← All articles · Thailand · 7 May 2016

Pattaya, Thailand: Petrified trees, a crocodile show and a giraffe with a banana habit

A day at the Million Years Stone Park and Crocodile Farm outside Pattaya in May 2016: fossilised trunks, clipped topiary, tame deer, giraffes and a crocodile show.

The Million Years Stone Park and Crocodile Farm sits inland from the Pattaya beaches, and it's three attractions sharing one ticket: a fossil and rock garden, a very enthusiastic topiary garden, and a small zoo with a crocodile show attached. We spent the middle of 7 May 2016 drifting between them.

Stone, and trees that turned into stone

Inga standing inside an archway cut through the base of an enormous petrified tree trunk, a green-roofed shelter visible through the opening behind her — A petrified trunk big enough to walk through. You can still read the grain in it, which is the genuinely unsettling part.

Inga sitting on a carved petrified wood bench in a garden of cloud-pruned topiary, pale stone sculptures and bright bougainvillea — Cloud-clipped trees, a heart-shaped hedge and pale stone thrones scattered around like garden furniture. Nobody could accuse this place of restraint.

Feeding time

The animals here have worked out exactly how the economy functions, which is to say they can spot a paying visitor holding food from a considerable distance.

Inga holding out handfuls of long green grass to a group of deer that crowd around her under shady trees — A handful of grass in each hand, and suddenly you're the most popular person in the park.

Inga feeding a banana from a green plate to a giraffe leaning over a fence, more giraffes behind it and a red basket of fruit in her other hand — A red basket of bananas, a plastic plate and a giraffe with no patience whatsoever. The tongue does most of the work.

The crocodile show

The show runs in a tiled pool at the back of the site, and it's exactly as alarming as you'd expect. The handler works in a red silk costume, the crocodile works in the same skin it always has, and for a few seconds nobody in the audience breathes.

A crocodile handler in a red silk costume lying flat beside a large crocodile with its jaws open around his arm during a show in a tiled pool — This is the point where everyone stops filming and starts wincing. He got his arm back.

It's about half an hour from the seafront, so it slots in neatly with the rest of a Pattaya trip: the carved wooden Sanctuary of Truth up on the coast, the climb up Big Buddha Hill, and the neon of Walking Street once it gets dark. If you like your animal encounters a bit less staged, our morning with the elephants at Kuala Gandah is the other end of the scale.