Safari Park Open Zoo & Camp

Safari Park Open Zoo & Camp is a drive-through safari combined with a walking zoo in Kanchanaburi’s Bo Phloi district, about 30-40 km from town. Entry is 550 THB for foreign adults and 350 THB for foreign children (200/100 THB for Thai nationals), open daily 9am-5pm.

The safari section lets you drive your own car or join a mini-bus through open-range zones where zebras, giraffes, deer, and antelope move freely around the road — a rarer format in Thailand than the standard caged zoo. Walking areas cover tigers, lions, bears, and primates in more conventional enclosures, plus a children’s section with farm animals. The park runs three scheduled performances each day: an elephant show, a crocodile-handling show, and a macaw bird show.

Watch out: The elephant show is a riding-and-tricks performance, not an observation-only encounter. Multiple visitor accounts describe elephants controlled with a spiked bullhook (a stick with metal points used to direct movement through pain response) and kept chained by one leg between shows — standard practice at ride-and-show venues, and not something we can recommend attending. If you want to see or interact with elephants in Kanchanaburi, Sai Yok Elephant Village — also a ride-and-show camp — has the same issue; our guide to ethical elephant sanctuaries in Thailand lists observation-only, no-riding operations instead, including Elephant Nature Park near Chiang Mai, the country’s best-known no-riding model.

The zebra-and-giraffe drive-through and the walking zoo sections don’t carry the same specific concerns as the elephant show, and some visitors report the park’s other animal enclosures as reasonably maintained; others describe cramped, worn-looking pens for the big cats. Judge it in person rather than from marketing photos.

If you go for the safari drive and zoo without the animal shows, mornings are cooler and animals are more active before the midday heat settles in. Bring your own water — the park is spread out and shade is limited between zones.