An afternoon at the Vietnamese amusement park

We needed to remain in Saigon while Krysta was recovering from dengue which gave us the opportunity to go and see the city in greater depth. One of our stops was a theme park called Suoi Tien, essentially the Vietnamese Disneyland. While not the same in quality, it is the same in scale, and offered an excellent day of life-threatening cultural entertainment we will not soon forget.

It was beautiful, hot and sunny. We met our friends Mike and Nicole and drove our motorcycles the 40 mins from the place we were staying to the park on the outskirts of town. The entry fee was $6 and each ride cost between $.50 and $2.

The themes of the attractions were mostly Vietnamese history or traditions. There were limited English translations. It was still interesting to see the way their past is remembered, and to see thousands of locals at leisure.

Highlights were the rollercoaster of death and the crocodile farm. After spending the entire day walking around in the sun, Mike and Nicole lost their ticket for the parking lot and had to wait 5 hours for the owners of the bike to drive out with the necessary documentation. Brutal. Overall it was other-worldly, and we’ll let the pictures tell the story.

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