Diving in Thailand

Thorbar

I've had a look over the stickys and old posts and I can't seem to find anything exactly on this so sorry if this has come up before.

I'm on holidays in Thailand for the summer, I'm staying in Koh Samui for the next few weeks and I love to give diving a go for the first time. There's a lot of dive companies here that offer PADI courses and for a beginner two dives in one day their charging around 100 euro. Is this good value? Also does anyone know if the safety standards are the same out there as they're at home? Well thanks for reading this talk to you later.

Evil Phil

2 dives in one day sound like the Discover Scuba course. TBH you're better off doing your Open Water cert. That covers 4 dives (plus two in a pool) and certifies you to dive with other dive operators up to 18m depth anywhere in the world.

Discover Scuba doesn't allow you to dive again. Budda View in Koh Tao (next door to you) are charging 8,500 baht with is approx €175. I dove with Budda View a few years ago.

Do the Open Water cert; you won't regret it. You can come diving with us when you get home

Batbat

summer in Thailand lucky bastard )

daveg

Originally posted by Evil Phil
2 dives in one day sound like the Discover Scuba course. TBH you're better off doing your Open Water cert. That covers 4 dives (plus two in a pool) and certifies you to dive with other dive operators up to 18m depth anywhere in the world.

Discover Scuba doesn't allow you to dive again. Budda View in Koh Tao (next door to you) are charging 8,500 baht with is approx €175. I dove with Budda View a few years ago.

Do the Open Water cert; you won't regret it. You can come diving with us when you get home

As Phil says do your open water course. You'll recieve a PADI certification card which you will be asked for )or should be asked for) whenever you want to dive again.

Evil Phil

And don't go for the cheapest course you can find. If there's a PADI five star resort try them - but ask around amoungst the divers and they'll point you in the right direction.

NordicDiver

Hi Thorbar

100 Eur sounds expensive for Discover Scuba, 35-40 Eur should be more right if it is from the beach, if you go on the diveboat for the day the price should be 75-80 eur.

Any Padi centre would be good, you should ask where the dive will take place, some take you out on a boat and others do it from the local beach.

Go shop around on the different dive centres.

Sawadee

Thorbar

Sawedee Cup.

Thanks for all the advice lads, still not sure whether I'll go on the open water course or just try it out once first, the water over here is so clear seems like a real crime not to make the most of it. If I do try it out I'll give ye a full report on who I went with and how it went. Thanks again.

whiteshadow

was going to suggest the buddha-view dive center on koh Tao also.

http://www.buddhaview-diving.com/

really cheap to do it.. also you can get a 10% discount on the Koh San Road in
bangkok... if you wait until you are there.

no need to book in advance... everyone wants your custom but
was very impressed with the buddha-view.
perfectly safe. good equipment... and a lovely sea-food bbq every night on the
beach after the dives...

Evil Phil

I'm actually thinking of going back to Koh Tao next year for a month of bouldering and diving. If I do I'll be going back to Buddah View. They have cool parties too if I remember, although the cute South African girls certainly improved the atmosphere

Koh Tao is the quiet one of the three(?) islands but I prefer that.

Thorbar

Hello everyone. In the end we decided to go with a dive center on Samui as we myself and my girlfriend were fairly settled in our bungloe and didn't fancy having to pack everything up and drag it around with us for a few days. We picked Captain Caveman in the end as they were had a five star rating, and offered us only 2 people to each instructor.

Anyway we've spent a day doing the theory and another in the pool getting used to all the gear and how to use it. I know you've all heard this before but its incredible to be able to stay under water for that long. And today we went for our first two boat dives off Koh Toa. I'm still finding it hard to put into words how amazing today's dives were. The coral was amazing and the amount of fish in the water was staggering. We saw angle fish, trigger fish, a blue spotted ray and 100s more. The freedom to move around in any direction with so little effort was hard to believe. We came out of the water after 40 minutes and it felt like we'd just gone down. doing the course together and I must say its been one of the best things we've done since we got to Thailand. We're going to sail rock tomorrow and we'll dive to 18 meters. We've rented a digital underwater camera for the day and we'll post up everything we take. Talk to you all soon.

NordicDiver

Sawdee cup

Really happy for you guys that you get to do the full open water course
Hope that your girlfriend share the same joy of diving. Watch up for those Titan-triggerfish, they are a pain in the arse some times :mad: .

Good luck tomorrow at sail rock and your deep dive to 18m.

Seems like Captain Caveman are looking after you

bringitdown

I know this is a bit late but:

Koh Tao, Koh Tao, Koh Tao, for a beginner it is all you need to know.

The VAST majority of sites in the 3 Koh's (Samui, Phanang, Tao) are in or around Koh Tao. As a result diving with a company on Samui is WAY more expensive as you will be have to be transported to Tao. You are better off on Tao, it is nicer more 'tropical paradise like' than Samui and Phanang, much more untouched and has some excellent dive centers.

Also the Simillian Islands are an excellent less crowded Thai dive site.

Thorbar

Our final two dives went really well. Diving around sail rock was amazing, so much life down there seemed to stretch on for miles. Everywhere you looked on the seabed and coral there were loads of sea urchins and quite a few rock fish as well so we had to be a bit more aware of what you were doing. Didn't feel any huge difference between 18m and 12m but when you looked up from 18m it was a shocking sight.

My girlfriend has enjoyed the diving as much as I did. Even though it was my idea to do it and she only really went along for me. Both of us a really looking forward to gettind under water again as soon as possible.

Although it was a bit more expensive to dive from Samui, we've been here nearly six weeks and are really settled in our bungloe. You can easily avoid all the traffic and german tourist/larger louts if you stay at a quieter part of the beach. Also going into the open water course we weren't sure how'd we would find it. Now that we've gone through the course and really enjoyed it we're planning on a trip to Koh Toa doing doing some more diving from there.

Also Captain Caveman couldn't have been better, all the instructors and boat crew were really helpful and relaxed. There was no pressure or egos. The speed boat was really good and we were usually the first to any of the dive sites. They are a bit more expensive but so I'm not sure if we'll go with them again but absolutely no regrets on doing the open water with them. Also there was always just the two of us to one instructor so the skills went really quickly and we had more time to swim around.

NordicDiver

Great, congratulation with your OpenWater certification, you should see how much they charge for the Advanced Diver certification also

And we are waiting for pictures as you promised, on the gallery section

Thorbar

Finally got around to posting up the pictures of our 3rd and 4th dives off sail rock. Back in Ireland now. God its ****ing wet and cold but its good to be home and see all my friends and family. Here's the link for the yahoo gallery were I stuck the pictures.

http://photos.yahoo.com/barryodriscoll1

We also went to Koh Toa for 3 days and did four more dives with budda view. We saw several blacktipped reef sharks off Champon pinnicle. We also saw a banded sea snake when we dived at red rock along with the hundreds of different tropical fish. We also did a 10 meter swim through at red rock which was really cool.

PWEI

If anyone else fancies doing a bit of diving around that part of Thailand and are staying in Samui,I highly recommend;

http://www.discoverydivers.com/


They're in the very top of Chaweng and are excellent.One and one instructors,speed boats,plus unlike a lot of dive shops around there,you do your initial training in a swimming pool.Richie the boss is from London and is one of the soundest Cockneys your ever likely to meet.They always leave at 07:00 to avoid the rush and as a result are back by about three.A lad from Limerick is part owner of the shop and if you mention his name George Clancy from Limerick they'll give you a discount. And in the unlikely event that George is in the shop tell him Cormac from Clare told you to get a discount.I go diving with them every year and they're superb!!

NordicDiver

PWEI wrote:

plus unlike a lot of dive shops around there,you do your initial training in a swimming pool.

It is not necessarily a GOOD thing to do all or part of the confined water training in a pool...

When i was working in Thailand and the viz was good id prefered to do the confined water training in the sea. Much nicer to look at fish for the students while they wait to do their skills than looking at the tiles in the pool.

PWEI

NordicDiver wrote:

It is not necessarily a GOOD thing to do all or part of the confined water training in a pool...

When i was working in Thailand and the viz was good id prefered to do the confined water training in the sea. Much nicer to look at fish for the students while they wait to do their skills than looking at the tiles in the pool.

Well I personnally felt a lot safer doing my training in a pool,that's why I did it with this dive shop.You have plenty of time to look at fish when you get your open water dive licence.

NordicDiver

PWEI wrote:

Well I personnally felt a lot safer doing my training in a pool,that's why I did it with this dive shop.You have plenty of time to look at fish when you get your open water dive licence.

Probably true and maybe i would have taken u to the pool also if i was not sure u where comfortable with the water.

But i just wanted to point out that if the instructor does not use the pool for confined water training, it is not necessarily a BAD thing, as some readers might think after looking at your first post.