Administrative offices in Ranong

Since Ranong is a rather small provincial capital, the main administrative offices are not spread too much, and their original locations not becoming too cramped that a newly built government center needs to be built to replace the nice old buildings.

City pillar shrine

The tour starts at the city pillar shrine, which I have covered in detail on my travel blog. Directly across the street is the municipal administration of the town Ranong (เทศบาลเมืองระนอง). On the Google map below it only shows the old office building, but directly next to it a new more representative one was built. As the current imagery on Google is from 2006, it is one of the many local administrative buildings built very recently.

Old municipality office

New municipality office

The province hall (Sala Klang) is located on top of a hill, and though it is rather old it still looks very much like the province halls in other provinces. While the building itself did not catch much of my attention, I much more enjoyed the fence at the small parking lot with the provincial seal inside, and a small park with a statue, I think it shows King Chulalongkorn.

Province hall

Province court

Down the hill again one reaches the provincial court (ศาลจังหวัดระนอง), again a building in the standard style, so not the kind of building many people want to photograph. I still wonder why the guard at the entrance did not allow me to take a photo - but luckily he only told after I did the first photo already and was trying to find an alternative view. I never experienced any real security measures around the administrative offices - only at the three southernmost provinces troubled by the insurgence I could imagine the authorities to be more reluctant on photography.

District office

One the other side of the hill is the district office of the Mueang Ranong district (อำเภอเมืองระนอง). This is a really old building, mainly built by wood.

I sadly missed the office of the Provincial Administrative Organization (PAO), which I did not find on the map before. When I later found out that it was actually located just across Phetkasem road from the gas station we stopped anyway, if only I had know its location I could do a quick walk over there without the need to ask for another stop. Well, opportunity lost, for the next such visit I will try even harder to have all the locations on my map before. It will probably take many years till I have another chance to visit Ranong.




View Ranong administration in a larger map