California’s ‘Kazakh-Land’: Central Asian Theme Park or Stunt?

Over at Registan, Michael Hancock investigates Kazakh-Land, a theme park in southern California. Hancock, though, doubts whether the place actually exists, beyond its snazzy website:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Kazakh-Land!  Situated near sunny Malibu, California, it offers something for everyone, from romantic folk-art displays to retirement-style weekend getaways. The website is plenty nice and the word on the inter-tubes [up to this point] is that it’s the real deal. However, there is a lot of suspicious English (especially on the guestbook and caretaker pages) that smells of Russian translation. Like some bad Borat joke, Russian-language descriptions of the theme park name-drop Pamela Anderson and Angelina Jolie. It’s not their fault, of course - these descriptions come off the site’s own guestbook, which reads like a finely translated and prepared proof-of-concept brochure. In other words, I’m skeptical whether any of these people are real.

The rest of the post includes some speculation about the source of the park’s photos (Hollywood movie sets) and the reason (money laundering, real estate concerns) for the hoax. I suppose we also have to consider the possibility that there’s another Borat project in the works? (Via The Atlantic Wire)

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