We just got back from a two week trip to Thailand and had an amazing time.
The diving is great, but it can be challenging. The water was around 84 degrees the whole time we were there, but the currents can rip, the viz isn’t great on some of the day dive sites and it’s mostly drift diving so it’s important to be able to do a free-floating safety stop.
There are a huge number of boats and operators that offer two or three tank day trips out of the port at Chalong Bay and between the island hopping and elephant trekking, we did two day trips with Calypso Divers and South Siam Divers before moving on to a four day liveaboard to the Similan Islands.
Our first day trip was a three tank trip to Racha Noi and Racha Yai just south of Phuket. All three dives were good, with visibility in the 20’ range and some pretty good current. Most of our diving has been in North America, the Caribbean and Pacific South America, so the marine life was way different than anything we’d seen before. Some of the fish like Ornatesand Meyers butterflyfish were similar to what we’d seen in Hawaii, but it was a blast to ride the current alongside Regal and Emperor Angelfish and watch clownfish flit in and out of their host anemones.
Our second day dive trip was out to the King Cruiser Wreck, Shark Point and Koh Dok Mai. I’m not a huge wreck guy, so the King Cruiser Wreck wasn’t my favorite dive of the week. The boat was a car ferry that used to run back and forth between Phuket and the Phi Phi Islands but sank after going off course and bottoming out on Anemone Reef. The wreck is fairly deep (my max depth was 104’ or so) and visibility there was less than 10 feet so if there was a lot of life there, I didn’t get a chance to see it. The current was strong, so we had to kick hard the whole time just to stay on the wreck. Based on what I found out after, I think I would have preferred to do Anemone Reef over the King Cruiser.
Shark Point and Koh Dok Mai were both good dives that were similar to what we saw our first day – and in the long standing tradition of having dive sites named after animals you’ll probably never see there, we didn’t see any kind of shark at shark point.
For both day trips we were picked up at the hotel around 7:30 and shuttled around 40 minutes to Chalong Bay. The pier there is hundreds of feet long, so they actually have buses that take you from shore out to the end of the pier where the boats moor. Breakfast was offered during the 1.5-2 hour trek out to the dive sites where we did two dives, had lunch, then did the third dive. From there it was back to shore and the van waiting to shuttle us back to our hotel, where we arrived around 6:30 or 7:00.
The day boats were all larger, more spacious and more comfortable than the typical Caribbean resort boat with air conditioned cabins and large open air seating areas. Both boats we were on had 35-40 divers aboard with four DM’s, so there were 8-10 divers in each group. Like almost everything else in our Thai experience, the day boats were crowded. The DM’s we met were mostly European, Australian or North American. For some reason we saw very few native Thai dive pros.
In addition to the day boats, there are also a large number of liveaboards offering 3-7 day trips out to the Similan Islands, a group of nine islands in aThai Marine sanctuary north of Phuket where the diving is amazing. Our Similan trip started at the hotel where we were picked up around 4:30 and driven 2 hrs north to the port at Tap Lamu where the M/V La Mahe was waiting for us.
We’ve done a number of liveaboards, but those experiences were all on Aggressor and Peter Hughes boats so we’re totally spoiled. As a result, we weren’t quite prepared for the more rustic La Mahe. The boat has cabins for 12 or 14 people with a dive deck, a single open air saloon for socializing and eating meals and a sundeck on top of the boat. There are a few double cabins, and a few cabins designed for singles with a partition between the beds. The crew all seem to sleep in a common open sided cabin on the top deck. Nitrox is not available onboard and the air conditioning only works at night (they can’t operate the A/C and the compressor for filling scuba tanks at the same time). The cabins were nice enough - each had it’s own head and tv / dvd player and the entire passenger compartment was finished with a dark reddish wood. Meals, snacks and water were included in the charter, but beer and soft drinks were not - the crew sold them for $1 or $2 each. Overall the food was pretty good, served buffet style with multiple options at each meal - mostly sea food or Thai dishes like stir fried cashew chicken or curry with rice along with the occasional western dish thrown in - like spaghetti with meat sauce or French fries. There were also fresh, warm snacks like pancakes, chocolate cake or cookies available between the afternoon and night dives.
The boat works on a four dive a day schedule – a morning dive around 7:30, then breakfast, a second dive, lunch, then a third dive, snack, night dive and finally dinner. We tried to talk them into shortening up the surface intervals or doing the night dive after dinner so we could get five dives a day in and the DM’s seemed open to it at first, but then when it came time to layout the schedule each day they changed their minds and told us it wasn’t possible. As a general rule, the boat does one dive at each site then moves on to the next one. A few of our favorite sites were East of Eden, Elephant Rock which had a crazy mazz of swimthroughs, Koh Bon which is supposed to be a Manta Cleaning station (though despite diving it three times we didn’t see a single ray there) and the best dives of the week were at Richilieu Rock (where we did see a Manta).
Like on the day boats, most of the Similan dives were easily navigable pinnacles or drift dives. What was interesting was that it wasn’t panga diving – it was the main boat who zipped around picking everybody up at the end of each dive. Dives were targeted at a max of 60 minutes or 50 bar / 700 psi, whichever came first and the crew was fine with letting us guide our own dives as long as we had a safety sausage on a reel and were comfortable deploying it on our safety stops.
The visibility in the Similans was up around 50 feet, heavy currents were common, and the marine life was absolutely amazing – including huge schools of Powder Blue Surgeonfish, Octopus, Leopard Sharks, the occasional White Tip and Manta Rays. There was also a ton of macro including decorator crabs, colorful nudibranchs, pipefish and seahorses. The sites weren’t as crowded as the day boat stes, but it was still unusual for us to finish a dive without crossing paths with a group from at least one or two other liveaboard boats.
For the four day trip we had three full days of diving and two dives on our last day before making the three hour trip back to Tap Lamu and the drive back to our hotel.
Communication was a bit of a barrier with the crew. There were 8 Thai crew members aboard, all of whom smiled a lot but didn't seem to have a clue what I was saying when I tried to talk to them, and the two dive crew were both French and spoke a little English but fell well short of what I’d consider fluent.
Overall it was a really great experience. The diving was good (if you go definitely do a liveaboard – the Similan’s are amazing), the food was great and the people we met were very friendly. Despite the crowds, we’ll definitely go back, hopefully for a longer period of time so we can see more of the country. What’s interesting is that the way everything is so spread out we ended up feeling like we spent more time going places than being places. Next time we’ll probably try to stay closer to Chalong Beach (though not actually on Chalong Beach – with the mud and the boat moorings it’s not a great place to stay) to at least cut down on some of the commute time.
The diving is great, but it can be challenging. The water was around 84 degrees the whole time we were there, but the currents can rip, the viz isn’t great on some of the day dive sites and it’s mostly drift diving so it’s important to be able to do a free-floating safety stop.
There are a huge number of boats and operators that offer two or three tank day trips out of the port at Chalong Bay and between the island hopping and elephant trekking, we did two day trips with Calypso Divers and South Siam Divers before moving on to a four day liveaboard to the Similan Islands.
Our first day trip was a three tank trip to Racha Noi and Racha Yai just south of Phuket. All three dives were good, with visibility in the 20’ range and some pretty good current. Most of our diving has been in North America, the Caribbean and Pacific South America, so the marine life was way different than anything we’d seen before. Some of the fish like Ornatesand Meyers butterflyfish were similar to what we’d seen in Hawaii, but it was a blast to ride the current alongside Regal and Emperor Angelfish and watch clownfish flit in and out of their host anemones.
Our second day dive trip was out to the King Cruiser Wreck, Shark Point and Koh Dok Mai. I’m not a huge wreck guy, so the King Cruiser Wreck wasn’t my favorite dive of the week. The boat was a car ferry that used to run back and forth between Phuket and the Phi Phi Islands but sank after going off course and bottoming out on Anemone Reef. The wreck is fairly deep (my max depth was 104’ or so) and visibility there was less than 10 feet so if there was a lot of life there, I didn’t get a chance to see it. The current was strong, so we had to kick hard the whole time just to stay on the wreck. Based on what I found out after, I think I would have preferred to do Anemone Reef over the King Cruiser.
Shark Point and Koh Dok Mai were both good dives that were similar to what we saw our first day – and in the long standing tradition of having dive sites named after animals you’ll probably never see there, we didn’t see any kind of shark at shark point.
For both day trips we were picked up at the hotel around 7:30 and shuttled around 40 minutes to Chalong Bay. The pier there is hundreds of feet long, so they actually have buses that take you from shore out to the end of the pier where the boats moor. Breakfast was offered during the 1.5-2 hour trek out to the dive sites where we did two dives, had lunch, then did the third dive. From there it was back to shore and the van waiting to shuttle us back to our hotel, where we arrived around 6:30 or 7:00.
The day boats were all larger, more spacious and more comfortable than the typical Caribbean resort boat with air conditioned cabins and large open air seating areas. Both boats we were on had 35-40 divers aboard with four DM’s, so there were 8-10 divers in each group. Like almost everything else in our Thai experience, the day boats were crowded. The DM’s we met were mostly European, Australian or North American. For some reason we saw very few native Thai dive pros.
In addition to the day boats, there are also a large number of liveaboards offering 3-7 day trips out to the Similan Islands, a group of nine islands in aThai Marine sanctuary north of Phuket where the diving is amazing. Our Similan trip started at the hotel where we were picked up around 4:30 and driven 2 hrs north to the port at Tap Lamu where the M/V La Mahe was waiting for us.
We’ve done a number of liveaboards, but those experiences were all on Aggressor and Peter Hughes boats so we’re totally spoiled. As a result, we weren’t quite prepared for the more rustic La Mahe. The boat has cabins for 12 or 14 people with a dive deck, a single open air saloon for socializing and eating meals and a sundeck on top of the boat. There are a few double cabins, and a few cabins designed for singles with a partition between the beds. The crew all seem to sleep in a common open sided cabin on the top deck. Nitrox is not available onboard and the air conditioning only works at night (they can’t operate the A/C and the compressor for filling scuba tanks at the same time). The cabins were nice enough - each had it’s own head and tv / dvd player and the entire passenger compartment was finished with a dark reddish wood. Meals, snacks and water were included in the charter, but beer and soft drinks were not - the crew sold them for $1 or $2 each. Overall the food was pretty good, served buffet style with multiple options at each meal - mostly sea food or Thai dishes like stir fried cashew chicken or curry with rice along with the occasional western dish thrown in - like spaghetti with meat sauce or French fries. There were also fresh, warm snacks like pancakes, chocolate cake or cookies available between the afternoon and night dives.
The boat works on a four dive a day schedule – a morning dive around 7:30, then breakfast, a second dive, lunch, then a third dive, snack, night dive and finally dinner. We tried to talk them into shortening up the surface intervals or doing the night dive after dinner so we could get five dives a day in and the DM’s seemed open to it at first, but then when it came time to layout the schedule each day they changed their minds and told us it wasn’t possible. As a general rule, the boat does one dive at each site then moves on to the next one. A few of our favorite sites were East of Eden, Elephant Rock which had a crazy mazz of swimthroughs, Koh Bon which is supposed to be a Manta Cleaning station (though despite diving it three times we didn’t see a single ray there) and the best dives of the week were at Richilieu Rock (where we did see a Manta).
Like on the day boats, most of the Similan dives were easily navigable pinnacles or drift dives. What was interesting was that it wasn’t panga diving – it was the main boat who zipped around picking everybody up at the end of each dive. Dives were targeted at a max of 60 minutes or 50 bar / 700 psi, whichever came first and the crew was fine with letting us guide our own dives as long as we had a safety sausage on a reel and were comfortable deploying it on our safety stops.
The visibility in the Similans was up around 50 feet, heavy currents were common, and the marine life was absolutely amazing – including huge schools of Powder Blue Surgeonfish, Octopus, Leopard Sharks, the occasional White Tip and Manta Rays. There was also a ton of macro including decorator crabs, colorful nudibranchs, pipefish and seahorses. The sites weren’t as crowded as the day boat stes, but it was still unusual for us to finish a dive without crossing paths with a group from at least one or two other liveaboard boats.
For the four day trip we had three full days of diving and two dives on our last day before making the three hour trip back to Tap Lamu and the drive back to our hotel.
Communication was a bit of a barrier with the crew. There were 8 Thai crew members aboard, all of whom smiled a lot but didn't seem to have a clue what I was saying when I tried to talk to them, and the two dive crew were both French and spoke a little English but fell well short of what I’d consider fluent.
Overall it was a really great experience. The diving was good (if you go definitely do a liveaboard – the Similan’s are amazing), the food was great and the people we met were very friendly. Despite the crowds, we’ll definitely go back, hopefully for a longer period of time so we can see more of the country. What’s interesting is that the way everything is so spread out we ended up feeling like we spent more time going places than being places. Next time we’ll probably try to stay closer to Chalong Beach (though not actually on Chalong Beach – with the mud and the boat moorings it’s not a great place to stay) to at least cut down on some of the commute time.
