This place is something that I had heard about from other people that have been here before and the way they described it doesn't do justice to just how ominous and a bit sad that it is. Apparently, pre-Covid some developers had a idea for an absolutely massive tourist attraction that was meant to be wildly popular with dozens of hotels thousands of rental properties and tons and tons of shops, restaurants, and bars in a massive area right next to the sea.
I don't know exactly what happened for it to completely fall flat but when you go to the area now it is indeed kept very clean, but almost none of the buildings are occupied and it just seems eerily quiet.
I probably could look up what the official name of this place is but if you go to the island you are almost certainly going to be offered a trip to Sun World and really, you should do so if you get a chance. On your way to the Sun World cable car, you will pass through this empty and European looking "city."
While I didn't actually wander all the way through the entire village, and it is huge, the main roads had almost exclusively "for rent" signs up in the windows and if you look at the 2nd floors of these hundreds of buildings you will notice that with rare exceptions, the upper floors of the buildings are completely unfinished. They didn't even bother turning any of these structures into habitable environments because the people simply aren't coming.
It seems as though they had grand plans for this place to just be hoppin with people all over the place but it is just completely deserted. The few coffee shops that were open are no doubt struggling to make any money at all because as it is now it appears as though all of the people that come this way simply drive past it all on their way to the cable car to Sun World.
It's tragic but I read something about how this island has been undergoing extremely rapid development to the tune of something crazy like $20 billion. It seems as thought they just assumed that if "you build it, they will come" and that simply hasn't been the case at all.
Every direction that you look there is just nothing. Some of the shopfronts have got decals indicating what a "deli or fruit market" or something like that could be like but there is nothing inside at all. I don't know what they could possibly do to get people to take over these places but as it is now there is just row upon row upon row of nothing all around.
It's actually pretty cool because there is a very good chance that the only people that are suffering because of this rather extravagant and unsuccessful development is large investment firms that kind of exploit the common man anyway. So eff em!
I don't plan on coming back to this island but if I do I can't really imagine this place changing. It's just so friggin big that nobody is going to take a chance on putting something here. Now just imagine if you got duped into staying here only to find out that your resort or hotel is near absolutely nothing other than closed shops?
