"Ranong" a Ranong Travel Page by Cathy&Gary

We are driving from Phuket to Ranong – the wettest place in Thailand!!

Now Ranong is only 300 kilometers from Phuket but it took us nearly 9 hours to get there with all the stops and sightseeing we did along the way!

We stopped at beautiful bamboo furniture places out in the middle of nowhere and if I had a house in Phuket all the furniture would be bamboo –so much cheaper than at home.

On the way to Ranong we stopped for lunch at Takua Pa which is a bus terminus with a food court and some markets.

No tourists eating here and all the signs in the food court were in Thai so I found something that sort of looked ok and ordered it with rice.

Gary had the same. It was some sort of chicken curry that was about to blow my head off, very cheap here, lunch cost 15 baht each.

It would have been nicer if I didn’t get all the boney and lumpy bits of the chicken with no meat on them (or parts I didn’t even recognize)

I have covered where we ate and places we went to like caves, waterfalls, hot springs etc under their own sections.

The scenery on the way to Ranong changes so much and the closer you get the more beautiful it is. Very lush and green - just perfect.

On the outskirts of Ranong we started seeing lots of police and soldiers, then a huge checkpoint manned by soldiers with machine guns, well, I don’t think I will chance taking a photo of them, though would have loved to!!

We arrived in Ranong at about 7pm and checked into the Royal Princess Hotel, a lovely hotel in the commercial district.

In the morning we had a look at the boats leaving for visa runs to Victoria Point Myanmar (Burma) you can see Burma and the trip over takes about 20 minutes.

Then its north of Ranong to find the Phra Khayang Cave (ok I know I said no more caves but I wasn’t going to disappoint Richard & Megumi as everywhere we are going today is a first for them as well)

Of course we ended up getting caught in some torrential rain late in the afternoon and decided it was time to head back to Phuket.

I hate driving in bad rain so this is not going to be a good trip back for me but I have to admit it was ok and Gary took it real easy.

We arrived in Khao Lak at dusk and there was one more stop. Somehow when Gary and I were in Khao Lak we could not find the police boat that was bought ashore during the tsunami, so Richard made sure we saw it.

The rain had let up quite a bit by now, it was late but there was one more little stop at Thalang, lets go to the Halal Food Festival, well we tried to but the traffic and parking was so bad we turned around and left.

We absolutely loved our trip to Ranong and will no doubt go back there and stay a bit longer, there is no hordes of tourists and so many more things we would like to see there.

Finally we arrived back on Phuket Island about 9.30pm, we were all so tired but happy as we had had such a great weekend wonder what is planned for Road Trip No. 2 next year, should be interesting!!.

Click here for lots more photos of our drive to Ranong.,