Get Close to Nature at the Bangkok Butterfly Garden
Adding a splash of color to the city, the Bangkok Butterfly Garden is a lovely place to spend the day. Get surrounded by butterflies inside a peaceful dome – for free! This isn’t some stuffy museum with dead specimens pinned to boards with dry, boring descriptions. Instead this is a vibrant living exhibit, with colorful butterflies fluttering through a dome filled with jungle plants, rocky outcrops and even a tropical waterfall. For the backpacker on a budget, this is one of the best things to do in Bangkok for a relaxing afternoon!
What To Expect At The Bangkok Butterfly Garden
It might sound like an obvious statement, but this isn’t a zoo and doesn’t have trained animals so you might have to wait a bit in order to see the butterflies! They live in the main ‘Butterfly Garden’ dome but the space is big and the butterflies are small, so take your time and wander slowly and you’ll be rewarded with glimpses of some of the most beautiful butterflies on earth.
The Golden Birdwing, Siam Tree Nymph and Giant Silkworm butterfly are all well represented here and if you’re quiet and calm enough then they’ll sometimes come and settle on you for a rest. Wearing a brightly colored top can help with this as you’ll literally look like a flower to these guys!
It’s not just butterflies, there’s plenty more to see!
You won’t only see butterflies as this is also an Insectarium, so look closely at the trees and soil and you’ll see a ton of jungle insect life too. The ponds are home to fish and frogs and you’ll often see small lizards basking on the rocks in the warmth. The scientists in charge of the complex have gone to great lengths to recreate the natural habitat of these animals to a high degree of accuracy, and their efforts have really paid off with a vibrant ecosystem that visitors can enjoy.
Elsewhere in the complex there’s an exhibition area which plays host to a rotating program of educational displays. If you want to learn more about the butterfly life cycle then head to the breeding rooms, where you can see embryos and chrysalises and if you’re really lucky, you might see a butterfly emerge and be born!
All Part Of A Visit To Rot Fai
You might not hear about the Butterfly Garden from tour guides in the city, and it’s not well signposted, but with the right information it’s pretty simple to find. Jump on the BTS to Mo Chit and walk to Rot Fai park. The butterfly garden is in the middle of the park and is quite easy to spot, but if you get stuck then locals in the area will be able to point you in the right direction.
If you want to make a day of it then Rot Fai park is home to a boating lake with boats to hire, and is also the perfect size for a leisurely cycle. Bike hire is only 30 baht ($1) an hour so you could easily spend a couple of hours exploring the area after a trip to see the butterflies.
A Bargain Day Out
The Butterfly Garden is open 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM, Tuesday to Friday, and is a fun distraction from the madness of Bangkok. We’ve saved the best thing about it for last though – it’s FREE! Yes, the whole thing is completely and utterly free, which is a huge tick for us. You can have a great day out and save your hard-earned baht for the Bangkok bar crawl later!
