stevenl
Contributor
Denise,
I really liked your post for several reasons but I have to give you a bit of a different opinion on some of the points you raise.
Training standards on Koh Tao are not extremely high, but that goes for most of Thailand and many places in the world to be honest. When I started teaching we only did open water courses in 5 days: day 1 CW and theory 1, day 2 CW and theory 2 and 3, day 3 CW and theory 4 and 5, days 4 and 5 the open water dives. And teaching that way you simply have much more time to prepare divers, who will be better divers after course completion than divers who have followed the here very standard 3 day divecourse. I can't bring myself to that and nearly all courses conducted are 4 days BTW, but still, 5 days is better than 4 days.
We have a PADI regional manager living on the island, but I must disappoint you, that does not influence the quality of courses taught, nor does the presence of monthly IE's, the examiners are there to conduct the IE, and that is what they do. They really do not get involved with the operation of the individual companies.
Having said that, violations of standards are not an/the issue (although I recently finished a SD upgrade where a big part of the training on Koh Tao was ommited), but IMO it is much more the total training students are receiving. Many people tend to complete quite a few courses on Koh Tao, giving the finished students a limited experience. On top of that they are quite often trained by people who have followed the same programmes, leading to almost inbreading in the diver education there.
IMO it is much more a lack in variety of diving experience of the students than violations of standards that are the issue. And that is the main reason why I think it is true that DM's from Koh Tao don't have the best reputation.
I really liked your post for several reasons but I have to give you a bit of a different opinion on some of the points you raise.
Training standards on Koh Tao are not extremely high, but that goes for most of Thailand and many places in the world to be honest. When I started teaching we only did open water courses in 5 days: day 1 CW and theory 1, day 2 CW and theory 2 and 3, day 3 CW and theory 4 and 5, days 4 and 5 the open water dives. And teaching that way you simply have much more time to prepare divers, who will be better divers after course completion than divers who have followed the here very standard 3 day divecourse. I can't bring myself to that and nearly all courses conducted are 4 days BTW, but still, 5 days is better than 4 days.
We have a PADI regional manager living on the island, but I must disappoint you, that does not influence the quality of courses taught, nor does the presence of monthly IE's, the examiners are there to conduct the IE, and that is what they do. They really do not get involved with the operation of the individual companies.
Having said that, violations of standards are not an/the issue (although I recently finished a SD upgrade where a big part of the training on Koh Tao was ommited), but IMO it is much more the total training students are receiving. Many people tend to complete quite a few courses on Koh Tao, giving the finished students a limited experience. On top of that they are quite often trained by people who have followed the same programmes, leading to almost inbreading in the diver education there.
IMO it is much more a lack in variety of diving experience of the students than violations of standards that are the issue. And that is the main reason why I think it is true that DM's from Koh Tao don't have the best reputation.
