Koh Bida Nok and Koh Bida Nai Islands

These two uninhabited islands lie south of Phi Phi and are a Mecca for leopard sharks. These harmless and docile creatures are usually sleeping around the sand and coral banks of the islands usually no deeper than 20 meters. With Bida Nok as the larger of the two it offers great hard and soft corals with turtles and sea snakes passing bye. The deeper of the two with depths to 30 meters on the west side wall teeming with life from lionfish to baby morays poking there heads from the cracks and well camouflaged octopuses blending in to the rocks will keep your eyes busy on this dive site.

Bida Nai island

smaller and slightly shallower offers the chance to see the sleeping leopard shark anywhere from 1 to 10 sharks resting on the bottom in between the staghorn corals. Here the soft corals are abound with their beautiful colors but look closely at the sea fans to find the Tiger-tail sea horse. With two swim-throughs covered in small baitfish and shrimps, lots of colorful reef fish and schools of barracuda and trevallys darting over the reef, and not forgetting the many nudibranches along the way make this a wonderful dive site.

Phi Phi Lae Island

This dive will take you to the famous Maya Bay Lagoon where they filmed the movie "The Beach". Here we take a sunset dive along Maya wall with its swim-throughs and excellent underwater canyons with a good chance to meet a family of Hawksbill sea turtles. A look under the cracks and overhangs will prove rewarding with rock painted lobsters and many types of cleaner shrimps. There is also a chance to visit the beach with one of our dinghies and take a walk through the picturesque forest to the other side of the island and in to Loh Samah lagoon.

Koh Ha Islands

Koh Ha is a group of five magical uninhabited islands, unspoiled and usually offering crystal clear waters. One of the highlights is diving the Twin Cathedrals, a large cave system that has formed into two large domes with a passage between them. This island group is a haven for marine life and divers alike! – awesome beauty with caverns, caves, chimneys, swim throughs, soft coral covered walls, coral heads and sea bed. The marine diversity here will suit all divers with interesting macro such as sea horse and rare nudibrancs and good fish action plus squid, cuttlefish, lobsters, morays and more.


Hin Muang (Purple Rock)

Purple rock is completely submerged with a bouy line running down to 18 meters in the center of the rock. Hin Muang is basically one very large rock with steep walls running down to over 50 meters with 6 pinnacles on the top. The shallowest being 10 meters from the surface. The rock lies in a north to south direction making navigation around the rock easy. The soft corals are prolific with anemones covering the surface and colorful nudibranches crawling over the walls, keep an eye out in to the blue for the manta rays passing bye gracefully feeding in the rich plankton water.

Hin Daeng (Red Rock)

Hin Deang has three large rocks that break the surface and a mooring bouy on the east side that descends down to 14 meters. Here the walls are covered with small red soft coral trees with shrimps and morays in every crack. The south east descends down to over 60 meters with large pelagics cruising in to be cleaned by the cleaner wrasse including devil rays, manta rays and whale sharks, with large schools of barracuda and tunas. Down to the west side on the slopping sand patches are the leopard sharks sleeping on the bottom. Visibility at both sites is usually very good with 20 meter plus.

Koh Phi Phi

The main dive sites for Phi Phi are Ko Bida Nok and Ko Bida Nai, two rocky outcrops just south of Phi Phi Ley. Both these sites are abundant in colourful soft coral, gorgonian seafans and sea whips.
The classic limestone scenery with its caves and caverns, ledges and walls give Phi Phi Island its well deserved reputation above and below the water line. The Islands are good places to spot Leopard sharks and the occasional visit by whale sharks.


Koh Ha Islands

Koh Ha is a group of five magical uninhabited islands, unspoiled and usually offering crystal clear waters. One of the highlights is diving the Twin Cathedrals, a large cave system that has formed into two large domes with a passage between them. This island group is a haven for marine life and divers alike! – awesome beauty with caverns, caves, chimneys, swim throughs, soft coral covered walls, coral heads and sea bed. The marine diversity here will suit all divers with interesting macro such as sea horse and rare nudibrancs and good fish action plus squid, cuttlefish, lobsters, morays and more.


Koh Doc Mai

This small, jungle topped island is located on the way to Shark Point from Phuket and is considered one of the best wall dives in the area. Doc Mai is a huge limestone rock that rises steeply out of the sea.

On three sides the sheer walls occupied with a different creature in every nook and cranny drop straight down to the sea floor. The west side is a gently sloping hard coral reef with an abundance of colorful sea life decorating its underwater cliffs. This dive is noted for its variety of reef fish and an opportunity to view some of the resident Moray Eels. The east-side of the island is a virtual garden of yellow tube corals and you can explore some of the small caves along the base of the wall.

Anemone Reef

Anemone Reef or Hin Jom (Submerged Rock) lies just underwater, about 600 meters to the North of Shark Point. As the Thai name makes clear, no part of the pinnacle is exposed, and underwater the rock drops off more dramatically to a depth of between 20 and 27 meters until reaching a bottom of sand and oyster shells. Although not as colorful as Shark Point, the fish life here is excellent as well and our friends, the leopard sharks, often are seen free-swimming at the top of the rock in six meters of water.

Located just South of Ao Phang-nga and all of its fresh water rivers, visibility averages around 10 meters, often less. Although conditions such as this are not what divers dream of when they think of perfect visibility, the amount of marine life more than makes up for the often limited visibility.

Shark Point

Hin Musang Marine Sanctuary- some 16 nautical miles due east of Chalong Bay are three limestone pinnacles popularly known as Shark Point. It is one of the best Phuket scuba diving sites to be found in the area. The northern most pinnacle of the three just breaks the surface to mark the spot. The dive site is abundant in soft colourful coral, large barrel sponges and gorgonian sea fans. A large variety of marine life can be found here ranging from leopard sharks, moray eels, jacks, trevally and honeycomb

King Cruiser Wreck
This 85 meter-long steel ferry sank on the 4th of May 1997, hitting the Anemone Reef. No one died. She's in 32 meters of water and already, after six years, bursting with amazing marine life.

At 25 meters, you'll find the engine room and the car deck, a huge open area.

Moving up to 18 meters you'll find the passenger section which has the heads, the bar, and lots of tables and chairs. Even though the ceiling is pretty low, this is safe to penetrate as the doors are now broken so there's no chance of being caught inside. For further penetrations, a reel is a must.

At 12 meters lies the captain's cabin and the wheel house. Many things have unfortunately have been taken as "souvenirs", such as the wheel and telephone, but it's still a nice view over the bow of the boat.

The smokestacks are sitting at about 6-7 meters, so a nice place to hang for your safety stop. Lots of fish have been attracted to the wreck so far, as well as eels and zillions of crabs. Its location near to Shark Point has undoubtedly had something to do with it's rapid population growth.

Langkawi

Forested hills, white sandy beaches and crystal clear water awaits visitors to the tropical island of Langkawi, the largest of about 100 islands in the Langkawi archipelago. The Langkawi Archipelago, with it's ancient stone formations and associated myths is also known as the "island of legends", rises from the idyllic Andaman Sea.

Langkawi located north of the Strait of Malacca in the southern Andaman Sea, near the border of Malaysia and Thailand.
Incidentally, Langkawi is duty-free trade zone - a paradise for tax free purchases.

For those who like sightseeing trips or just to stretch their sea legs, the visit to a crocodile farm, snake farm, art museum and a national museum or climbing a waterfall and much more is waiting to be explored. The absolute must see in Langkawi is the newly opened cable car.

Tarutao National park Tarutao National Park

Ko Ko Adang and Ko Rawee lies north of Ko Lipe. These islands feature mountains with an altitude of up to 700 metres and are covered by dense forest.
There is no Infrastructure whatsoever. The offshore reefs are ideal for diving and snorkelling.

Ko Lipe

The small idyllic island of Ko Lipe, part of the Tarutao National Park, is still inhabited by Sea Gypsies and due to the fact that there is no easy access by road has largely remained in it's natural state far away from mass tourism Phuket's. In the last couple of years a few resort facilities opened and it can now be compared to the famous Phi Phi Islands but 10 years ago. With its white sandy beaches and numerous dive sites and it's unspoiled environment this island certainly is one of the most beautiful destinations Thailand's and a must for those who prefer to spend quality time away from the crowds.

Hin Daeng (red rock)

Hin Daeng is a large rock formation and the second home of mantas and whale sharks in Thailand. A small proportion rises about 3 meters from the water. The north eastern side is relatively flat, while the south side plunges to a depth of up 60 metres. Red soft corals, which grow luxuriantly here give the place its name. Large schools of mackerel can often be seen here. The shallower parts offer encounters with schools of Fusiliers and huge barracudas. Hin Daeng offers among other things the deepest drop off of any dive site in Thailand, a wall dive up to 60 m deep.

Koh Rok

Koh Rok is located 25 kilometres south of Koh Ha. Koh Rok actually consists of two islands, divided by a narrow 15-metre deep channel, these separate islands have some of the most beautiful beaches, hard to find anywhere else in Thailand. The underwater world has also lot's to offer, Black tip reef sharks can regularly be observed and there is almost always turtles to be seen.

Koh Ha

Koh Ha is a small group of five islands 25 km west of Koh Lanta. The islands are separated by channels up to 50 metres deep. The water is usually quite clear, what almost always a visibility in excess of 20 m allowed.
The diving highlight of this island group are the caves in the largest of the 5 islands, Koh Yai Haa. The emerald green light shining through the cave passages in the morning hours let's everything appear in a magical light. The cave is easy to dive, even without a diving torch, because the entrances to the first caves are very large.

Koh Phi Phi Islands

Consisting of the islands of Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Leh - this picture book islands are surrounded by the emerald waters of Phang Nga Bay. Koh Phi Phi offers it's diving visitors more than 15 different dive sites. Among them several caves, passageways and walls. Here is your best chance to see turtles, sea snakes and Leopard sharks.

Fifty-two miles north-west of Phuket lies Koh Similan Marine National Park. This is an archipelago of nine granite islands, reputed to be in the world's top ten dive sites. The Similans provide a huge variety of diving topography and boast the richest variety and abundance of reef fish in Thailand.
During southern Thailand's hot season in February, March and April, the rising sea temperature causes a boom in plankton levels. This in turn attracts whale sharks and manta rays to be drawn to the Similan islands to feed.

The eastern Similan dive sites feature lush coral gardens with sea anemones and a host of colourful reef fish. Seas are calm and dives are at moderate depths, suitable for all levels of divers and also for snorkellers. Western dive sites feature enormous granite boulders, descending down to 40 meters with swim throughs, caves and tunnels, making the diving more challenging. Currents provide nutrients for a colourful variety of soft corals and seafans.
Above sea level, the islands are covered in lush rainforest, and there is an abundance of bird life.

Boulder City (Island Three - Koh Payan)

Boulder City lies some 200 meter south of Koh Payan. The dive site is completely submerged with two mooring buoys to mark the location, one at the north end and one at the south. Descending down the north line takes you to 20 meters and the south line to 30 meters. This is a dive in the 20 to 30 meter mark making it not a long dive but the underwater scenery here is spectacular with large granite boulders some bigger than a house, with swim-throughs and the chance of swimming with large pelagics. Eagle and manta rays cruise around the large boulders while large fan tail rays rest in the sandy bottom. This is also where I have been lucky enough on two separate occasions last season to witness the mating of leopard sharks. With a family of large humphead parrot fish and napoleon wrasse living in the area the beautiful soft corals and large gorgonian sea fans make this an eye opening dive site with the occasional whale shark cruising past.

Koh Miang # 4 Honeymoon Bay

Honeymoon Bay is a beautiful bay on the back side of island 4 with its quiet beach and tranquil bay it’s the perfect place for a snorkel or our sunset dives on the gentle slopping reef down to 24 meters. In the shallows around the coral heads you will find octopus, crabs and mantis shrimps on the hunt for food.
With the occasional hawksbill sea turtle and white tip reef shark patrolling the reef will keep you busy on your dive.

Koh Haa # 5 Hideaway Reef

Hideaway reef is great place for check out dives or night dives. With depths along the reef at 20 meters this site has some spectacular coral bommies. Covered in soft corals the colors are superb and a great dive for macro photographers with harlequin and ornate ghost pipefish. Down in the sandy bottoms are lots of spotted garden eels poking their heads out to catch a passing feed with the well camouflaged Thai flat fish. On the reef there are plenty of surgeons, butterfly and angel fish with blue fin trevally and goat fish on the hunt for small bait fish.

Koh Payu # 7 Deep Six

Deep six lies on the northern tip of island 7 and has a buoy line running down to 18 meters there as the name implies you can descend down to over 60 meters. Here the dramatic underwater boulders have formed some excellent swim throughs, tunnels and canyons that make this an exciting dive. But down in the soft coral garden the largest gorgonian sea fans in the Similans survive untouched. With the occasional manta ray gliding passed in the blue will make for an enjoyable dive.

Elephant Head, Hin Pousar

This is probably the most famous dive site in the Similan Islands, it lies in between island 7 (Koh Payu) and island 8 (Koh Similan).

With three large rocks breaking the surface these granite boulders run down to over 50 meters. This is an exciting dive. Not too much coral growth but the way the boulders are lying on top of each other has left an intricate web of tunnels and swim- throughs. Large overhangs with oriental sweetlips and harlequin sweetlips which are only found in the Andaman sea hang around in small groups to escape the currents. Coming in and out of the tunnels keep an eye open for the colorful clown triggerfish and the white tip reef sharks resting on the bottom. Currents can be quite strong sometimes but this makes for an exciting and fun dive.

Koh Similan # 8 Beacon Point

Beacon point lies on the south tip of island
# 8 and is one of the deeper sites running down to over 40 meters. This is a great spot to look for stingrays, including the small and common blue spots and mask rays to the larger black spotted fantails and Jenkins rays. With large granite boulders and the occasional White tip reef shark swimming round the boulders, try to see if you can spot the blue ribbon eels poking their heads out from their sandy holes.

Koh Similan # 8 Beacon Reef

Beacon reef lies on the east side of the island and has the longest reef in the Similans. This is a great check out or night dive as the gentle slopping reef runs down to around 22 meters. With lots of hard and soft corals the reef fish here are in abundance with the lion fish and moray eels hiding in the holes. A glance out in to the blue can prove rewarding with large dog tooth tuna and trevallys darting in to the reef to feed on the small bait fish.

Koh Bangu #9 North Point

North point lies on the west side of the island with a dramatic underwater scenery of large boulders with canyons and swim throughs. As you descend down the line passed the tall fin bat fish and head through the tunnels, keep your eyes open for a pair of Napoleon wrasse. In between the large canyons grow large gorgonian sea fans with excellent soft corals hiding harlequin ghost pipe fish but a look out into the blue can be rewarding with frequent visits from the graceful manta ray passing over head.

The Koh Surin Marine National Park is located 85 km north of the Similan Islands and 80 km west of Ranong. The Surin Islands themselves are not too impressive for diving, but the two islands between Similan and Surin, called Koh Bon & Koh Tachai are absolutely fantastic dive sites offering just about everything divers can wish for. These two spots are hard to top but the Richelieu Rock is capable in doing so, one of the, is not the best dive site in the Kingdom.

Koh Bon - The Pinnacle

Koh Bon island lies 12 nautical miles south of Koh Tachai island and the dive site is located around 150 meters north west of the island and has no bouy line so location is by GPS. When the captain signals its time to jump into the blue and descend down to the pinnacles. The top is around 18 meters and continues to run down to over 50 meters to the sand bottom were the docile leopard shark sleeps while white tip reef sharks patrol the reef in search of a meal.

These amazing pinnacles are covered with colourful soft coral trees, large gorgonian sea fans and barrel sponges running down the walls. With 5 species of clown fish in the magnificent anemones and their shrimp and porcelain crab hosts its difficult to keep your eyes of the pinnacles but a look out in to the blue can be rewarding with manta rays gliding around and the occasional whale shark. But don’t forget to keep a check on your air supply as its time to head back to the surface and leave these beautiful creatures behind.

Koh Tachai Island - The Plateau

Koh Tachai lies 22 nautical miles south of Surin, the dive site is located around 200 meters south of the island and is marked with a bouy line which descends down to 16 meters to reach the top of the plateau. From here you decide which way to go ? North or South. North takes you over the plateau to the beautiful coral garden at around 22meters to 26meters with some of the best soft corals and sea fans in the area, which will keep underwater photographers busy. South takes you down over the large boulders to between 36meters and 40meters to reach the sandy bottom looking for the docile leopard shark and large stingrays. Up above schooling great barracudas with tunas and trevallys darting down to catch the baitfish hanging around the reef. With a multitude of small creatures to look at try not to forget a look into the blue to see the manta rays gliding past and the occasional whale shark make Koh Tachai a spectacular dive site.

Richelieu Rock

Richelieu lies 7.5 nautical miles east of the Surin islands national marine park. Here this large rock pinnacle just breaks the surface at low tide and descends down to around 33 meters to the sandy bottom. The northern side has an excellent wall with lots of cracks and holes for you to look inside. The wall is covered with coral and zig zag oysters where you can find over ten species of moray eels like the commonly spotted white eyed, giant, yellow edged, and bartail morays or the shy dragon, leopard, honeycomb and zebra morays.

The wall is all so home to many species of shrimps from the cleaners, anemone, saron, squat and the colorful harlequin shrimps. The west side contains mostly soft corals and sea fans with ghost pipefish and tigertail sea horses hiding in between the branches. But its here where we all so encounter large schools of silver jacks and bluefin trevallys with chevron and great barracudas too.

Its also home to the gentle giant the whale shark anywhere from 2 meter babys to 8 meter subadults. The walls seem to move with so much life or look closely at the camouflaged scorpion, stone and lionfishes that blend in to the rock. A truly spectacular dive site no matter what the visibility.

The Mergui Archipelago

800 unexplored islands along the coasts of Burma, a liveaboard dive safari to the Mergui Archipelago promises to be the adventure of a lifetime. Closed by the Burmese government in the 1940s, Mergui was opened up again as recently as 1997.

This opens up the opportunity to breathe compressed air where it has never been breathed before. Mergui features rugged, rocky terrain. Undoubtedly the main attraction is the opportunity to observe a wealth of huge open ocean creatures, notably sharks such as silvertrips and pelagics including mantas and whale sharks.

Above sea level, the wildlife and scenery is equally impressive. Sea eagles and kites circle and dive for fish, while parakeets fly over the thickly forested islands. The islands are largely uninhabited, except for a scattering of Moken sea gypsies who have likely never seen a foreign face before. There are even reports that wild elephants and tigers inhabit a very few of the islands.

Black Rock

Probably the most spectacular site with the most potential for big stuff in the archipelago, Black Rock is a rocky island approximately 100-meters long. Here is the closest you’ll come to having a true wall dive, with depths to over 60-meters and a dramatic drop off in most areas.

Some of the fish you will see here include black-spotted pufferfish, spotted hawkfish, scorpionfish, and blue-ringed angelfish. If you are a moray eel fan, then this is your dive site. Many unusual and rarely seen morays are common, including extra-large common green, zebra, and fimbriated and white-eyed morays. Octopus and cuttlefish can be found here, the latter easy to photograph.

Great Swinton Islands/North Twin Island

There is a large underwater plateau located close to the North Twin Island. The top of the reef has an average depth of 5-15m, with large mating cuttle fish and the highlight here are the Manta rays that visit this place many times with there graceful displays. On the deeper side of this dive site there are big boulders dropping down to 40m where you usually find a large population of black spotted stingrays sleeping on the sandy bottom.

An underwater pinnacle located close to North Twin Island. The shallowest point of this pinnacle is around 12m and continues down to over 60 meters. As you descend down the slopping reef which has been dynamited you will find a huge amount of sea fans swaying in the usually strong currents. At around 25 meters you can find large Indian nurse sharks sleeping in the overhangs. A look out in to the blue can be rewarding with large dog tooth tunas circling above.

Cavern Island

This site harbors some of the best marine life in the archipelago. Huge schools of fusilier and silversides surround you upon entering the water. The sandy base of the islands reveals unusual anemones and starfish, while the walls are covered with orange cup corals, whip corals, and green tubastrea coral. It is one of the better areas to see harlequin shrimp and harlequin ghost pipe fish.

If you’re looking for drama, there is a canyon that leads to a tunnel connecting the northern and southern part of the main, middle island. Here, if you’re lucky, you can witness gray reef sharks swimming in and out of the canyon. The trick here is to hang out against the east side of the wall and just watch what comes by.

The Burma Banks

A series of seamounts that rise up from over 300-meters to just below the surface. Depths average 15-22 meters on the flat areas on top, dropping off slowly on the edges. Some banks have a more dramatic drop off than others, but nowhere will you find a vertical wall. Diving here requires careful planning, as the currents are often strong and unpredictable. Guided drift dives are the norm, usually starting on the edge of the bank in 35-meters of water where divers stare out in the blue looking for large silvertip-, nurse- or grey reef sharks. If the sharks don’t happen to be around, the dogtooth tuna, Spanish mackerel and jack fish that patrol the reef edges will delight you. The coral is in very good shape in many places, but this varies from year to year depending on storm activity and other environmental factors.

Western Rocky Island

This limestone island features beautiful underwater terrain, including a tunnel–often full of large tawny nurse sharks–which traverses the island about 20-meters down. The island is more like a series of pinnacles rather than one big rock and the soft limestone makes for crevices offering shelter for a wide variety of sea creatures. Some of the marine life you will see here include mantas, gray reef and spinner sharks, and eagle rays in the open water next to the island, while leopard sharks and spotted rays lie on the bottom. On and around the rocks, spiny lobster, cowrie shells, feather stars, anemones and an assortment of crabs abound. Reef fish include blue-ringed angelfish, moray-eels, snappers, frogfish, and ghost pipefish.