Guide for Getting from Langkawi to Krabi by Land

We began our journey from Langkawi to Krabi by land on Monday 23th of January. We had booked a taxi from our accommodation, Best Seven Motel near Kuah center, to Kuah Ferry Terminal at 10.30 am. With that schedule, we had plenty of time to buy ferry tickets to Kuala Perlis, have a lunch in the Jeti Food Court, and buy some snacks for the trip from Langkawi to Krabi by land.

At 12 pm our ferry from Langkawi to Kuala Perlis started its engines and off we go. The ferry journey from Langkawi was a little bit faster than when we came to Langkawi in the first place. It took only one hour whereas it had been taken one and half hour when arriving at Langkawi. You can read more about our ferry journey from Kuala Perlis to Langkawi in my previous posting A Tropical Week in Paradise Island Langkawi. Ok, I have to admit that the title is misleading a bit since you cannot leave Langkawi island by land without taking a ferry or a plane.

 

 

Real Start of Getting from Langkawi to Krabi by Land

Our journey from Langkawi to Krabi by land continued by grabbing a taxi after arriving at Kuala Perlis Ferry Terminal. Because there are no buses going directly from Kuala Perlis to the Malaysia-Thailand border town Padang Besar, we had first to take a taxi from Kuala Perlis to Kangar. This 15 minutes and 12 kilometers taxi trip cost us RM16 ($3.60). From Kangar bus station you can take an affordable bus to Padang Besar costing only RM4.20 ($0.95) per person. You should be aware that the bus from Kangar to Padang Besar makes around 15 minutes loop before reaching to its destination. Because of that, this 35 km bus trip will take an hour instead of 45 minutes.

 

You have now reached the border town Padang Besar. Great! Now, let’s continue our guide for getting from Langkawi to Krabi by land.

The final stop for the bus from Kangar to Kuala Perlis is just few hundred meters away from the Malaysian immigration point. You can spot a traffic circle ahead of you and the immigration point is just behind that. You will be able to easily walk there even if it’s raining like in our case.

The Malaysian immigration was very easy task for us.

They were just checking our Thai visas which we had gotten during our week in picturesque digital island Penang and stamped us out from Malaysia. After getting the stamp out of Malaysia, you have to walk around half a kilometer in order to reach Thai immigration. There is a fairly large duty-free shop along the way. That enables you to spend the rest of Malaysian Ringgits if you still have some. Unfortunately, there weren’t any restaurants in the shop since we were hungry at that point. Having said that, we just bought some chocolate and RM1 ($0.23) cokes. After this small break, we continued our walk in the No man’s land towards Thai border.

Thai immigration became needlessly trickier

First, when you reach Thailand immigration, you have to go and get an arrival card to Thailand. You just walk to one of the booths for foreigners (non-Thai or Malaysian) in the immigration point and ask for it. After filling it properly, you can queue in order to get your passport stamped and get access to Thailand.

In our case, everything went really smoothly until this phase. There was no queue at all and it was easy enough to find everything needed. But for some reason, the immigration clerk didn’t notice that I had Thai visa already in my passport and granted me only 30 days stay in Thailand. After getting my passport back, I immediately pointed this out. For approximately 10 minutes he tried to figure out how he could solve the error and ended up doing nothing. Finally, he just wrote by hand that I should have had 60 days stay in Thailand since I had a tourist visa there.

The other weird thing in Thailand immigration point was that a Finn gets 30 days stay in Thailand only when arriving in Thailand by air. Because we traveled by ground, he should have given me only 15 days stay in Thailand. So he accidentally made two huge errors in few minutes. Anyway, we did get things sort out and I just hope, there won’t be any troubles when extending the visa with 30 days or getting out of the country.

Congratulations! You are now officially in Thailand.

After reaching the Thailand side of border town Padang Besar, we kept going our journey from Langkawi to Krabi by land with local bus to Hat Yai. The red bus stops directly on the other side of the road when exiting right from the Thailand immigration point. Before that, though, we just had to take our first delicious Thai made meal since 45 days or so.

We had most definitely missed that wonderful taste!

The local bus trip from Padang Besar border to Hat Yai bus station takes around one and half hours to complete. This 60-kilometer trip cost only 44 baht ($1.25) per person. We suggest everybody cut this trip from Langkawi to Krabi by land in Hat Yai for the night. Of course, if you depart much earlier than we did, feel free to keep going. Since we wanted to have a good night sleep before leaving Langkawi at noon, we arrived at Hat Yai around 7 pm.

One night stand in Hat Yai, Thailand

We booked a room from C.K. Residence just next Hat Yai bus station in order to proceed our journey from Langkawi to Krabi by land easily in the following day. We had a great dinner in the Food Park of Central Festival shopping mall nearby and went to bed after 7 hours of traveling during that day. It isn’t too harsh though when you split the traveling for several days, instead of pushing hard for 24 hours or so. Of course, some people have more time and the others more money so this way might not be suitable for everyone. For us it sure was.

Continuing Our Journey from Langkawi to Krabi by Land on Following Morning

We continued our trip from Langkawi to Krabi by land on Tuesday morning. We purchased bus tickets to 12.30 pm depart from Hat Yai to Krabi. You can find a minivan to Krabi from Hat Yai as well but we prefer to travel a bit more comfortable way. Trust me, we have already seen and done countless of full packed minivan trips during these couple of traveling years in Southeast Asia. Having said that, bus ticket from Hat Yai to Krabi cost 162 baht ($4.60) per traveler.

It wasn’t the most comfortable bus journey we have done in Southeast Asia but neither the worst. Even though I’m just an 180 cm short guy, I hit my head twice on the roof when moving inside the bus. I’m sure you can imagine that it was a bit tight in the bus. Our journey from Hat Yai to Krabi should have taken four and half hours but due to traffic (and over-optimistic bus schedule maker), we arrived at Krabi bus station around 6 pm after five and half hour ride.

After 30 hours since leaving Langkawi, we were in Krabi

We will finish our guide for getting from Langkawi to Krabi by land by staying a couple of days in Krabi. Since my brother arrives at Krabi airport on Saturday morning, we will stay put in Krabi Town for four nights. That allows us to wander around this beautiful destination first time since January 2016. We will continue to one of the best islands in Thailand, beautiful Koh Lanta, for 10 days after that.

 

 

I hope you have found some helpful pieces of advice from this guide for getting from Langkawi to Krabi by land. Feel free to browse more travel articles like this as well as regarding my location independent lifestyle here in FlowingFirm.com.