New York Post
Traveler stumbles on bizarre COVID-19 theme park: ‘It all feels pretty dystopian’
By Ben Cost
Published Dec. 11, 2024, 9:59 a.m. ET
This tourist attraction is sick.
A UK tourist stumbled upon a COVID-19 theme park with “googly-eyed” pathogen sculptures and more while exploring Vietnam, as seen in photos going viral — in every sense of the word — online.
“It was such a weird experience,” Ella Ribak, 29, told South West News Service while detailing the dystopian attraction, which he discovered during a visit to Southeast Asia in 2022.
The Brit, who directs commercials in London, was exploring Da Lat when she encountered an attraction called the Tuyen Lam Lake National Tourist Complex. This site was home to four themed zones, one of which was controversially called the “COVID-19 Park.”
Photos of the bizarro sculpture park show roly-poly pathogen figures with googly eyes, two of which are engaged in a humorous boxing match. Others were being shishkebabed with syringes, locked up in jail or present at a court case presided over by a “Judge Judy” facsimile.
Meanwhile, another viral blob is seen hauling a wheelbarrow with the “dying earth” like a three-dimensional political cartoon.
More unnerving was a spooky timeline clock, in which each number was replaced by symbols of the coronavirus pandemic, including a face mask, vaccine, and a person in a hazmat suit disinfecting an area.
While initially finding the attractions a bit apocalyptic, Ribak quickly saw the humorous side.
“The clock at the start made it all feel pretty dystopian, and the fact all the sculptures were shrouded in trees,” she said. “But then when you turned a corner and saw a human-size pathogen with googly eyes on it locked in a jail, it just becomes funny.”
She added, “Me and the other travelers couldn’t stop laughing and we kept looking around to see if any Vietnamese people found it funny as well, but they all seemed pretty serious.”
Naturally, it might seem in poor taste to lampoon a pandemic that killed over 7 million people across the globe.
However, Ribak said she was unsure “how serious” to take this disease Disneyland, explaining, “Obviously it touches on a sensitive topic for some people, but the clay sculptures seemed so jokey that it’s hard to tell.”
She explained that ultimately they had a “great time, even if we didn’t take it as it was meant.”
It’s unclear if “COVID-19 Park” is open in 2024.
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