Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden, Pattaya, Thailand

Tropical Garden Nong Nooch (Thailand, Pattaya) – A magnificent tropical town with rich flora, fauna, daytime entertainment shows, and a developed infrastructure! It’s an amazing place that simply must visit any vacationer in Pattaya. This is the most popular and most beautiful tour.

Rest here will be just a pure pleasure  – you will see a beautiful landscape design, an amazing collection of exclusive cars, visit the orchid garden and some other gardens, see the best elephant show, tiger show and ethnic show in Pattaya. There are even a small but interesting zoo and even some fish in aquariums. Here, for some money, you can ride an elephant and take a picture of yourself with a tiger.

But to go here alone or still as part of the tour is a difficult question. Personally, I was here twice – the first time with a guided tour (bought at a street agency), and the second time on my own. 

The fact is that the park is huge, there are large areas that can not be seen in detail during one visit, and you still want to take a photo. Therefore, this tour is like a marathon, when you need to constantly catch up with the guide. And still, there must be left time to watch three shows!

Buying a tour at the agency, you also get a guide and transfer from the hotel and back. I suggest you consider the combined version of this excursion – to come with a group, and then stay until closing time and go back on your own, taking a taxi. In my opinion, this is the best option so that there is no feeling of dissatisfaction from the fact that you didn’t have time to see or photograph something.

This park can be visited in different ways, the most common way is the bus. I mean, do not get to the park, namely to move around the park by bus. The fact is that this national park and the pride of all of Thailand occupies at least two hundred and fifty hectares of area, you can’t see it all in a day, if you only drive it all day without stopping with a video camera, and then at home, in a calm environment, pressing pauses, everything to rewatch. However, the park sells discs with all its views and attractions, so you can buy a disc (it is inexpensive, almost as all in Thailand) and fill up all the gaps.

The other method is on foot. With or without a guide. If you go without a guide, you can use the map, there are a lot of them on the territory both on the stands and on paper, at many points, completely free of charge. With such a card, you can figure it out without a guide, but go early in the morning, there will be a lot of tourists for dinner, and you will have time to buy tickets for daytime shows (elephants, Thai boxing, and national ceremonies). I don’t know exactly how much a ticket and show tickets cost, because we visited with a guide, he took care of everything, including the best places on shows.

The park has so many diverse vegetation that I couldn’t even name or identify or assign to a family. I am not strong in botany, but it’s all very nice and great eye. In addition, on the territory there are a lot of various representatives of the fauna, including sea, river (in ponds and aquariums) and in air (in cages and on the branches of trees) with which you can take pictures; in some places you can even feed the fish with hands, food is sold immediately by the pond through special machines. This also applies to bananas for elephants, which are sold here for mere pennies by local teenagers and children.

A lot of shops, local cafes, where you can grab an ice cream or refreshing cocktails, buy souvenirs or just relax. There are a lot of fountains, interesting statues, a whole garden of huge round stones, a special nursery of cacti and orchids, a giant palm tree that has been around for many decades, even a private collection of sports cars display.