Hi,
we went to Thailand last year on a diving holiday and being brutally honest, we should have saved ourselves an extra 7 or 8 hours of flying and stayed in the Red Sea.
The actual best part of Thailand to dive is the Similan Islands which are only done via liveaboard. Then those on liveabords get invaded by those on day boats as they are quite mercanary in Thailand..they book all these people on all these wonderful dives and then ship them out to where a liveaboard has paid a fortune to be..and then suddently the boat is crowded with an extra 20 odd divers..not impressive at all.
Much of the diving is done off the western Andaman sea side, which is where we went from. There are many dive operators operating out of Phuket..every resort has them along that side from Patong all the way down to Kata Noi. Some hotels do have thier own associated dive school..they are quite expensive and only send you to a dive centre in the town. it is also very hard to get a good deal as well as most of them have all agreed prices, they have fixed them and none of them will break them. We found the prices quite high..but most offer discount for the more dives you do obviously and all centres offer free pick up and drop off from your hotel/BB.
We went with a Dive school in Karon..and all the diving was done off day boats going out of Chalong Bay in Phuket. Another thing we found was that they all have the same same itinery..eg: Monday, they all head off to Phi Phi Island. Tuesday, they all head off to the wreck of the King Cruiser and so on...leaving it always crowded at any site and empty everywhere else!!
Visibility is affected by the time of the month..I know it sounds daft but..we went there was a full moon..and the tides were heavy and the viz was pretty awful much of the time. There is not alot of coral life as much of it was destroyed by the Tsunami..but there were signs that things were just starting to grow back. In addition, the wildlife was not that crash hot either..on some dives we hardly saw anything. We went for 16 days in March. From about April/May onwards is monsoon season through to about October.
There were a few things that got me: They did not do any safety checks at all. There was no asking to see the PADI or BSAC card...no checking whether you were even qualified or had any insurance such as DAN. We did no check dives at all..it was just straight in and away you go down to 30 mtrs. If the boat was full, there were more European instructors/dive guides on board, all doing the hard sell trying to get you to buy a 3 day liveaboard package or something extra for a daft amount of money. If there were say only 10 people on board..they only had Thai divemasters on board and the dive briefing would consist of "same same". Also, it was definitely only 2 dives a day with no chance of doing a 3rd dive as we sailed back to port.
It also makes a difference whether you have your own kit or are hiring in..some of the kit was in poor repair and quite tatty...
on our first day there, a liveaboard sank and 2 people died.
Having said all this to you, I hope it doesn't put you off..we were just unlucky I guess..and there is nowt better than the Red Sea in my humble opinion...I am sure you will enjoy..but don't commit yourelf to the first dive school you visit..
