Hi Wes, I'm late to the party (was in Florida caring for an elderly mother who hasn't got internet), but since nobody else has followed up on your latest questions, I'll chime in.
Flying to Phuket seems easy enough. Where else could we fly to find some great diving in November in the Andaman Sea?
You could fly into Krabi and go to Koh Lanta. There is some very nice diving down that way.
When I search for Koh Lanta it looks like a location far from the ocean and much closer to the gulf side, maybe I am not seeing the right location?
Perhaps the map you're looking at is confusing you. Zoom out on the map so that you can see what I'm describing below. There is a very large bay on the Andaman side called Phang Nga Bay, and you may be thinking that this bay is the Gulf. Phuket island and Krabi town are sort of gateposts at the mouth of this huge bay, and Lanta is an island a little south of Krabi. Phang Nga Bay is part of the waters of the Andaman Sea/Indian Ocean whereas the Gulf of Thailand is part of the South China Sea/Pacific Ocean. The landmass separating these two bodies of water is quite narrow in some places--it fans out northward to hold northern Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, etc. To the south it snakes down and bulges a little bit to contain southern Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.
I think we would want to take the time to go somewhere great for 4 days rather than dive in Pattaya, now I just have to figure out the best place to go. Can you dive Surin, Similan, Burma Banks or Mergui from Phuket?
You can dive all of those places if you fly into Phuket, but most boats actually depart from Khao Lak, which is a small town in the next province north of Phuket. Phuket Airport serves both Phuket Island and the Khao Lak area.
By day boat from anywhere else, or just via liveaboard?
For diving in Burma from a Thailand base, only by liveaboard. Burma trips tend to be longer than the amount of time you have available, so I would say to scratch that from the list for this trip.
For trips to the Similans, you have a choice of either daytrip boats or liveaboard boats. For daytrips, you can base yourself either on Phuket Island and expect long transfer times each day (because you have to drive for a couple of hours to get to Khao Lak and then ride in a speedboat for another hour or two), or you can base yourself in Khao Lak and jump on a speedboat daily. For liveaboards, it doesn't matter where you base yourself since you'd need to make that transfer from Phuket Island (at least from the airport) and back anyway, and most boats offer transfer services. Having said that, if at all possible, do a liveaboard--you have the opportunity to do more dives, it is time- and cost-effective, and logistically you have less planning to do for one booking on a liveaboard than you do for four daytrips with speedboats.
Quite welcome!
