It is flat and short enough for higher handicappers, but the stop-start rhythm and the noise are not for everyone.
Can you still play it? The honest answer
Two uncertainties hang over Kantarat, and they are worth keeping apart. The first is the land. In early 2024 the government pressed the air force to give the site back, and on 4 March 2024 the defence ministry said the RTAF had agreed to hand it to Airports of Thailand, compensation still to be settled and earmarked for a sports complex at Dhupatemiya. AOT wants the ground for a parallel taxiway, telling a parliamentary committee that each extra flight per hour is worth up to a million passengers a year. The compensation figure, reported at around three billion baht, proved contentious enough that in May 2025 the air force sued an MP for defamation over it. Agreed in principle, unresolved in practice, no published closure date — and the course still operating throughout.
The second is access. In February 2024 the air force chief said the course was open to anyone, not just serving and former personnel, with advance booking the only real obstacle; a Thai listing from March 2025 still showed identical fees for Thai and foreign players. Against that, traveller reviews posted during 2025 claim tourists are now turned away on airport-security grounds. We could not verify any such policy from the air force, the airport or the regulator; and when ICAO audited Thailand from 27 August to 8 September 2025, including a Don Mueang site visit, Thailand’s Civil Aviation Authority chief said the auditors raised no initial safety concerns about the course. Treat foreign access as unconfirmed: phone ahead, and hold a backup tee time.
Is it right for your trip?
Play Kantarat if you would rather collect an experience than a scorecard: aviation enthusiasts, anyone with a long DMK layover, and anyone who wants a cheap round they will actually remember. As a story to tell afterwards, nothing else in Thai golf comes close.
Skip it on a short trip where golf quality is the point: flat, plain, loud and interrupted, with real access friction and a non-zero risk of turning up and being refused. For the military-club experience without the airfield, Bangna Navy Golf Course is the navy-run equivalent on the other side of the city and a far simpler booking; for a genuinely strong round near the same airport, Alpine Golf & Sports Club is 25 km north in Pathum Thani.
Fit it into the wider picture with our Bangkok golf guide, weigh it against our Thailand golf course directory, and build the itinerary from the Golf in Thailand hub. If Kantarat does go, it will be one of the few golf courses whose obituary runs in the aviation press.