Aquaria Phuket

Go in expecting a couple of hours, not an afternoon, and you'll come out happy. Aquaria Phuket bills itself as Thailand's biggest aquarium and fills the B1 floor of Central Phuket Floresta on the edge of Phuket Town. The aquarium suggests allowing about an hour and 45 minutes. Some people walk it in 30 minutes flat, and others linger past two hours reading the species boards, depending on how much you like stopping at tanks.

What it does well is mood. The lighting and the background music do a lot of heavy lifting, the tanks are properly stocked, and the upper section with arachnids and reptiles is the part adults tend to remember. Reviews raise a fair point about the non-fish animals, with small enclosures and a lot of plastic greenery. If that bothers you, it will bother you here.

Feedings run through the day, the giant Amazon fish at 11:15, then otters, penguins, sharks and stingrays every 15 minutes after it, and the same round again from 14:00. The mermaid show, in a 3.5-million-liter saltwater tank, is at 15:30 Tuesday to Friday and at 14:30 and 15:30 on weekends. It's aimed squarely at children, so a couple without kids needn't build the visit around it.

Foreign adults pay ฿1,390 at the counter or ฿1,251 online, and children 91 to 140 cm tall ฿750 or ฿675 online, with smaller children free. A family pass for two adults and two children is ฿3,580. Online tickets have to be bought at least three hours ahead, and prices are the same every day. Thai residents and expats with a work permit pay far less, and the older Phuket Aquarium at Cape Panwa is the ฿300 alternative.

It's open daily from 10:30 to 19:00, with last entry at 18:00. Being indoors and inside a mall, it's the obvious call on a wet afternoon, with food and parking right there.