Water Parks in Thailand

The world's first Columbia Pictures themed park, at Bang Sare about twenty minutes south of Pattaya, built around Jumanji, Ghostbusters and Hotel Transylvania. Thirty-odd slides, a wave pool and a surf pool, plus a beach club attached to the same site. It is the newest big park in the country and the one with the shortest queues outside Thai holidays.

A small water park on the roof of The Mall Bangkae in western Bangkok, and almost entirely a local affair. Slides, a wave pool and a lazy river, with city views from the top of every ride because you are several floors up. It is cheap, it is indoors-adjacent when the rain comes, and it is a genuinely odd thing to find above a shopping centre.

The biggest water park in the country, at Na Jomtien south of Pattaya, spread over a hillside with more than twenty slides, two wave pools and a lazy river running past an artificial waterfall. A full day here is realistic in a way it is not at the smaller parks. Note the name confusion: this is Pattaya, not Bangkok.

On Mai Khao beach at the northern end of Phuket, well away from the Patong crowds and attached to a resort. Slides of varying nerve levels, a wave pool and a lazy river, with a spa and two restaurants on site. It is the only significant water park on Phuket, which is why it fills up when the weather turns.

The oldest amusement and water park complex in Southeast Asia, out in Minburi in eastern Bangkok, and still holding a Guinness record for the largest wave pool in the world. The water side sits alongside a full theme park with roller coasters, so one ticket covers a genuinely long day. Dated in places, but the scale is real.

A ten-acre park in Hua Hin with nine slides, a wave pool, a lazy river and a children's pool, attached to the Black Mountain golf resort. It is the quietest of Thailand's larger parks and the easiest to visit on a whim, since Hua Hin is a three-hour drive from Bangkok and nobody is queueing.

Asia's first themed water jungle, in Hua Hin, with more than twenty rides threaded through planting designed to look like rainforest. It is smaller than the Pattaya parks but better looking, and the slides are steeper than the setting suggests. The two Hua Hin parks are close enough to do in the same trip.

A combined amusement and water park on the edge of Khao Yai National Park, three hours north-east of Bangkok. The water side is modest, but the setting in the hills is the point, and it works well as a break in a Khao Yai trip rather than as a destination in itself.

A rooftop park on top of Central Plaza in Bangkok, themed around Pororo, a South Korean cartoon penguin who is oddly famous across Southeast Asia. It is aimed squarely at younger children, it is covered in parts, and it is the easiest water park to reach on public transport in the whole country.