Diving around Ko Samui

[hippienw]

Hi!

this summer my family and me are going to ko samui for about ten days.

does anybody know a good PADI base there?

we also would like to spend two or three days on a boat to dive around ko tao. after having a pretty bad experience on one of these boats in cairns/australia i wondered if somebody knew a recomendable boat for longer trips starting at ko samui.

thanks for your help,
philipp

 

[divestoffel]

The best and cheapest places around Koh Samui is Koh Tao. If I were you I would forget about Koh Samui and drag your family over to Koh Tao. It's a much better, not so touristy , friendly place. Go to a small dive shop and they will guide you to the best sites and every shop has its own boats. A good diveshop on Koh Tao is New Way on Sairee Beach or Big Blue.
If you have any more questions you know where to find me

Stof

 

[hippienw]

thanx,
but i´m afraid you´re too late, a week ago we booked the hotel, a friend recomended it to us, it´s called "the white house" and its located in a smaller side bay of koh samui.
the next dive shop is called "all scuba adventures". so we´ll probably dive from there and go to koh tao from there.

anyway thanx,

philipp

 

[vmf]

divestoffel & hippienw ,
I am also interested in diving on Koh Tao.
Have you any recommendations on accommodation - two adults and one 6 yo child?
What are the dive sites like - reef, drift, walls, wrecks?
I would appeciate any other travel info like how to get there from Bankok, transfers, things to take etc.

Regards,

vmf

 

[hippienw]

first we´ll fly to bangkok, there we will rent a car, cause we´re not going to dive all the time in thailand, we also want to see a bit of the country. so we will drive to koh samui by car/ferry and we will stay there at the above mentioned hotel. we booked the hotel over the internet, cause you get special internetrates. for more infos on diving sites an accommodation on koh tao follow this link: http://www.kohtao.com

i´ll return from thailand mid of august so i can tell you more then!

philipp

 

[darren]

Have to agree about Ko Tao being the best of the island out of the three phnang, samui, and tai. Very small, easy to get around, hot... but cheap. It will be easy to get there from Samui. Great diving off of shark island!! One of my best ever. We stayed at a bungaloo resort that had some of the best snorkeling right off its beech and a dive shop within 2 minute walk. Can't remember the name but it was affiliated with one of the three resorts on that side of the island. it was at the end of a 2.2 km road in an area called hat sai daeng. Sah wa di kap...

 

[hippienw]

hi,
we returned from bankok this morning an heres what we found out about diving in the gulf of siam:

as above mentioned, koh tao is the best place for diving and staying there because the dive centres in samui and phangan go there anyway. we only stayed 2 nights there but it is really beautiful! a great resort i can really recommend is the "sensi paradise" just about 300 metres south of the ferry pier with about 10 diveshops in walking distance. we took a tour with asia divers and that was really nice. the rest of the two weeks we stayed on samui, there diving is a bit different than i knew it from the red sea and mexico: because around samui there are no reefs you have to take a speed boattour to koh tao, sail rock or the pinnacles. those speedboattrips are kind of bumpy, loud and the kind of suck if you have to take them every day. at the divesite you dive from those boatswich is sometimes chaotic because there so small. a dive shop i can NOT recommend is all scuba adventures at the boat house in samui. the management is bad the equipment worn out an the spedboats are so small that ther always is chaos. also not recommedable is easy divers, the biggest dive school in thailand, because they put 30 divers on a boat and drop them into the water at the divesite so its more some masstourism. the equipment is fine however and management and organisation are good, but 30 divers on a site isnt that much fun.

a dive center i can really recommend is discovery at chaweng beach( http://www.discoverydivers.com ) they have not only a large speedboat and small groups, but also good equipment and friendly instructors/divemasters with a great sense of humor!
so if someone should go to samui, they are first choice!!

about the divesites:

i didnt dive at shark island so i can´t say anything about that. i think in koh tao grenn rock is a great site. there are some little caves and swimthroughs and many fish and corals.
chumporn pinnacles is the best site at all there, there are really really many fish, more than at any point we saw in the red sea! also sailrock is a great site to dive!

for more information, dont hesitate to ask!

philipp