Chumphon National Museum

The Chumphon National Museum is the provincial museum of Thailand's national museum service, and it sets out the history of a province most travellers pass through rather than stop in. Chumphon sits at the narrowest part of the Thai peninsula, and that geography — the isthmus, the overland shortcut between two seas, the coastal trade — shapes most of what is on display.

Galleries cover prehistoric finds from the province, the early trading settlements, local crafts and ways of life, and the modern history of the town, including the 1997 typhoon and Prince Chumphon, the naval figure the province commemorates.

It is a useful hour for anyone with time between a train and a boat.