Chumphon travel guide

Chumphon is considered the ‘gateway to the south’ and is where the southern highway divides, one route running west and then south on Route 4 to Ranong, Phuket and the Andaman Sea; the other, south on Route 41 to Surat Thani, Koh Samui, Nakhon Si Thammarat and the waters of the Gulf of Thailand.

There isn’t much to see in the town itself, although there are some good beaches and islands nearby; the town is an access point for Koh Tao . The station is at the west end of Krom Luang Chumphon Road, where the trains from Bangkok arrive.

The waters off the coast provide excellent diving opportunities. There are dive sites around the islands of Koh Ngam Noi (parcelled out to bird’s nest concessionaires) and Koh Ngam Yai. Rock outcrops like Hin Lak Ngam and Hin Pae, are also becoming increasingly popular with dive companies for their coral gardens, caves and rock piles. Of particular note are the 500 varieties of rare black corals found in the vicinity of Hin Lak Ngam. The sea here is plankton-rich, which means an abundance of sea life including whaleshark, other species of shark, and sea turtles, as well as coral gardens. Visibility, though, is variable and certainly not as crystalline as on the Andaman Sea side of the isthmus. On a good day it may be more than 20 m, but at low tide less than half of this.

In his book Surveying and exploring in Siam (1900), James McCarthy writes of ‘Champawn’ marking the beginning of the Malay Peninsula. A group of French engineers had already visited the area with a view to digging a canal through the Kra Isthmus and it was clearly a little place at that time: the “harbour was full of rocks covered with oysters. The usual cocoa-nut palms and grass shanties marked the position of the village”.