Tanintharyi Region, Myanmar — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Tanintharyi Region known for?

The Mergui Archipelago fills the southern and central waters off Tanintharyi Region, while the smaller Moscos Islands lie off the northern shores, so the sea here is broken up rather than open. Dawei is the capital. Myeik and Kawthaung are the other cities that count, spaced down a region that narrows as it runs toward the Kra Isthmus.

Where is Tanintharyi Region?

Tanintharyi Region is the long and narrow arm at the bottom of Myanmar, laid along the northern part of the Malay Peninsula and reaching down as far as the Kra Isthmus. It is wide nowhere. The Andaman Sea takes the whole western side, and the Tenasserim Hills run along the east with Thailand immediately beyond them, so the habitable ground is a strip between water and ridge.

Mon State closes the north. Offshore is where the region gets its shape. The Mergui Archipelago occupies the southern and central coastal waters in numbers, while the Moscos Islands off the northern shores are fewer and smaller, and between them they make the Andaman Sea edge of Tanintharyi Region an island coast rather than a plain one.

Dawei sits toward the top of it. Myeik lies on the central coast where the archipelago is thickest, and Kawthaung marks the far end, close to where the Kra Isthmus narrows the whole peninsula. The Tenasserim Hills hold the eastern boundary the entire way down, which is why the region has always faced the Andaman Sea rather than the country on the other side of the ridge.

What is Tanintharyi Region like?

Every name here has two versions. The region was Tenasserim Division and then Tanintharyi Division before it became Tanintharyi Region, Dawei was Tavoy, Myeik was Mergui, and the older spellings survive in the Tenasserim Hills and the Mergui Archipelago that were never renamed alongside the towns. That doubling is the local grammar.

A traveller reading a chart and a road sign in the same afternoon will meet both sets, because the sea features kept the old forms while the administrative ones changed. The sea does the organising. With the Tenasserim Hills sealing the eastern boundary and Thailand beyond them, the towns of Tanintharyi Region grew facing the Andaman Sea, and Myeik in particular sits against the thickest part of the Mergui Archipelago.

The Moscos Islands answer for the north. Kawthaung holds the far end. Down where the Kra Isthmus pinches the Malay Peninsula, that town is closer to the bottom of the region than to Dawei, and the distance between the two ends is most of what shapes life along the strip.

Mon State is the only land neighbour inside the country.

What is the history of Tanintharyi Region?

Tenasserim came first on the maps. The division was called Tenasserim before it was called Tanintharyi, and the change ran through the towns as well, turning Tavoy into Dawei and Mergui into Myeik while the Tenasserim Hills and the Mergui Archipelago kept the older forms. Dawei holds the seat.

That the capital sits toward the northern end rather than at the middle follows from Mon State being the land link, since everything past it runs out along the peninsula.

What is the climate of Tanintharyi Region?

The Andaman Sea governs it. Air off the open water reaches a strip with no width to absorb it, and the Tenasserim Hills stand in the way of anything carrying on east into Thailand. The region sits deep in the tropics.

Running from Mon State down to the Kra Isthmus, Tanintharyi Region stays inside that band along its whole length, and the Mergui Archipelago lies in the same warm water.

How do you get to Tanintharyi Region?

Mon State is the land door. It is the only Myanmar neighbour Tanintharyi Region has, so an overland approach from the rest of the country comes down past it and then runs the length of the strip. The Tenasserim Hills block the east.

Thailand lies directly beyond that ridge and the Andaman Sea takes the west, which leaves the strip itself and the water as the ways of moving between Dawei, Myeik and Kawthaung.