One fun little diversion for us was a visit to the Siam Insect Zoo. It’s about 30 minutes out of town, near Mae Rim, Tiger Kingdom and a bunch of other attractions.
There’s a decent butterfly garden, a section where you see lots of insect specimens pinned, mounted, and labeled, plus the real fun part, a guided tour and interaction with some cool live bugs! The kids were kinda spooked, but warmed up to holding most of the insects.
There were a pretty fair number of live critters, including funky caterpillars, spiders, scorpions, walking sticks, mantises, and beetles. You could hold just about everything although we decided not to hold the live scorpions even though the lady assured us “it only stings a little bit”.
Another neat part was seeing all the different types of caterpillars and seeing their various cocoons. Some cocoons lo0k like real gold and are beautiful!
It’s a bit overpriced for Chiang Mai, but the kids got a unique experience to hold some exotic bugs. Adults are 200 Baht, kids are 150 Baht, so that was about $23 US for the 4 of us. Expect to spend about 90 minutes there.
The website for this zoo is a mess, so just check out the info on TripAdvisor if you’re interested. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g1766192-d2069504-Reviews-Siam_Insect_Zoo-Mae_Rim.html