Suoi Tien

We headed to Suoi Tien, an amusement park with a big artificial mountain carved in the face of Hung Vuong, the king that developed Vietnam as a country back when it was still a monarchy.


Bus #19 at the main station near Ben Thanh Market took us on an hour-long ride to Suoi Tien. It was a popular field trip destination for grade-school students, and we saw several groups while we were there. The Vietnamese are used to riding on motorbikes, bicycles, or just plain walking; a jolting ride on a bus with poor shock absorbers got so many of the kids carsick, which definitely made for an interesting ride.


We were charged an entry fee at the park, and each themed entertainment center also charged an average of $5,000-$10,000 dong per person (30-60 U.S. cents). Food in the theme park was the worst we've eaten yet in Vietnam and of course overpriced. The seasoning was bland, and our soy milk came with what must have been 3 tablespoons of soy milk padded with 3 pounds of ice. By far, it made the chili-dogs at Disneyland seem like fine dining.

Here is Tung and me taking a picture next to our Chinese zodiac, the Monkey.


Here I am at the foot of a row of "lan" of different sizes. "Lans" are a mix of dragon and lion, and a male and female pair would often be seen guarding the gates of many Vietnamese buildings. The lans in the photo are male--you can tell by the pearl and money ingots under their paws. Traditionally, males are the "money makers" in the family, so they guard the family jewels. Female lan are seen with a lan cub underneath their paw, signifying the nurturing female instinct. Together, they are yin and yang, and they balance each other out for a well-rounded family. If there were female lan in the U.S., they'd probably have both the pearl and the cub underneath their paws, haha!


Tung and I step across "lily pads" amidst a pond to take a picture against a waterfall backdrop.


And in the Hall of Monarchs, we get to be King and Queen for 2 minutes.


At one of the show exhibits, I witnessed a bad case of animal abuse. They had several monkeys put on a show of riding a bike, wearing a conical hat, jumping across a barrier, and giving audiences high-fives in exchange for $2,000 dong. The whole time, the trainer was chasing the monkeys with a bamboo stick, threatening to beat them at every wrong turn. The first monkey riding a bike must have gotten beaten a lot; one of his eyes was swollen half-shut, and the pinky on his right hand looked maimed. After two minutes of the show, Tung went to wait outside. The animal abuse soured the rest of our experience in the theme park, even though there were so many monuments and picture-taking opportunities left to see.


I was bracing myself to see animals treated cruelly in a country known for dog-eating and sacrificing the family water buffalo for food after it's gotten too old from long years of service, but seeing trainers so openly beat their charges while using them to make money still churns the stomach. In Sea World in the U.S., there's a certain relationship between the trainer and the marine life that merits love and respect. Even in Saigon, people tether their young puppies briefly to trees to keep them from getting killed by running into the traffic-heavy street, but they quickly un-tether them and take them back into the house after a brief time. My Bac 3 has prized, purebred German shepherds from Australia that he takes good care of, and when we left our family dog behind after immigration, Bac 3 snuck past the Viet Cong who guarded our house in the act of governmental confiscation to feed our trapped dog a meal of rice and pork chops.

When we got home from Suoi Tien, we visited Tung's uncle, Vo Si Ba. He and his relations hire workers to make clothes by the bulk, which they sell to stores at wholesale prices. Here is a worker checking out the stitches on embroidery machines.


Vo Si Ba treated us out to an interesting dinner of "lau nam" (mushroom hot-pot) at Ashima Restaurant. The broth was made from a myriad of ingredients that were supposedly healthy and had "cooling properties" for the body. The restaurant was upper-scale, with beautiful interior lighting and modern decorations, and the wait staff dressed in neat brown-and-yellow uniforms. It was a unique meal, but it tasted quite bland. I did, however, get a good sleep that night.