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Chumphon is generally considered the starting point of Southern Thailand. One road heads towards the Eastern Coast, and another over the central hills towards the Western Coast. Having deliberated over the last few weeks on ‘East or West – which is best’, we opted for the more scenic Western Coast. We had more detail on the route courtesy of Durk, and it would also take us through Ranong, a city at the Burmese border, from where we could do a day-trip to Burma and get a new free 30 day Thai visa upon our return. Handy really since we only had about 10 days left on our visas!!
The hills to Ranong (which we had feared) were surprisingly easy, with only one biggish one (150m altitude). The road was quiet and scenic with tropical forest, and a light rain every now and again helped keep us cool. Before Ranong we stopped off at another cave, which was home to thousands of bats and absolutely stank of bat poo.
Ranong was an interesting town with Burmese and Chinese influence, and was full of other expats (probably mostly from Phuket) in town, also on the visa run like us! Weirdly though they all looked really drugged up for some reason?! We heard Ranong was quite famous for its illegal amphetamine trade – though we didn’t see any evidence (other than the zombie like tourists) that might explain why!
The visa run is commercialised, with companies offering a door to door service. We decided to do it ourselves to save some money, and actually spent only half the price! Bus to the Ranong pier, exit stamp at the immigration office, and then haggling for a longtail boat to take us across the river to Kaw Thaung, the Burmese town on the other side. Our longtail boat driver took care of the rest – even jumping on and off at the various island checkpoints (Thai and Burmese) to get the necessary stamps, pay fees etc. Half an hour later we were in Burma.
We spent an hour in the town, strolling around and amazed at how different it was from the other side of the water. Much poorer, and more like India in fact. We wandered into the fish market, only to regret it moments later and search for the nearest exit holding our breaths!! 🙂
Back on the boat and then on Thai soil, we went back to the immigration office – 3 hours and half a dozen stamps later we had our new 30 day Thai visas!! 🙂
