Next to Sunway Pyramid is the famously touted Sunway Lagoon, Malaysia's "Premier Theme Park". From the billboards that were hung all over K.L City and the advertisements that were featured ever so often on television, it seemed like a fun place. And yet another novelty that Malaysians had never seen before. The whole park was divided into 2 main areas, the wet and the dry. The wet contained all the slides that needed one to wear a swimsuit on. The dry was of course the normal stuff like the swings, rollercoasters, merry go rounds and even a pair of tigers kept in a huge enclosure (picture). I went to Sunway Lagoon once, and only visited the dry side. It was nothing more than a place where one could go once in a while to experience more G forces than your average everyday car-ride.

The Tiger at Sunway Lagoon.

A week after my visit as I was walking through nearby Subang Jaya on my daily rounds I saw a headline in the newspaper that said that a death had occurred at Sunway Lagoon. The details were such. A couple was lining up for one of the rides called the "Runaway Train". Apparently they edged away some students who were ahead in the queue so that they could get on the ride first. The seat that the woman of the couple had got into had a faulty seat belt, but this didn’t bother anyone as they just tied it up like a knot. During the course of the ride, the woman fell out of her seat and was hurtled a distance down towards on of the small pools. Authorities did not react immediately to claims that this had happened, thinking it to be a hoax. Eventually however they did, and the tragedy that was discovered became front-page news all over Malaysia.

The worst thing about this incident was that even though the Park was closed for a week for investigations to be carried out, the Park owners were eager to open the Park as quickly as possible in expectation of the coming school holidays. That says so much about Malaysian common sense.

The wet side of Sunway Lagoon.

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