Kawthaung south Myanmar Kawthaung Map and Visa Run

The owner of the Kawthaung casino, a Thai businessmen made a deal with the Myanmar authorities to get the island on long term lease, built a excellent beach resort with a casino and make a lot of money. They also offer sightseeing and scuba dive trips into south Myanmar and the Myanmar islands around. But there is a big difference compared to Thailand Islands.

On Thailand Islands there is almost always some kind of infrastructure, on Myanmar Islands there is usually no infrastructure. This is the main reason why all scuba diving trips via liveaboard are done out of Phuket which is just 300 km to the south.

The problem with the city and Ranong area is, climate is very wet. Actual one of the most wettest areas on planet earth because the clouds coming in from the Indian Ocean or here the Andaman Sea, stall on the hilly coast and empty the water.

South Myanmar and Kawthaung

is easily accessible from Yangon by several daily flights and there is a daily shop connection between Myeik or Mergui and the city. But it is not possible to use this ship with a visa issued by the local immigration. From Phuket, Samui, Phang Nga and around, there are plenty of buses everyday. E.g. the bus ticket from Phuket to Ranong is Baht 350,-, where the bus stops walk

Along its 2,800 plus kilometers coast line, Myanmar has countless islands and archipelagos, the biggest is the Myeik Archipelago with the sea gypsies in south Myanmar and at some places with a rich underwater world, coral reefs and millions of fishes and sea creatures down there. Some of them are hunted by the sea gypsies of south Myanmar with harpoons, other with a net and other such as pearl oysters are brought up by pearl diver. 

themselves because the Britons had much better weapons which they ruthlessly used to kill the locals. Here is the end of the Burmese coastline which is divided into two, the northern and the southern. The southernmost tip is Bayintnaung Point with some incredible colored water around with plenty of corals. The incredible color of the sea in this area is because of the different depths, salt content and refraction because of this, after Thailand starts.

To give you a better understanding what was going on in the past

in this area here is some text of an old book describing the area in about the 18. Century actually not much has changed, the ship got engines, the pirates are gone and the buildings are made from bricks, that's the main difference.

The ports of Indo-China and the islands have changed little with the centuries. Mergui, about 300km north of Kawthaung, to day is much the same as before.

This is not only true of the scenery. The ridge, the woods and the heavy greenery, the shimmering islands farther out are naturally the same. But the town itself has changed little. Its thatched and bamboo houses, winding streets, roadside bazaars and monastery stairways are still what they were in the seventeenth century.

The ridge round which the town is clustered is not high, hardly more than one hundred feet, but it rises nearly as steep as a cliff. On the highest point is a Buddhist pagoda, which by its design alone stamps the place as Indo-China, an art-integration distinct from India. The houses nestled into the steep hillside and looked towards the water of the harbor, which at full tide washed underneath the piles on which they were perched. At low tide there was an expanse of mud and mangrove.

Siam, Mergui changed later to Myanmar or Burma, it seems that the middle and lower classes were chiefly Burmese. In this connection, the Jesuit, Nicolas Gervaise, a contemporary writer, is quite explicit. He says of the whole province of Tenasserim: 'Its inhabitants, who are fairly numerous, are almost all foreigners. The language of Burma and Ava is still much more in use than Siamese.'