Handpicked experience · Pattaya
Pattaya, Thailand
The smiling face on a ray's underside is a pair of nostrils, and the shark feeding you are watching is really a health check.
Marvel at the 5,000 fish species at Underwater World in Pattaya.
Enjoy a day with your family and experience a 100-meter underwater viewing tunnel.
Feed the aquarium's koi fish, an activity that is fun for both kids and adults alike.
A tunnel where the traffic passes overhead
Feeding demonstrations run by the keepers themselves
Shallow displays sized for small children
A visit that fits either side of lunch
An indoor stop that works in any weather
Admission to Underwater World Pattaya, a compact aquarium on Sukhumvit Road with a walk-through tunnel, feeding demonstrations and shallow touch displays. Most visits run between one and two hours.
This is a well-made aquarium of modest size, not a full-day oceanarium, and it is better enjoyed with that in mind. An hour to two hours covers it comfortably, which makes it a good half of a day rather than the whole of one.
That compactness has an advantage: nothing is a route march, the tunnel is never more than a few minutes away, and it works well with young children who run out of patience in larger venues.
Everybody photographs the underside of a ray gliding over the tunnel, because it looks unmistakably like a smiling face with two eyes above a wide mouth.
It is nothing of the kind. A ray's eyes are on top of its body, looking up, and the two openings you take for eyes are its nostrils. The wide curve below them is the mouth, and behind that sit the gill slits. So the creature beaming down at you cannot see you at all from that angle — it is looking upwards through the water while its mouth and nose face the seabed, which is where its food lives.
In a mixed tank, food cannot simply be thrown in. Sharks are target-fed by keepers on poles for two reasons: so that faster or greedier tank-mates do not take everything, and so that staff can see exactly what each individual animal has eaten.
That second reason is the important one. A shark that goes off its food is often showing the first sign of illness, days before anything else is visible, so the feed is as much a health check as a meal. The demonstration you are watching is routine husbandry that happens to be worth watching.
Transport is not part of every booking here, so plan how you are getting there and back. Whatever you spend inside is settled at the venue.
The galleries are dark by design, since bright ambient light makes tank glass act as a mirror. Give your eyes a minute when you go in, turn the flash off — it reflects straight back and disturbs the animals — and be ready for the temperature drop from the street.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
One to two hours for most people. It is a compact aquarium rather than a full-day oceanarium, which makes it a good half of a day.
Attention span, mostly. Interest in tanks drops off sharply after about forty minutes, and a venue you can finish inside that curve leaves a better impression than one you cannot.
No. A ray's eyes are on top of its body. The two openings that look like eyes underneath are its nostrils, with the mouth below them and the gill slits behind.
It hardly needs to. Rays carry electroreceptors in the skin of the snout that detect the faint electrical fields of animals buried in sand — useful for hunting things you cannot see.
Because in a crowded tank a shark that misses a meal is invisible. The pole turns each animal's intake into a recorded number instead of a guess.
Because fish conceal illness. A visibly weak animal is a target in the wild, so the instinct to hide weakness is strong, and appetite is often the only symptom that surfaces early.
Because bright ambient light turns tank glass into a mirror. The darkness is what lets you see into the water at all.
No — it reflects straight back off the glass and disturbs the animals. Give your eyes a minute to adjust instead.