Diving & Accomodation in Koh Samui

[Clyde Frog]

I am planing a trip to Ko Samui in early April 2005 and wonderd if any one had any sugestions on both dive sites and accomodation. I am a BSAC advanced Nitrox diver and can dive to 40m. I have carried out planed decomprsion dives and I dive at home here in sunny Redcar, England. :06:
P.S. My wife does not dive so a liveaboard is a non starter.

 

[orangeBloke]

First of all, there is no decent diving off of Koh Samui itself so you'll need to take a boat out. I dived Koh Tao, Sail rock and the Chunporn pinnacle which were all reasonably nice dives. The marine park is also supposed to be good.

I dived out of Samui last July and used Samui International Dive School. One of the reasons I chose them was that they have a fast speed boat that can take you to the sites a lot quicker than some of the bigger boats so you can get your first dive in with a small group before the hordes arrive. On Koh Tao trip we had lunch on the island which was a nice way to spend the surface interval. A couple of the staff were from England so they'll make you feel right at home

Try to avoid operators that cram a load of people onto one boat as the site just gets too busy and it does nothing but scare the fish away and cause annoyance

 

[hikescub]

Not to be too much of a party pooper...

The 2 hour speed boat ride to Koh Tao was miserable. On the way back we were litterally jumping off the swells and then slamming back down. Kind of fun the first 2 times, after 2 hours, not fun. People were getting seasick too.

For all that the diving was marginal and in my opinion not worth the trip.

It sounds like the Samui Dive School is a decent operator. Ours was not. The speedboat was very fast but was full. The crew was not very helpful. They were a mix of Thai, British, and German. I got the feeling the Europeans were pretty burnt out on Thailand after being there that long.

 

[orangeBloke]

I can see your point, choosing an operator can sometimes be a bit of a lottery and we were lucky enough to have no swell on the water so there was no real bouncing going on.....tho in general any speed boat and a swell means lots of slapping down on the seats.

The speed boat they used was called Naughty Girl II and did the journey quite quickly....it had only recently come into service last July. We did our two dives, had lunch and were back on the shore in the early afternoon. It also has a proper toilet on board.....a bit of a novelty in my experience

They had another boat, MV Waverunner, which was cheaper and bigger so probably more stable in rougher seas but it was also fairly packed and a good deal slower.

 

[Clyde Frog]

I can see your point, choosing an operator can sometimes be a bit of a lottery and we were lucky enough to have no swell on the water so there was no real bouncing going on.....tho in general any speed boat and a swell means lots of slapping down on the seats.

The speed boat they used was called Naughty Girl II and did the journey quite quickly....it had only recently come into service last July. We did our two dives, had lunch and were back on the shore in the early afternoon. It also has a proper toilet on board.....a bit of a novelty in my experience

They had another boat, MV Waverunner, which was cheaper and bigger so probably more stable in rougher seas but it was also fairly packed and a good deal slower.

Thanks for the replies I will check out SIDS when I get there.