Ranong, Thailand

Another visa run.

The reason I was moving so fast in my previous few destination was because I needed to back it to a boarder town by the end of my then-current visa and I did not want to have to backtrack too much along the way. It was a pretty rushed week, especially for the friend that is visiting. He observed that we spent far too long on buses during that time and I could not agree more but I think it was the best plan given the circumstances.

Ranong is a bland, dull town that exists seemingly exclusively for people to do visa runs into southern Myanmar. We arrived at 1AM, after some sleep, I ventured off alone to do my visa run, we spent that night there, then we left. Pretty simple.

The visa run itself, however, was kind of interesting. The going rate for a visa run service in Ranong is 400THB (about US$12). This sounded reasonable to me but I was confident I could do it myself for less so I declined the effortless visa run service and went for by my lonesome.

I got a ride to the pier without issue. At the pier I met up with three other people doing a visa run as well. We could save money by splitting the cost of the boat we needed to take to get to Myanmar. One of the three needed to buy US dollars from me and did so at a rate that was favorable to me so, other than the cost of the Myanmar visa, the cost of the visa run nearly paid for itself. I got to run the mile I run in each country I visit in Myanmar. The boat back to Thailand went off without a hitch and I got my new 15-day Thai visa no problem. Everything was perfect.

This is when things got interesting. The guy that had to but the US dollars from me had an issue, however. Myanmar forgot to stamp his passport so he had to go back to Myanmar because Thailand would not given him a new visa without the stamp indicating he actually was in another country. (Worked out for me; he needed to buy more US dollars.) He went off back to Myanmar and I headed to my guesthouse in Ranong, Thailand.

Getting to the pier took about 15 minutes. Getting from the pier to my guesthouse, which was right next to the bus station, took 3 hours. My first effort to get there took 1.5 hours but because I had arrived at night I did not recognize the bus station and refused to get off. He took me back to the pier. The next effort took me to the same place, quickly this time, but I obviously still did not recognize it and again refused to get off. The driver eventually pulled over to speak to somebody that I guess he knew spoke English. I told him that I was not actually going to the bus station but that where I was staying, Kiwi, was right near the bus station. He said Kiwi was in fact right near the bus station. The same bus station that I had already been to twice. I finally got off and walked. Eventually I made it there. The visa run portion of my visa run took 2.5-3 hours but in total I spent about 5.5-6 hours in total to actually get back.

As there is not much in Ranong, we left pretty much as soon as we could to go to Krabi.