Things to do in Chumphon.

Hat Sai Ri, in Na Cha-ang subdistrict east of the town, is the province's most significant place as well as one of its prettiest beaches — fine white sand, clear water, and at its northern end the shrine of Prince Abhakara Kiartivongse, the Prince of Chumphon, regarded as the father of the Royal Thai Navy. Thai visitors come specifically to pay respects here, and it is one of the four things named in the provincial motto. Beside the shrine sits HTMS Chumphon, a preserved torpedo boat 68 metres long and 6.55 metres across, open as a small museum ship.

Thung Wua Laen, sixteen kilometres northeast of the town, is Chumphon's main resort beach — a long, gently shelving bay with small hotels, dive shops and beachfront food stalls rather than high-rise development. Two kilometres on, the crescent of Hat Saphli was ranked the cleanest beach in Thailand by the Pollution Control Department in 2017. The fishing village of Ban Tha Samet beside it is a working community known across the region for its shrimp paste and fish sauce, and is worth an hour on its own.

Chumphon has 222 kilometres of coastline and 44 islands, a scatter of which fall inside Mu Ko Chumphon National Park. The waters here are the same system that makes Ko Tao a diving destination, and day boats run from the Chumphon piers to the nearer islands for snorkelling, diving and beach trips. Several of the limestone stacks off the coast are worked for edible birds' nests — the last item in the provincial motto — and are off-limits to visitors as a result. Trips are weather-dependent; the crossing is rough through the northeast monsoon.

Chumphon grows around sixty per cent of Thailand's coffee, essentially all of it robusta, with the heart of the industry in the Ban Panwal valley in Tha Sae district — roughly 178,283 rai of plantations. Local roasters including Thamsing and ST Chumphon sell under their own labels, and the plantation country inland from Highway 4 makes a genuinely good day out for anyone who cares about where their coffee comes from. Pair it with the province's other agricultural claim to fame: it is Thailand's second-largest durian producer after Chanthaburi.

The southern town of Lang Suan holds one of the best-known river festivals in southern Thailand — a boat procession and long-boat races on the Lang Suan River, staged after the end of Buddhist Lent. It is a genuinely local event rather than a tourist production, and it is the clearest expression of the fact that Lang Suan was its own province until 1932 and still holds its own identity within Chumphon.

Phato, the province's southwestern district and the source of the Lang Suan River, is the wet, green corner of Chumphon — 928 km² of hills and rainforest running up to the Ranong border, with waterfalls, homestays and the province's best river rafting. Forest still covers 1,288 km², about 21.5 per cent of Chumphon, and most of what remains is here and in the western uplands. It is the antidote to the coast: an hour or two inland and the province stops being about beaches entirely.