Nếu có thể đi cáp treo đến Đấu trường La Mã, bạn đang ở Việt Nam

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We are inside a glass box of a gondola (toa trần, buồng thang máy), part of the longest passenger cable car in the world, flying silently along on a nearly five-mile ride, and some 50 stories above a sapphire sea just off the coast of Phu Quoc Island in southern Vietnam. On this bright March afternoon, hundreds of colorful wooden fishing boats speckle the crystalline water below as we sail toward Hon Thom Island.

On the way back, as the 20-minute ride nears an end, Phu Quoc station and the newly built town around it come into view. The station looks like a full-scale (quy mô đầy đủ), prefab (nhà đúc sẵn, nhà tiền chế, nhà lắp ghép) section of the Roman Colosseum (Đấu trường La Mã), and the town is an elaborate (phức tạp) facsimile of a seaside Italian city complete with a hulking bell tower (tháp chuông khổng lồ), mock baroque fountains in piazzas and pseudo Roman ruins. Fanning out all around are several hundred pastel (màu phấn) — and almost entirely empty — terraced (bậc thang) buildings lining streets named Venice, Amalfi, Positano and Sorrento.

... This two-part tourism colossus (khổng lồ), called Sun World Hon Thom and Sunset Town, is one of Vietnam’s most astounding (kinh ngạc) man-made attractions (or abominations (ghê tởm) depending on your point of view).

... Most of Vietnam’s systems were built by the Doppelmayr Group of Austria, one of two consortiums that dominate the industry, for the Sun Group of Vietnam, one of the communist country’s biggest real estate and tourism developers.

... The company’s six Sun World attractions with cable cars boast nine Guinness World Records, including: longest three-cable ropeway, at Phu Quoc (4.9 miles); biggest cable car cabin (230 passengers) on the Ha Long tramway; tallest cable car tower (705 feet), along the line to Cat Ba Island; and greatest vertical ascent (4,626 feet) to the top of Fansipan Mountain — Vietnam’s tallest peak — in the north in Sa Pa.

source: nytimes,