Ho Tay Water Park

On an early summer morning, the first cars and buses are already crowding in front of the park gate on Lạc Long Quân Street. Children tug at their parents' hands, and the grown-ups carry bags of swimming gear. That scene at Ho Tay Water Park has repeated itself across many generations of Hanoi families.

The park stands in Nhật Tân, in Tây Hồ, right beside the northern shore of West Lake. It is one of the oldest water parks in Hanoi. The city center is about 7 to 8 kilometers away.

According to the Nhân Dân newspaper, the park opened on May 19, 2000. That day was the 110th anniversary of the birth of President Hồ Chí Minh. It was also the 990th anniversary of Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. The people who first proposed the park chose that date on purpose. It was the first entertainment complex in northern Vietnam built entirely with domestic money, not foreign or joint-venture capital. For Hanoi's entertainment business at the time, that was a milestone.

The park has two main zones. The water zone has slides, a wave pool, a lazy river and a pool for water flips. A lazy river is a slow channel where guests float around on tubes. The zone on dry land has spinning rides and roller coasters, and many other machines for different ages. There are 34 attractions in all.

After ten years of operation, the Nhân Dân newspaper recorded 10 million visits to the park. That averages one million visits a year. For a place whose season depends on the weather, it is a large number.

What sets the park apart is its position as much as its rides.

Lạc Long Quân Street runs along the western shore of West Lake. It links the Ba Đình area with Nhật Tân. From inside the park grounds, the lake is only one road away, and its surface covers 500 hectares. The lake wind blows in without a pause, which is hard to find at amusement parks built inside the inner city. To the south, the road leads to the Trịnh Công Sơn walking street and the Quảng Bá lotus fields.

For more than 25 years, Ho Tay Water Park has been part of the summer memories of generations of Hanoi children. Here the lake wind never stops, the artificial waves mix with the sound of children laughing, and West Lake glitters just across the road. Few places in Hanoi let a family play to their heart's content and also stand before one of the loveliest lakes in the city.