Pattaya Dolphinarium

Pattaya Dolphinarium is a commercial marine park in Bang Lamung that stages bottlenose dolphin and seal shows, plus a paid swim-with-dolphins program. It’s open 10:00-18:00 daily except Wednesday, with three shows a day running 45-50 minutes each; standard tickets start from 700 THB and the swim program starts from 6,000 THB.

A show follows a fairly standard marine-park format: trainers cue dolphins through jumps, ball-balancing, and synchronised routines from poolside, with a commentator explaining each trick as it happens. The swim-with-dolphins add-on puts visitors in the water for a short guided session with a dolphin, followed by professional photos — a higher-contact experience than watching from the stands.

Watch out: Captive-cetacean venues like this one are widely and specifically criticised by marine-welfare organisations. Dolphins are wide-ranging, socially complex animals, and confining them to a show pool for repeated daily performances is flagged as a welfare concern regardless of how the facility is run. TripAdvisor removed bookings for any attraction offering physical contact with captive wild animals as a matter of platform-wide policy in 2016, and this venue isn’t listed for booking there as a result — worth knowing before you decide whether to go.

If you want a marine-life encounter near Pattaya that doesn’t involve a captive-performance animal, the Royal Thai Navy Sea Turtle Conservation Center in nearby Sattahip rescues and rehabilitates sea turtles for release rather than staging shows. A boat trip out to Koh Larn or the reefs off Koh Samae San puts you in the water with fish in open sea instead.

The venue sits in Nong Prue, the same central Pattaya subdistrict as the main beach, and is reachable by taxi or one of the shared songthaew trucks that run along Beach Road and Sukhumvit. It’s covered here alongside the rest of Pattaya’s attractions, shows, and beaches on the destination guide — not as a recommendation, but so you know what a ticket actually buys before you decide.