Visas and border crossings forum

I did a visa run from Ranong recently too and noticed that a few things had changed since my previous trips over to Kaw Thaung so it's a good job I didn't see your first post and reply Spartan!

In the past you had to go to the main immigration office for your entry and exit stamps. They gave you an exit stamp even though you hadn't in fact left Thailand and nothing was forcing you to actually go to Burma that same day. Sometimes people forgot to go back to the immigration office to get stamped in after they got back too. They wandered off to Phuket or Bangkok without an entry stamp in their passports....which must have caused a few problems when they tried to leave the country!

Anyway, things have changed and you now get stamped in and out of Thailand on the pier where you get the boats across to Kaw Thaung.. The pier in question is behind a big petrol station about 1km down the road from the immigration office on the same side of the road... locals know where it is.

If you're coming from the bus station the cheapest way to get there would be to take a blue No 6 songthaew (15B), otherwise there are motobike taxis who charge about 100B I think.

The queues at the immigration booths were quite long when I was there. They also seemed very slow moving indeed! The whole visa run procedure took nearly 4 hours which is double what I'd anticipated .... maybe Monday mornings in peak season are a very bad time to do visa runs! BTW I overheard people from Ko Tao saying they weren't going to make the afternoon ferry when I was there so maybe you were quite lucky to get everything done so quickly Spartan.

A longtail to Burma should cost 50B each way if you're sharing a boat with other people. If you charter a private boat the standard price is 300B. However unless you look like you've done this visa run 10 million times already they'll probably try and ask you for more than this so be prepared to bargain.

Final tip. There's often no shade from the sun on the longtails so it's a good idea to do as the locals do and bring an umbrella with you (and some water).