Sunday 8 January 2012

Dai Nam

After a few days of the intensity of the city we headed to an amusement park about 40 kilometers out of town.  We had read a few reviews on the Dai Nam theme park and it sounded like it would be a lot of fun and large enough to make it worthwhile spending the night.  As the driver we had hired drove up through the gates and to the hotel we did not quite know what to think.  The parking lot was huge (literally room for thousands of vehicles) and it was empty….weird sort of empty.  We got dropped off at the hotel and went into a pretty fancy lobby that was again, empty except for the staff, weird again.  We checked in and were driven to our room as the place was enormous and our room was too far away to drag our bags.  Our room was pretty nice but it was very odd as there was absolutely no one else at the hotel.  Eventually we did see a few other guests but a “few” is no exaggeration.

We dropped our bags in our room and made our way to the entrance of the park not knowing what to expect.  It turned out that there were people there but not many, we had the place pretty much to ourselves and we are not talking about a little place.  The park was enormous, consisting of a zoo, a bunch of very strange but very well done haunted house type attractions all with various Buddha type themes, a bunch of standard amusement park rides, a Snow World where the kids went tubing down snow, a gigantic pool which they call a man made beach and a temple that was completely amazing with a garden that was probably the nicest we have seen on the trip.  All of this and the highlight for the boys – Paint ball. The money that has been spent to build this place is staggering and it was empty……weird!  

Below are some pictures of some of the many "haunted" houses throughout the park.... very cool.





Even the ticket gates were cool......in a strange sort of way.



The haunted houses were not the only scary things in the park.  The amusement rides were fun but not quite up to western standards as far as safety was concerned......but hey, this is Asia after all....





And the highlight of the day, getting dressed up in fatigues and cooking on the paintball field.
Here we are ready for battle.


We were right to spend two days here as we could not have enjoyed everything in a day.  
On the second day there were a lot of school groups visiting but they seemed to only visit the pool, the rest of the place was still pretty much empty.  Our night at the hotel was rather eerie as we were in this enormous hotel with only one other room seemingly occupied or I should say occupied with people.  When we were returning from dinner we could hear rather loud scratching noises in the ceiling of the hallway.  We were not as alone as we thought we were.  These noises continued in our room and we actually thought at one point in the night that something was going to fall through the ceiling….another restless night and more “weirdness”. 

On day two at the park we visited the zoo which was the best we have seen in Asia.  The animals all looked very well kept and were in large enclosures that really did seem appropriate.



Up close and personal with the rhinos below....


The White Tiger was a highlight.



As I mentioned before, the zoo was huge.  There were trams available for transport but we preferred to get ourselves around on the bikes that were also available.



The giraffs had a large area in which to roam but a few of them preferred to hang around where the snacks were easy to come by.





After the zoo we revisited a few of our favorite things from the previous day and took in some more of the attractions we had not had time for on day one.  We also had another paintball battle in which Rob and I got our buts kicked by the boys.  I did manage to get a good shot in on Eric that left him with a very large welt on his backside….I think that will be the last time I shoot at my kids.  I’ll leave the boys to their paintball. 



The temple was actually beautiful and the gardens were outstanding.  We almost skipped it and boy are we glad we didn't.






After another fun filled day at Dai Nam we returned to HCMC and were actually glad to see places bustling with people as it had been a bit surreal to be at such a cool place so empty.

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