Explore Southern Thailand: the Andaman coast
Despite being the soggiest town in the country, with over 5000mm of rain a year, RANONG has a pleasing buzz about it, fuelled by the mix of Burmese, Thai, Chinese and Malay inhabitants. It’s a prosperous town, the lucrative nineteenth-century tin-mining concessions now replaced by a thriving fishing industry centred around the port of Saphan Pla, 5km southwest of town, and its scores of fishing boats and fish-processing factories staffed mainly by notoriously poorly treated Burmese workers. As with most border areas, there’s also said to be a flourishing illegal trade in amphetamines, guns and labour, not to mention the inevitable tensions over international fishing rights, which sometimes end in shoot-outs, though the closest encounter you’re likely to have will be in the pages of the Bangkok Post. Thai tourists have been coming here for years, to savour the health-giving properties of the local spring water, but foreign travellers have only quite recently discovered it as a useful departure point for the alluring nearby little islands of Ko Chang and Ko Phayam. The other reason to stop off in Ranong is to make a visa run to the Burmese town of Kaw Thaung.
A stroll along the town centre’s main road, Thanon Ruangrat, brings its history and geography to mind. The handsome, if faded, shopfront architecture bears many of the hallmarks of nineteenth-century Sino-Portuguese design, with its arched “five-foot” walkways shading pedestrians, pastel paintwork and shuttered windows. Chinese goods fill many of the shops – this is a good place to stock up on cheap clothes too – and many signs are written in the town’s three main languages: Thai, Chinese and curly Burmese script.
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Into Burma: visa runs and Kaw Thaung (Ko Song)
Into Burma: visa runs and Kaw Thaung (Ko Song)
The southernmost tip of Burma – known as Kaw Thaung in Burmese, Ko Song in Thai, and Victoria Point when it was a British colony – lies just a few kilometres west of Ranong across the gaping Chan River estuary, and is easily reached by longtail boat from Saphan Pla fishing port just outside Ranong town centre. It’s quite straightforward for foreign tourists to hop across to Burma at this point, and hop back for a new fifteen-day stay in Thailand (the “tourist visa exemption”). You can either do it independently, as described below, or you can make use of one of the all-inclusive “visa run” services advertised all over town, including at Pon’s Place (B850 including visa). Most visa-run operators use the Saphan Pla route, but they can also book you on the faster, more luxurious Andaman Club boat (B1000 including visa), which departs from the Andaman Club pier 5km north of Ranong’s town centre and travels to and from the swanky Andaman Club hotel, casino and duty-free complex, located on a tiny island in Burmese waters just south of Kaw Thaung.
Boats to Kaw Thaung leave from the so-called Burmese Pier in the port of Saphan Pla, 5km southwest of town and served by songthaews from Ranong market. Thai exit formalities are done at the pier, after which longtail boats take you to Kaw Thaung and Burmese immigration. Here you pay US$10 (or B500) for a pass that should entitle you to stay in Kaw Thaung for a week but forbids travel further than 8km inland. Note that Burma time is thirty minutes behind Thailand time, and that to get back into Thailand you’ll have to be at the immigration office in Saphan Pla before it closes at 6pm. Thai money is perfectly acceptable in Kaw Thaung.
There’s nothing much to do in Kaw Thaung itself, but it has quite a different vibe to Thai towns. As you arrive at the quay, the market, immigration office and tiny town centre lie before you, while over to your right, about twenty minutes’ walk away, you can’t miss the hilltop Pyi Taw Aye Pagoda, surmounted by a huge reclining Buddha and a ring of smaller ones. Once you’ve explored the covered market behind the quay and picked your way through the piles of tin trunks and sacks of rice that crowd the surrounding streets, all that remains is to take a coffee break in one of the quayside pastry shops.
