Pattaya Thailand Guide

The first thing you notice at Nong Nooch isn't a flower. It's the scale. The garden covers about 600 acres of sculpted hillside between Pattaya and Sattahip, and it holds more than 18,000 kinds of plants — palms, cycads, cacti, orchids and entire gardens laid out like a theme park for people who love leaves. It is not a quiet botanical garden. There are daily cultural and elephant shows, a dinosaur valley, a fleet of trams and a small army of gardeners trimming hedges into elephants. That's either a delight or a distraction, depending on your mood — but the gardens themselves are genuinely impressive, and they are the reason to come. Give it a full morning or afternoon. Two hours is a skim; three to four is comfortable; a full day is only for the truly plant-obsessed. What Is Nong Nooch Tropical Garden? Nong Nooch began as a fruit orchard in 1954, bought by Pisit and Nongnooch Tansacha. The plan changed to a garden open to the public, and over the decades it grew into o...

Nong Nooch Tropical Garden: Pattaya's French Gardens, Cactus Garden and Dinosaur Valley Most day trips from Pattaya head out to sea, to Koh Larn and its beaches. Nong Nooch goes the other way. About twenty kilometres south of the city, on Sukhumvit Road at kilometre 163 in Na Jomtien, Sattahip district, stands one of the largest botanical gardens in Southeast Asia: a privately owned, family-run garden of roughly 1,700 rai — about 2.7 square kilometres — that mixes a serious plant collection with clipped French parterres, a Stonehenge replica, a skywalk through the palms, cultural shows, and hundreds of life-size dinosaurs. It is big, it is hot, and it is more theme park than quiet garden, and that is exactly why it works. Plan it well and it is one of the best half days in the Pattaya area, with children or without them. This guide does it in order: what the garden is and how it started, the gardens worth seeing first, Dinosaur Valley and the Garden in the Sky, the shows and the ...