Koh Lipe Diving

[Derrick in Aus]

Hi

Planning to visit Koh Lipe Island in the Andaman Sea next month (April 2006) for a couple of weeks and looking for a recommendation who to dive with? Have sent E-mails to two of the Island's dive operators but neither has bothered to reply!

Thanks and will report experience in due course.

PS - I hold AOW certification and have dived in various parts of the world - mostly in cold waters.

 

[diveman7683]

Welcome to the board.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

Welcome to ScubaBoard Derrick!

 

[DandyDon]

Howdy from Texas and welcome to SB!

Don't be too hard on the Ops. Emails can be delayed to islands, and - things go wrong there, too. Anyway, have you tried our Search feature?

Good to have you here. Click here to PM me if I can help you get started in our various forums.

don

​

 

[El Orans]

Welcome (Scub)aBoard! :happywave

it’s about time you surfaced here!

Click [thread=91105]here[/thread] for ScubaBoard 101: [thread=91105]A beginner's guide to the ScubaBoard.Com forums[/thread].

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Laurens

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[SubMariner]

Moved from Introductions & Greets forum.

 

[buksida]

Derrick, I don't think there are very many full time dive operators on Koh Lipe you may be better off just rocking up and seeing who is about.

Be sure to post a trip report on here as the diving down there is supposed to be awesome!

 

[Luko]

Hi Derrick,

I was in Lipe a month ago : I would recommend Ocean pro Divers, located on "Pattaya" beach, Dave a cool canadian guy is the owner. They're pretty much the only operation which owns a big boat, much more comfortable than longtail diving.

I didn't dive for long there (I was coming on my way back from 10 days diving in the Similans and HinDaeng/Hin Muang, because of the full moon, I couldn't go on 8 mile rock, which is the local highlight (instead I had music on the beach until 6AM ) ... someone I know, who stayed a ten days more than me, told me they went there spearfishing and saw several sailfish, greyreef sharks plus an unidentified shark, probably a bull shark, due to its size and color... interesting spot, eh?

As for me, I went to shallower sites (no more than 19m deep), like Hin Song or Sarang : covered with soft corals, lots of species of anemone fish, more than I have ecver seen anywhere, but mediocre viz too and few big fish. On the way back, we had a pod of dolphins playing around the boat.

Other dive companies on Lipe are swiss Forra diving who also own a larger boat than a longtail but not as comfortable as Ocean Pro. Lotus dive, at Pooh's bar seem interesting but longtail dives only, as well as shabby ChaoLe diving.

If you're looking for accomodation I would recommend Varin Beach resort on the best part of Pattaya beach (looking south), 900 baht for clean aircon bungalows... but if you're budget minded you can find good wooden bungalows for 250 bahts at Pink resort. On the upmarket end, Lee Pae resort is too expensive IMHO, not really better than Varin and a on a less convenient stretch of beach.

You'll have a great time, it's really hard leaving Lipe!

Cheers
Luko