The heat alone in Hà Nội, Việt Nam during my trip hasn’t been too much of an issue, but paired together with the insanely high humidity, going outside has been an uncomfortbale experience for me. Because of this, I’ve been trying to find tourist activities that involve staying indoors, preferably in areas with air conditioning.

One of the spots I found was the Vincom Mega Mall Royal City, an underground shopping and entertainment complex. I scouted out a few museums inside the complex that I wanted to visit ahead of time online, but while walking around, I came across Vườn thú Chú Voi Con, which translates to the Baby Elephant Animal Park. I peeked inside and saw a bunch of animals in the format of a petting zoo, so I figured I would make a spontaneous stop to check it out.

This was very fun. I had an opportunity to get closer to some of these animals than I have ever been before, and got to pet some of them for the first time, such as the alpaca and sheep.

With that being said, this is probably the most unethical zoo I have ever seen in my entire life. The two alpaca and the sheep were confined together as a group of three in a pen that seemed too small to even accommodate one of them. A lot of the animals looked malnourished. Some of them looked like they were infected with something, or at the very least, extremely unclean. There were no attendants carefully supervising the petting areas, so there were children in the animal park that had free reign to yank at animals’ limbs and otherwise inflict distress on them.

In a vacuum, I enjoyed my time here, and it was very amusing seeing a bunch of farm animals inside an underground shopping center. However, I cannot fully recommend visiting the Baby Elephant Animal Park. If you’re not too concerned about the morals and ethics aspect of zoo animals, that is fine, but it is personally conflicting having this fun activity in the Mega Mall but also not wanting to encourage supporting their business model of making profit at the expense of what seemed to me like animals that weren’t really having a nice life.

The animal park had glass that allowed passersby in the mall to look in, so that is one alternative if you want to check it out but don’t want to purchase an admission ticket.

Here are some photographs I took of the animals during my visit: