Trip Planning

[Ed Hatfield]

I'm in the early stages of planning a trip for September of 2012. The tour is of Vietnam and Cambodia ending in Bangkok on the 27th of Septembet/2012. It is a two week tour with my wife and I was hoping to spend a few days (up to a week) diving at the end of the tour. Is there any day trip boat diving direct from Bangkok? What about all-inclusive beach resorts?

My wife is not a diver and she would prefer a resort.

I know nothing about the area and I am having difficulty finding accurate information on the internet. Everything points towards Phuket.


If anyone has any information I am open to any and all suggestions. If I can't put something together that is agreeable with my wife then we will likely extend our tour of Vietnam by a week and finish in Hanoi. Any diving in Hanoi?

 

[lord khram]

No diving direct from Bangkok. Nearest place is Pattaya, but the diving there is really not too good, and not really the place to take your wife. There are some dive shops in Bangkok that run day trips to samae san (near Pattaya) mainly at weekends catering for Thai customers. Closest place to get reasonable diving would be as you have said around the Phuket area in the Andaman Sea.

 

[Quero]

Phuket is one alternative, and as you won't want a liveaboard (non-diving wife), it's a reasonable choice. The big caveat is that September is, statistically speaking, one of the three rainiest months here in the Andaman area (along with May and October). So there is definitely a chance that sea conditions will be a bit rough, and also there's no swimming on our beaches at that time of year due to rip currents.

Although the diving is not as remarkable in the Gulf of Thailand as it is in the Andaman, it can still be very pleasant, and as a bonus in September, the weather is generally not so bad there as on our side, though it may rain a little. SB/Thailand member limbo is on Samui and can give you the low down from that end. It's easy to fly there from Bangkok, and the Samui airport must be the cutest airport on earth.

So Phuket or Samui would be my recommendation.

 

[Sinbad Scuba]

Sorry, but I have to argue that Pattaya is just fine for diving. You can do a day trip or stay at a resort. The coral is healthy and there are lots of reef fishes. Contact mermaid dive center.

 

[Ed Hatfield]

Any information on All Inclusive Resorts or is this just a Carribean/Mexico phenom. I'm still trying to get dive info here but so far........ not so good.

Thanks for the posts so far.

 

[Quero]

I wouldn't say it's just a Mexico/Caribbean thing, but it's not common in Thailand, if it exists at all. I still think your best two options are either Samui for a beach resort and some Gulf diving or Phuket, and I'd skip the beach as the red flags are up and go to a nice spa resort instead, and do some Andaman Sea diving.

 

[limbo]

No red flags are up in Samui beaches during September, the diving in general is still very good during Sept since the nice weather and dive conditions usually carry over from August. Check my Samui info and weather blog for daily weather updates and please have a look at my archives, half way down the page on my Samui info and weather blog, left hand side, they go back a few years. Open a month that you’re interested in and check one of the of the last posts of each month, starting with ‘Goodbye to…………’ this post will tell you the weather conditions for that month.
You can also check each individual post for that month if you wish to.

There are no dive resorts as you mention in your post but many resorts will have a dive center at the premises, maybe try the Kandaburi in Chaweng or the Bandara in Bophud, nice resorts and 'The Dive Academy' has outlets in these resorts. They offer speedboat trips to the Koh Tao dive sites and to Sail Rock, the latter being the best dive site in the Samui archipelago.

 

[lord khram]

Dont know of any all inclusive resorts myself, but personally there are so many excellent eating / drinking oportunities all over Thailand why would you want to restrict yourself to doing everything at one place?
With regards to the diving I would go to the Andaman coast as has already been suggested. The diving is also good around Koh Tao this time of year, but on my several visits to the island (during december / January) I have found the place to be full of lager louts, drunks, full moon parties, idiots and backpackers. It would appear from comments made on another thread that this is still the case during the 'low season', so unless that is your thing best avoided I think, the Islands on the Andaman sea are generally much nicer places.