Once upon a time…

This is the biggest theme park in South East Asia and its called VinPearl. Vinpearl is located on an island off Nha Trangs main beach. To get there you catch the longest cable car at the docks in South East Asia as well. And once you get to the other side (it’s a 12 minute journey that is a wonderful experience in itself) the dream appears…Vietnam’s rival to Disneyland. It’s clean, the WCs are the cleanest we’ve experienced in our entire trip, and it’s modeled on a fairytale-adrenalin theme. The price roughly works out to $25 per person (cheaper for kids under 1.5m) which we thought was great value for money.

We rearranged some of our travel plans to stay an extra night in Nha Trang (thanks for suggesting this Francesca) and go to Vinpearl with our English mates. It was a great day. From 10am to 8pm we were completely entertained with so many things to see and do: water theme park, ride theme park, aquarium complete with travelator, 4D movie theatre, indoor games and there was a cool magic show by a Vietnamese man dressed up as Elvis-Gary Glitter lookalike! He really did make a girl and a duck disappear.

The dare-devil girls (aka Billie and Dacey) did not let us down, jumping on everything they could. So did all the other kids actually. Some of the water rides were quite hairy, so I’m told and could see from the look on their faces coming down. Such fun together. I was quite happy taking some family action shots.

The aquarium was fantastic…full of tropical fish, sharks, turtles, sea horses, urchins, sting rays and more. However, it’s such a shame that tourists feel the need to handle the creatures for a photo. The place needs more tourist control. The travelator went right around an underground glass viewing tunnel where we got to see the underbellies of sharks and sting rays up close as they swam over the top and sides of the glass dome tunnel walls as well as schools of nemo fish gliding through this amazing gigantic sea tank.

Then, of course, time for theme park rides!

We had read that the food at Vinpearl wasn’t much to be desired. However, if you’re prepared to eat Vietnamese food while in Vietnam (which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be the way), the food was delightful. The fast food option looked pitiful (but isn’t that he case at all theme parks?) We are still stunned to find Western travelers opt for Western food when in Vietnam…all I can say is that they’re missing out big time. We went to the Food Village and enjoyed one of the best noodle-seafood dishes we’ve had so far.

We finally got going on the cable car about 8pm – kids in one, adults in the other. Once back onto the main land from our return night journey via the lit-up-like-the-Eiffel-tower cable car, We all enjoyed a mouth watering Indian meal with our English backpacking friends (our final catch up for this trip) and bought an ice-cream afterwards. Great day out for all.

Back to our hotel, grabbing some snacks for a quick breakfast in the morning for our 5-hour bus trip to a small and quaint (so unlike Nha Trang) beachside town called Mui Ne. Looking forward to it.