Suoi Tien

Suoi Tien is one of the highlights of – I would say – Southeast Asia. It is a vast and bizarre fantasyland of gaudy Buddhist sculptures, neon shrines and concrete oversized fruit, dancers in monkey suits, a water park with a wave machine, houses-of-horror and live crocodiles (which you can buy and take home!) and dolphins jumping through hoops of fire. It is also, inexplicably, not mentioned anywhere in the Vietnam Lonely Planet guide. Really? Someone should really get fired for that, as it is hands down one of the most bizarre, mind-boggling sights on the planet and an absolute “must-do.” Read more on my previous visit here.  To get there, just hop on the number 19 bus opposite the Ben Thanh market. It takes about an hour and drops you right at the door which is marked by a gigantic frog, and therefore unmissable. When the city’s subway is up and running it will get a stop nearby so it will be even easier.

The aerial drone video below should provide some more inspiration to visit (if that could possibly be necessary) although ignore the misleading claim that the park is “abandoned”  – it was just filmed after closing time, I would say.

Suoi Tien

Suoi Tien – a Buddhist-themed amusement park – is by far the best thing in Saigon, and a reason to visit to Vietnam in its own right. It is, in a word, stunning. I have never been to a more magnificent themepark anywhere in the world , outside of the Disney parks in Tokyo – which it probably equals. An amazing achievement for a country like Vietnam. Even more amazing is that the park is so little known to foreign tourists. Its not in any of the guides, and I didn’t meet a single other person who had been there. In a whole day there I didnt see another white face.And yet, how could you miss this…?

It is centred around a huge, surreal swimming pool where two 100 metre waterslides in the shape of dragons splash into a lagoon between two cliffs carved into sages heads’, with psychadelic colored flower-trees spraying mist into the air.

From here, you can climb up, up, to twelves storeys above the ground, up wet slippery cocrete steps (lax Asian safety standards!) inside the head, which is shaped into a weird, airy, echoing caves painted in psychadelic colors. From there, you can look down:

The park also has an astonishing wealth of other attractions. You really need two full days to do it justice (as opposed to one at Angkor Wat!) I was pretty systematic, but I still ran out of time to see the wonderful-sounding “Strange Things in Nature” pavilion. But I did see;

Huge golden lions and tortoises – check the figure on the far right for scale!

 

You can walk into the mouth of an huge golden dragon, to where a neon-haloed Buddha sits.

More statues;

The “Palace of the Unicorn” below – sounds cute, doesnt it? – where you unexpectedly descend into a pitch black, freezing corridor filled with ear-piercing, high-volume screams to see the torments awaiting sinners in hell (much like Tiger balm gardens in Singapore).

A delightfully kitsch aquarium with painted-on underwater scenery;

There is an ancient Egypt exhibition…

 

…which, did I mention, is in the mouth of a concrete elephant?

…and theres more!

 A Mardi Gras-esque parade, where all the dancers wore masks (presumably to cover their shame!)

An assortment of gargantuan dog/turtle and dragon-shaped pavilions, in swan-boat filled lakes

Avenues lined with tusks

Hedges in the shape of teapots

Monkeymen

Robots that dance to Vietnamese pop music

A crocodile farm where handlers poked live crocodiles with bamboo poles and happy punters fed them chunks of meat from strings

And this giant statue of a frog with a coin its mouth. Which revolves.

The Magic Kingdom

For a report of my trip to Ho Chin Minh’s city bizarro Suoi Tien amusement park see here. And don’t worry, contrary to the video title it is not “abandoned” – they just took the footage after closing time.

 

Wonderful world

Atlas Obscura is an inspirational new website. In fact its inspired me to become a contributor. The site bills itself as a catalogue of wondrous, curious and bizarre locations across the globe, and it is a virtual treasure chest of everything that is strange and amazing on our planet; even as a “connoisseur’ of strange and amazing places, there were things in here that I had never dreamt existed; five-storey blood-red Antarctic waterfalls, stones that move, a Moses-style tidal “parting of the seas” on a remote Korean island, a tribe in Zimbabwe called the “Ostrich people” for their malformed, bird-like feet and a house in Kentucky where a blue-skinned family once lived.

Amazing.

My pieces so far are mainly condensed versions of articles that previously appeared on this blog including (in Japan) ;

The Kappa-dera “kappa temple”
Fish from outer space
The giant Gundam robot in Odaiba
The dead insect shrine
The robo-cockroach building in Daikanyama

The Meguro parasite museum

The incomparable mystery of Gunkanjima which I previously blogged about here

In Korea:

A talking elephant

In Cambodia:

The dinosaur of Angkor Wat

And in Vietnam:

Suoi Tien
The Crazy house

And plenty more to come from Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil…. !!!