Planning a diving vacation in Phuket

[Tempest63]

We are going to Phuket from January 23rd to February 7, a 15 day vacation!

We are a couple in our 40s. He is a tec45 diver with lots of diving experience specially in Canada and Caribbean. She only has her scuba diver certificate, havent finished open water but has done around 30 dives in Bonaire.

We really need some advise, planning is getting confusing.
We would like to do some shore diving, what would be the best dive sites and where to rent the gear?
Prices on dive shops seem to vary a lot.

We want to look for the best sites that we both can do and make sure he doesnt miss a site worth seeing that is for advanced divers.

For 3 or 4 night we want to do a liveaboard but seems they get booked really fast this season.
Dolphin Queen, Manta Queen 1, 2 or 3 and Similian Explorer seem to be our options.
Any recommendations? Would love to know more from the experts.

Thank you soooo much.

 

[stevenl]

First for her, get open water certified before the liveaboard, otherwise diving options will be really limited.
Secondly, the boats you mention are more or less backpacker boats, so in general younger people with not very much diving experience. The exception to that would be Manta Queen 2, although also on that boat there have been quite a lot of inexperienced divers recently.

You're leaving it late, but there still will be some options available.

 

[PADI Travel]

Hi Tempest63!

You're going to love Thailand. A liveaboard is a great way to get to the best dive sites in the area, namely those around the Similan Islands and Richelieu Rock. You might be interested in reading our guide to liveaboard diving in Thailand and our guide to scuba diving in Phuket.

We would definitely have to agree with stevenl about the atmosphere on those particular boats. In addition to the MV Manta Queen 2, the MV Dolphin Queen and the Similan Explorer, you might also consider the MV Manta Queen 5, the South Siam 3, the MV Deep Andaman Queen or the MV Bavaria. All of these have availability during your travel dates and meet your criteria for around the same price.

Let us know if you have any other questions. In the meantime, happy diving!

 

[loady]

Which boat did you use in similians Thailand? What's your review of it?