After a week of sleeping on a rock hard bed, in a $3 per night hotel on Cat Ba Island (Vietnam) I decided to treat myself to a bit of a luxury. So I booked five nights in a 4* hotel, with a private beach and a steam shower on Tuan Chau Island. Perfection.
We arrived at the resort after getting a ferry and bus over to Tuan Chau from Cat Ba, and it was perfect, it was everything we could have hoped for. The beach had miles of untouched sand, and hammocks hanging from the Palm trees. I’d upped my budget to $50 a night, and it was worth every bit of that.
But after a few days of relaxing with fried noodles and cocktails on the beach, I started to get itchy feet. It was time to explore the island properly.
Tuan Chau – the ‘touristic’ island of Ha Long Bay
I’d read online that Tuan Chau was the ‘touristic island’ of Ha Long Bay, it was even marked on Google Maps as Touristic Centre, but the second we stepped outside the resort we knew there must have been some mistake.
Admittedly, we visited in October, which I guess is low season, but I’ve never seen a place so run down and eerily empty.
There was life-size Disney figurings laying damaged and scattered over the different gardens. It was like a graveyard of children’s dreams.
Then there was the fact that every shop was completely empty, no furniture, nothing, some of the buildings were half built, and there wasn’t a soul in sight.
We walked to the ferry port to get some snacks, as this seemed to be the only place that was 1) open and 2) not entirely deserted. There was a security standing outside, guarding the entrance, looking stern as they do, and when we walked into the building and into the convenience store, he followed us the whole way round, keeping uncomfortably close. I’ve never had such a tense snack-buying experience. I grabbed my cashew nuts and got out of there ASAP.
Just outside of the port was a YOLO bar. We’d been to a YOLO bar before in Siem Reap, with free beer pong and pool but this one was nothing like the chilled out backpacker bar in Siem Reap. We walked in and saw big black curtains hanging, blocking our view of the main bar. When we tried to walk through the curtains, three men starting shouting and quickly escorted us out.
Confused at why everyone on the island seemed annoyed at two tourists on the supposedly ‘touristic’ island, we headed back to the resort, back past the fallen Disney statues, and the empty buildings.
The deserted amusement park
On our walk back, we decided to stop off at a theme park that was literally just opposite our hotel. We’d heard loud music and seen sweeping spotlights each evening coming from the park, so we thought we’d check out what seemed like the one lively place on the island.
We got to the ticket office, and asked about the show, which turned out to be a dolphin show. So we booked tickets for 8:30pm and started to head back to grab some dinner before the show (it was only 5:30). But as we were walking away the ticket lady called out to us, telling us we could enjoy the rest of the amusement park before the show started.
Thrilled that for about $10 our tickets also included a theme park, apparently with roller coasters, arcades, and funfair rides, we jumped at the chance.
But the second we went through the ticket barriers we realised we’d made a mistake.
We walked up the hundreds multicoloured steps that faced an empty pool/fountain, and with a view over the whole park we realised we were the only ones there. There weren’t any workers, and there definitely weren’t any tourists.
The rides were all lit up, flashing spookily, with no one there to operate them. But what was creepier that around the rides – the children’s rides – was barbed wire lining the fences.
After walking through the rides and determining that they definitely weren’t the sort of rides you could operate yourself, we walked further into the park, walking through the forest until we came to a huge water arena. We could see the jets where a fountain would be, and the seats surrounding the arena, but again, there was no water, and no people.
The sun was setting, and soon we found ourselves in the pitch black, walking through a forest path with an abandoned kids’ play park on one side and the deserted water arena on the other.
It’s safe to say we were pretty freaked out, being completely alone in a deserted theme park, on a deserted island, with only rats to keep us company. Oh yea, didn’t I mention, there were rats running around the park having a great time.
We walked back towards the rides, because at least they were lit up and noticed that just beyond the rides, just past the perimeter fence of the park was a huge ditch where more Disney figures and kids statues lay abandoned and dirty in a pile.
As if that wasn’t creepy enough, a topless man, covered in dirt from the ditch walked slowly through the rubble and statues. Slowly he turned to look at us, and altered his course, walking in our direction.
Now, in the hard light of day, I’m fully aware that this guy probably worked there, and was likely coming to tell us about the park, but in the dark and silent theme park, I was already spooked, and so when I saw a strange man arising from the ruins of Disney statues, I did the only logical, and very British thing: I turned around and walked away as briskly as I could (you won’t catch me running).
I’m not sure why at this point we didn’t just go back, we were both thoroughly freaked out, but we thought we’d walk to the dolphin arena and see if that was as creepy. We followed the signs past the empty games room and kids’ soft play area, using our torches to guide the way, and in the dark we saw a family sat around a corner, eating a meal in the dark. Worried about what sort of characters eat their dinner in an abandoned theme park, on the floor, we didn’t stop to chat, but continued on towards the dolphin arena.
The path took us down a hill, further into darkness, before we reached the arena, which was right next to the main road. The arena was shut and padlocked, with no lights on – clearly they weren’t preparing for the evening show. There was also a gate that led out onto the main road, which was also locked with several padlocks.
That was it, we’d finally had enough of the dark, deserted park, so we made our way back to the entrance. When we got there the man who had let us in was gone, the ticket barriers were all shut, and the one gate out was padlocked.
I’m not going to lie, at this point, I was prepared to pole vault my way out of the park, I’d had enough, it was just too weird. Who lets people into a completely empty theme park and then padlocks the exit gate?
As we frantically tried each of the ticket barrier turnstiles, the lady from the ticket office appeared and asked us what we were doing – as if we were the strange ones for wanting to leave the world’s creepiest theme park. When we asked what was wrong with the park, and why everything was shut, she looked astounded.
For a while we had her try to convince us that the park was fully open, and that we should enjoy it, but eventually she let us out of the padlocked gate and stamped our hands in case we wanted to come back.
It’s safe to say, we didn’t go back, not even for the dolphin show that we’d paid for. The thought of once again being padlocked in, but this time inside an enclosed dolphin arena just didn’t appeal to me, so instead I spent the evening googling things like ‘why is Tuan Chau a ghost island’, ‘haunted amusement park Tuan Chau’ – you get the gist.
The mystery of Tuan Chau deepens
Slightly traumatised by the experience of wandering alone through an abandoned theme park and then being locked in, my imagination was going wild. So when my google searches returned a complete lack of any real information about the island, I got even more hyped up.
Everything is on Google. Everything. Sure you might occasionally stumble across a cafe or whatever without a website, but you can normally find just about anything on TripAdvisor, Reddit, and other travel forums. But we were getting nothing, just a government page stating that the island was the tourist hub of Ha Long Bay (it definitely isn’t).
The next stage in my detective work was to find out what the locals call the theme park. Eventually I found the Vietnamese name for the theme park, after looking through endless leaflets and websites, typed that into Google instead.
This got me a little further. I found the Google Business Page for the theme park, which meant I also found the Google reviews.
But the Google reviews just fuelled my imagination more. There had been no reviews for months, apart from a picture of one man standing outside the gates, holding a child and forcing a smile – he definitely didn’t look like he was having a good time, and he wasn’t even inside the park.
Most reviews were from 2012, and after scrolling through I realised that a lot of the reviews were actually written by the same person. Either that’s one very happy customer who returns every month or so, or someone’s going to great lengths to make this place look legit.
After going through what felt like every single Google result, it seemed that park has been mostly empty since 2012. The 2012 pictures show the theme park thriving and full of people, so what’s happened since? Was it just that I visited during low season? But even that doesn’t explain the lack of recent reviews. Perhaps no one has actually lived to tell the tale.
Okay, okay, that’s probably a little far fetched, but still, this was a spooky experience. I never did find out the full story behind the theme park, but still I’m curious. I asked my hotel reception staff about the park, but they refused to comment on whether or not it was worth visiting – perhaps because of the language barrier, perhaps because there’s a little more going on than meets the eye.
If you’ve got any theories or you know why Tuan Chau is such a ghost town, I’d love to hear your thoughts! I might even publish them as a second article! So don’t hesitate to contact me with your thoughts and theories!
I also managed to film some of the experience, so if you want to check out the abandoned theme park video, watch it below!
I live in the UK, in the country’s most uneventful city, where the most interesting story in the local paper is about banning dressing gowns in supermarkets.
I travel and I write, because surely there are more interesting stories than that to write about and share.