Hi hutchinson12--I remember talking to you about Sipadan and about Indonesia and other stuff, right? So I've got a pretty good notion of your desired standards already.....
For the sort of diving you've been doing and looking at, I would also recommend the 4-day trip and not any of the 3-day trips. Yes, you definitely want to get to Richelieu, which is our premier dive site in the Kingdom of Thailand, but the three day trips tend not to do the Similans, which are spectacular in their own right.
Though I will tell you that the stories of dynamite fishing in the Similans and around Richelieu are false, I won't tell you that there has been no coral bleaching, because in fact we did have a bleaching event two years ago. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of staghorn corals in the shallow areas on the eastern sides of the Similans and some of the other sloping reefs. These formerly majestic staghorn forests are now starting to recover, but those shallow areas still have significant coral rubble. HOWEVER (and notice I put this in BIG, bold letters) in my considered opinion, the thing that makes the Similans so special are the granite boulder sites on the northern, southern and western sides of the islands. Some of these dive sites have rocks as big as houses with tons of swim throughs at various depths, lots of coral sheltering in the passages, pelagic fish, etc. I've not dived anywhere else where the underwater topography is as dramatic and wonderful. If you do a four-day trip, you will visit a number of these amazing boulder sites. If you do a three-day trip, you may miss them.
