Palau: Sam's tour or Neco Marine
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LiquidDivingAdventure
Contributor
I recommend Palau Dive Adventures. Small groups, personalized service.
We've had really good luck with sam's the past 5 years on our annual trip down there. 
. Nice folks, good boats and a lot of fun.
havent used the others mentioned so no opinion.
. Nice folks, good boats and a lot of fun.havent used the others mentioned so no opinion.
I haven't dived there yet but am going in March and diving with Palau Dive Adventures. Friends went in November and thought they were fantastic.
jake11
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We used Sam's tours and had a great time! The people who used to run Maluku Divers Resort in Ambon are now at Sam's Tours! I would highly recommend LiLi Tey!!! She is awesome! We had great dive masters for our whole 2 weeks there! Have a great time!! Also, Sam's Tours has an awesome shore dive where you can see Mandarin fish any time of the day!!!
Kevrumbo
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If your hotel is on Malakal (Sea Passion, Palau Royal Resort or West Plaza Hotels for example), you're in walking distance to all three dive operations, and the eateries at Drop-OFF Bar & Grill (Neco), Bottom Time Bar & Grill (Sams), and Kramer's Cafe (a walk to the dockside behind West Plaza Malakal). . .
jfcl01
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Cumulatively since Feb 2013, I have been out with Neco on 14 day trips. The most crowded of the trips was when I (foolishly) chose to go to Palau during Chinese New Year-not a good idea. On a few of those days, I saw perhaps 12 divers on the boat and a minimum of 2 DMs. On most of the day trips with them, there were usually 4-6 divers total, with 2 DMs. I cant recall going out with only one DM on the boat except once when there were only 3 divers of pretty high-and comparable-dive experience. One of the nice things about Necos is that they are big enough to run multiple boats when there is too much discordance in the experience of the divers, and/or when there is a group of divers that wants to stay together, and cramming them in with a few other random divers would be possible but unpleasant. Most dive ops (IMHO, and speaking in general terms about dive ops I have known in various dive locales) want to do that and state an intention to do that, but often can't afford that.
---------- Post added January 25th, 2015 at 11:11 PM ----------
BTW-I have no doubt that Chris-the US based co-owner of PDA-keeps his word about the guaranteed group size (I think they set the limit at 10 divers)-so I think you could expect a group no larger than that if you go with them. You could theoretically be on a boat with more divers if you go with Neco Marine. If you dont have hotel reservations yet, you need to get on that ASAP. There is a crunch with hotel rooms because Chinese agencies are booking entire hotels for long blocks of time, even without customers to fill them, now that there are multiple daily direct flights from 3 Chinese cities to Koror.
LiquidDivingAdventure
Contributor
As a related note, talking about hotels filling up, I just experienced a surprise at the Cliffside Hotel. I had a fully paid reservations for in transit divers. The hotel has changed hands and new management refused to honor the paid reservations. If I wanted the rooms, I had to pay the new price. I cancelled and opted for the Royal Palau Resort. Beware of the price increase at the Cliffside.
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