Visa run from Phuket to Ranong

We'll tell you about our recent experience (November 2017) of a visa run from Phuket to Myanmar via the Thai town of Ranong. We got visa-free stamps for 30 days there. The same way, you can extend the visa you already have without any problems (activate its second entry).

First, a bit of theory :) Let's figure out what the procedure of leaving Thailand to officially extend your stay in the country is actually called. There are 2 different kinds of runs — the visa run and the border run.

A visa run is the procedure of getting a visa that involves temporarily leaving Thailand and, as a rule, visiting a Thai embassy/consulate for the purpose of, well, issuing that very visa.
A border run, on the other hand, has nothing to do with getting a visa, since it's assumed that you already have one and need to leave the country to extend it (activate the next entry). Or you have no visa at all, but you have a legal right to stay in the country visa-free — citizens of a fairly long list of countries have that right:

Table of countries with visa exemption and visa on arrival for Thailand — Countries with visa-free entry to Thailand

As the table shows, the countries with visa-free entry to Thailand fall into 2 groups — visa-exempt countries and countries with a bilateral agreement. Russia is in the second category. And Vietnam, surprisingly, ended up in both categories at once :)

So if you're a citizen of one of the countries listed above, you don't have to bother with getting a visa: you just fly or drive to the Thai border and get a stamp that lets you officially stay in the country for 14 to 90 days. And of course, nothing stops you from leaving the country and getting the same stamp again when you come back in.

Or rather, nothing stopped you until December 31, 2016, when Thailand's new immigration rules came in. They say that under the visa-free regime you can enter Thailand (by land; flights are not affected) only 2 times per calendar year. But even this isn't clear-cut — for example, Russia is not on the list of visa-exempt countries, and the stamp is given because there is a bilateral agreement. So in theory the new rule shouldn't apply to Russians, but we haven't tested the theory ourselves yet, since so far we've only gotten the stamp 2 times. And the first time was in Ranong.

Visa run from Phuket to Ranong — Burma (Myanmar)

So, you've realized it's time to leave your cozy hotel/apartment to extend your official stay in Thailand. This article is about the trip from Phuket to the town of Ranong, which is on the border with Myanmar (Burma). The border between the countries runs across the water, through a small bay. Let's go!

How to get from Phuket to Ranong

Well, there isn't much room for invention here. There are 2 main options:

By bus
By your own transport — scooter/car

We went by bus, although we did consider going by scooter. In the end we decided that our scooter wasn't powerful or reliable enough for a trip like this (we bought an old one cheap). But in general it's quite doable on a scooter too, especially since along the way you can stop for the night in the resort village of Khao Lak or in Ranong itself. One way to Ranong by scooter will take about 6–7 hours. By car you can make it in about 4 hours.

The bus takes about 5 hours. It leaves from Phuket Bus Terminal 2. Departure times as of November 2017: 05:30 — 08:10 — 10:10 — 11:50 — 14:00 — 15:50 — 18:10 (check online or at the bus station). A one-way ticket costs about 200 baht.

Empty road and hills seen from a bus window on the way to Ranong — Visa run Phuket — Ranong. View from the bus

The bus arrives at the Ranong bus station, where local minibuses — songthaews — will be waiting for you. For 30 baht, routes #3 and #6 will take you to the pier. The ride takes about 15 minutes. At the pier you'll need to go through border control and get an exit stamp from Thailand.

Here we ran into a few hitches. We had read somewhere that at the Ranong border visa-free stamps aren't given to anyone, and you can only go there to extend a visa. We didn't pay much attention to that information, thinking there couldn't possibly be such arbitrariness or some unique immigration rules just for this stretch of the border, and we even forgot about it. We remembered when we came up to the window with our passports and a fat officer, after looking thoughtfully at our passports, asked: where are your visas? Realizing that we had no visas and had come for a stamp, he flatly declared that they can't give us a stamp, i.e. we need a visa, and that we should actually go to the Ranong immigration office and pay to extend our stamp (by the way, 1900 baht for 7 days). We started to argue, saying we had the right, after which we were invited into their office, where after a short conversation we agreed that we would pay a 500 baht bribe and they would give us the stamp after all, but we absolutely had to spend the night in Burma. There's just no way at all we can stamp you in the same day, he said. That's what we agreed on (of course, we didn't pay the money up front — we figured it would be wise to do that after getting the stamp).

After getting your exit stamp, you'll need to find yourself a boat to Burma (if the pushy touts along the way haven't already done it for you). The boat for locals costs 50 baht per person one way, but chances are you'll have to wait a while for that very boat to fill up (we waited about 20 minutes there and about 5 minutes back). If you prefer comfort to saving money, you'll be offered boats for well-off gentlemen for 100 and even 200 baht. Chances are you'll sail off a few minutes sooner that way.

Boats moored at a covered river pier in Ranong — Boat to Burma from Ranong

Passengers on a wooden boat from Ranong to Myanmar — Boat to Burma from Ranong

On the way to Burma, the boat stops at some obscure Thai immigration checkpoint, where they tried to squeeze some baht out of us (supposedly it had to be given to the border guards). They were told where to go and backed off.

Next you arrive at the pier of the Burmese town of Kawthaung, where, if you have a visa, you don't need to stay: just get a local one-week visa for $10 and go look for a boat back. Well, unless before that you might want to walk to the shops and buy some cheap alcohol/cigarettes.

P.S. The Burmese border guards keep your passports while you're in the country. Supposedly so that you don't go beyond the permitted 30 km from the town and don't travel around Burma illegally.

Street with motorbikes, stalls and billboards in Kawthaung — The pier in Kawthaung

In our case, though, we had to stay the night in this town. We googled a hotel (a Thai SIM card gets a signal in most of the town) — Penguin Hotel. By the way, hotels here cost twice as much as in Thailand, with lower quality of service.

Hotel room with a bed and air conditioner in Kawthaung, Myanmar — Our hotel in Burma, the town of Kawthaung

Hotel bathroom with a shower, sink and blue pipes on tiled walls, Kawthaung — Our hotel in Burma, the town of Kawthaung

The town of Kawthaung itself has nothing interesting to offer — a small village with a single sight, a temple on a hill.

Rooftops of Kawthaung and the bay at dusk, Myanmar — The town of Kawthaung, Burma

Kawthaung town and the bay seen from a hill, Myanmar — The town of Kawthaung, Burma

The next day we went to the pier in the morning, where we got our passports back and our exit stamps, and went to look for a boat.

People walking along a blue truss pier bridge in Kawthaung — The pier in Kawthaung

Boats near a shore lined with buildings and a hill on the return to Thailand — The way back to Thailand by boat

When we arrived at the border post in Thailand, we expected to be asked for a bribe, but there was a different officer there, who stamped us in without any questions or demands, after which we caught a songthaew back to the bus station.

Songthaew with passengers on a street in Ranong — Songthaew bus station — Ranong pier

At the station we bought bus tickets (buses run every 2 hours) and made it back to Phuket safely.

Ginger-and-white cat on a wooden bench at the Ranong bus station — Ranong bus station

So that's our simple report. We hope the information will be useful on your trip from Phuket to Ranong. Good luck!

From the diary · 2017

Our stamp was about to expire, and on November 15 we set off to Myanmar for a new one. We were counting on making it there and back in one day: get there by bus and be back by evening.

So we left at 5:30 in the morning. We got there without incident and quickly made it to the pier: the border here runs across the water. But it didn't work out in one day: we had to spend the night in Kawthaung.

To Myanmar by boat, together with the locals

Finally pulling in to Myanmar

Kawthaung is the southernmost town in Myanmar; it stands across from Ranong in Thailand. A room here cost 23 dollars in 2017, while our apartment in Phuket cost 8. A beetle wandered in to see us. We rested and went for a walk around the town.

This is the town

An evening walk

On the morning of November 16 we climbed up to the Buddhist stupa. You can see the whole town from it, and across the water, Thai land.

Buddhist stupa

View of the town from the stupa

The way back went quickly: we didn't have to wait for the boat to fill up — it was only waiting for us. The Burmese pier looks almost the same as the Thai one — unlike the border with Laos, where the Laotian and Thai posts are very different.

A few more views from the water

On the Thai side they stamped us in without a word. While we were waiting for the bus to Phuket, a cat came over to chat with us, and then we came across a giant grasshopper. By the evening of November 16 we were home.