Any Thailand recommends please ... ???

[Carpster61]

Hi peeps,

My friend and I are about to pass our PADI open water certification in a couple of weeks. Our dream is to scuba dive in the Maldives which we will be doing all going well just after Christmas. She suggested a couple of dives somewhere warm before we go. We both live in London and we thought about a few days in Thailand. We have chosen Thailand at random because of the great diving there.
We are looking for a short break, maybe 5 days where we can get a couple of dives in at least. We know nothing about the country or places to go etc. Instead of reading travel agents blurb I would rather get some recommends from divers who have actually dived there. We want to do it as cheap as poss (not easy considering the country we chose), but stay safe at the same time. Any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Is our best and cheapest way through a travel agent ... ???

Thanx for reading ...

 

[Quero]

Thailand will work for you, and for the lowest average prices you'll probably end up at Koh Tao, but you will need to factor in travel time to the island as well as just getting to Thailand. Koh Tao is reachable only by ferry. If you don't want to fuss with ferrys and just want to fly in and out, you might consider coming to Phuket, where there is an airport, even though the diving is a bit more expensive.

 

[TheWartHog]

Hi Carpster61

For 5 days from London I would not recommend travelling all the way to Thailand and you shouldn't dive for 24 hours before your return flight home anyway.

I think you and your friend would be better off going to Egypt and diving the Red Sea which has, IMO, better diving than Thailand can offer anyway. Sharm is the most popular place to dive from but you could easily go to Dahab, Hurghada or even a short liveaboard if your experience/no. of dives allows.

Good diving

 

[supergaijin]

+1 Egypt from England- just makes sense on a time budget. Dives themselves may be more expensive but all up you'd balance this with cheaper flights- and right now the diving should be fantastic as they move towards summer. May-June can be good for mantas and whale sharks in Sharm if I remember correctly.

Dahab is usually cheaper on average than Sharm btw.

 

[Carpster61]

Thanx for the replies, you definately give food for thought, I will put it to her that we rethink and I will get back to you with what we decide ... Thanx for that ...

 

[Quero]

Well, as long as we're off topic and discussing alternative destinations rather than Thailand, I'll say what I had originally put in my reply but took out before posting as I didn't want to derail the topic....

I would recommend going to Bali as an alternative to Thailand. (I would personally avoid Egypt at the moment because of the political situation that is still unstable there even though it's closer and would result in a few hours of saved travel time.) Bali is perfect at this time of year, it's logistically easy, the water is warm, and topside it's great.

 

[stevenl]

Another vote for Egypt. You could even consider e.g. Malta, which also offers good diving and is even closer by. In none of the Egyptian diveplaces has there been any kind of political unrest BTW, so because of that I would not avoid it.

The travel time to Thailand is simply to much for 5 days IMO.

 

[lord khram]

I would second what Steven says, Malta & Gozo have some great diving, short and cheap flights from UK. Also I would have no hesitation in going to one of the Egyptian dive resorts, and indeed the Foreign office have no travel warnings in force for these areas. https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/egypt You will see the current advice is not to visit certain areas of Egypt, as indeed the website has been displaying similar advice for parts of Thailand for a number of years.
I see in earlier posts references to avoiding Egypt due to the current unrest, several years ago there was much political unrest in Thailand I don't recall anyone advising divers to stay away from Thailand, quite the contrary, despite at the time a number of Western Governments advising against all travel. It would appear that the problems in Egypt are localized as were the recent problems in Thailand and can easily be avoided.
In my mind 5 days is simply not enough time to have an enjoyable trip from London to Asia, Personally I would go somewhere closer to home and leave the long haul destinations until a time when you can visit for longer and fully enjoy the experience.

 

[Quero]

Yes, it's true that travel time from UK to Egypt is maybe 5 hours and to Thailand maybe 11 hours, so yeah, it takes twice as long to get to Thailand/Asia as it does to get to Egypt, and in addition there's the aspect of jet lag and time zone differences to take into account. So from a purely practical perspective, going to the Med makes the most sense.

And I guess it's a personal thing about whether to travel to a place that is experiencing upheaval. The troubles in Thailand a few years ago did provoke a lot of cancellations to Phuket even though we didn't have any disturbances here and things were quiet in that sense. Even so, I couldn't fault people for changing their plans since they had to transit through the BKK airport which had in the past been a locus for demonstration action. As for me personally, as I said above I would personally not want to go to Egypt at the moment, despite the fact that there has been no trouble at the places where diving takes place. I guess I know too many colleagues who have left there because things are still quite unsettled. But each person has to make those calls him/herself, I suppose.

 

[stevenl]

Yes, very personal decisions.

I personally don't know anybody there who has left the resort areas because things are unsettled, I personally do know people who have left because the number of visitors has gone down and there was simply not enough work anymore. I personally do believe tourism is on the up again a bit there though.