to truly enjoy your open water course – keep the groups small
The maximum group size for a diving course.
When you are looking for diving courses around Thailand, you see that prices differ from place to place and sometimes even in the same place. This has to do with many factors, travel time to the dive sites, quality of equipment, service, safety equipment, park fees, operation costs, quality of staff etc. One of the most important factors in this is the group size of the course. Why waste your vacation to Similan Islands diving in the middle of a huge crowd?
There are places in Thailand where you can get a very good deal on courses, but you might end up in a big group of students, spending most of the time watching your buddies doing skills under water. The maximum number of students per instructor that the dive organizations allow during underwater training is 8. It is possible to increase that number to 10 or even 12 when 1 or 2 divemasters assist on the course. Big groups of course means low prices, but these “factory dive schools” often pump out as many students as possible in a very short time. This has a few disadvantages:
First of all, when you take a dive course, you want plenty of time to practice new exercises until you are comfortable with them. In big groups, you often end up doing an exercise once and that’s it. As there are 7 more people to do the skill there is no time for repetition. In the worst case, the instructor might even skip certain skills to speed up the course. This is completely against the standards set by the diving industry.
Second, you wont get too much attention from your instructor, as he/she is not an octopus and has to keep an eye on a lot of people. This is fine if you don’t have any problems, but it can get a bit messy, or even unsafe, if you and some other people need help from the instructor.
Also, with big groups you often end up spending a lot of time on the skill part of the dive, which leaves only a bit of time left for the actual dive. And that’s actually the best part of the course!
With big groups, there is not much time to spend with students who take a bit longer or need a bit more time to get comfortable under water. This leads to people being stressed. They might even drop out of the course, when with a bit more time and a calmer pace, they might have been able to get more comfortable and finish the course.
All in all at Wicked Diving we think that the maximum group size for a course is 4 people. This way the students get plenty of attention from the instructor and a lot of time under water to enjoy the beauty of the Similan Islands. We like a relaxed pace and if we need to spend some more time in the pool, classroom or in the sea, we just schedule an session. This leaves the instructors in control and guarantees a safe and relaxed course in which you will have plenty of time to ask questions, repeat and practice your skills and get maximum time diving some the best dive sites in Thailand.
Best time to visit Thailand – Festivals
Thailand boasts some of the world’s best festivals at times that don’t line up with the Commonwealth of Nations’ school holidays.
Try to set your trip for Loy Krathong, held on the full moon in November, and make your way to Chang Mai. There you will witness the waterways filled with floating Krathong (banana leaf rafts lit with candles) and the night-sky speckled with flying lanterns. It’s truly a stunning sight.
If you’re visiting in the spring shoot for Songkran, one of the world’s most unusual, fascinating and brilliantly chaotic festivals. Songkran marks the Thai New Year and spans from April 13th-15h. During the celebration businesses throughout the country shut down (particularly in Bangkok and Chang Mai) and citizens partake in a national water fight. The streets are filled with revelers signing, spreading mud paste on each other’s faces and dumping water on each other. It challenges Spain’s famous Tomatina Festival for both messiness and enjoyment. Both Loy Krathong and Songkran offer excellent opportunities to connect with locals.
The Songkran festival in Khao Lak is much more low key – meant for families and great fun. It also coincides with some seriously incredible diving to! One of the best times to Dive Khao Lak
At the end of the day, finding a way off the Banana Pancake Trail is simple-all it takes is a spirit for adventure, a thirst for something new and a willingness to split from the pack. The only downside is you might have to try a new dish for breakfast. I’d say it’s certainly worth the trade-off.
Similan Scuba Diving | Dive Sites…Similan Islands
Similan Islands or Mu Koh Similan National Park
Similan is a small group of islands comprising nine islands stretching from north to south, Similan is highly praised for its beautiful scenery, both onshore and underwater.
Koh Similan or Koh Paet is the largest island in this group of islands. It has a distinctive horseshoe-shaped bay. The average depth of the water is 60 feet. Underwater is full of rock formations and coral reefs in several shapes and forms such as deer, leaf, brain and mushroom.
The latter one is the most unspoiled coral found in the country. Its soft sandy beach is very beautiful and diving around here will let you see a lot of fishes and coral.
To the north, lies a striking large rock formation with astonishing shapes such as boot and Donald Ducks head. The upper part of the beach is an ideal lookout point with a rock of a sailing boat shape
Always choose a dive center that has staff speaking your language, have insurance and are certified.
Similan Scuba Diving Dive Sites – Koh Tachai
Koh Tachai
The Main site is located just off the Southern tip of Koh Tachai. located withing the boundaries of the Similan Islands National Park, but geologically separate.
As there are can be cold currents from the ocean tides that are quite strong here - divers are recommended to wear a proper wetsuit when diving in this spot.
This site features rock corals and sea fans with plenty of huge marine life cruising around.
Diving here requires the use of the guide rope connected to the buoys (there are two), as a strong current might sweep divers out of the intended target. This also means making sure you only dive with boats and staff that are safe and aware of diving conditions – please avoid untrained and inexperienced liveaboards.
Leopard Sharks, Manta Rays and even Whale Sharks are among the visitors to this site.
Always choose a dive center that has staff speaking your language, have insurance and are certified.
Khao Lak IDC – Instructor Courses in Thailand
It all starts with those first few breathes underwater!
This can happen while on vacation in the tropics and awakening to the reality of an alternative lifestyle!
Certain people find this experience as they swim over a coral reef and find themselves face to face with incredible marine life and realize that this is the real world – not the cubicle back home!
Some people decide to change their lives as they interact with dive professionals and see the rewards of such a lifestyle and how it can easily become a reality.
The international dive industry is an incredibly exciting lifestyle to be professionally involved in and has many unique career opportunities all over the world for people from all different cultures.The Khao Lak Instructor Training center (Khao Lak IDC) is one of these places. When considering a career as a dive professional you want to make sure that you get off to the best start possible! With your entire dive career in front of you – you should be looking for the right dive center and staff to share your Divemaster/Instructor Course.
You need to feel comfortable and confident with the team and the facilities. You should be looking at a center that does not claim or boast to be “the best” or “the biggest” – that usually means less attention, dozens of students and a great big pyramid scheme. There are other many massive commercial, business orientated dive schools to choose from. These are called factory schools – and you will soon know why!
If you have never dived before and can get instructor certification within 6 months – something is wrong. Instead why not look for an Instructor Training Facility that offers a more personalized, real world approach to instructor training?
Safety, standards and an eye to service is the real key to a good dive center! In addition look for a wide range of courses options – do these schools only offer basic courses or are there experienced divers too? Your experience should be applicable to the real-world. You will want to to actually work after the course is done!
A few questions to ask!
- “How fast is the course?” Wrong question – “How long is the Instructor course?” – that is the real question. As much time being mentored, trained and supervised as possible – that’s what you want.
- Are the staff all made up of other inexperienced instructors?
- How many dives do they have?
- What certifications do they have?
- Are courses taught in wide rage of settings How many students have they certified?
Khao Lak IDC offers these options to a wide range of students. Located near the Similan Islands – This is one of the best palces to become a professional diver!
Learn To Dive – Online!
With SSI Online Learning – Learning to scuba dive has never been easier! Whether you prefer to study at home or would like to save your vacation time for DIVING - you can now complete the academic portions of the Open Water course online with SSI Online Learning for FREE. Right now! Start your adventure today with the Open Water Diver course online and SSI Online Learning!
The Open Water Diver course is by far, the world’s most popular SCUBA diving certification course. Millions of people have started diving as certified Open Water Divers. Learning to scuba dive requires both knowledge development (facts, principles, concepts) and Physical training (skills, techniques, methods). The SSI Online Open Water Diver Course via provides the knowledge development portion you need. You develop the remaining skills by actually diving with an SSI Instructor. The Online Learning is FREE.
It’s Easy! Simply Login – then SSI’s Online Learning system presents you with interactive presentations that include videos, audio, graphics and reading. As you progress you can pause, and take some time off – or speed through. Short reviews let you gauge your progress – allowing you the opportunity to go back and correct anything you might happen to miss. This lets you move through the program efficiently and at your pace. At no cost to you!
SSI Online SCUBA Dive training is designed to be easy, straight forward and always fits YOUR schedule. Access the Online Learning center anywhere you have an Internet connection. Feeling stressed? Don’t be – complete the Online Learning entirely on your own schedule. eLearing will keep track of your progress, and you can begin again where you left-off last time.
The FREE Online SCUBA training system has many features…
- Interactive Multimedia content – pictures, video and presentations
- Links to more-detailed explanations of relevant information
- Instant feedback on quizzes and tests – correct as you go!
- An online dive buddy to talk you through the training
- Access to background information
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Why not start your FREE online dive training course today!
Similan Scuba Diving Dive sites: Koh Bon
Koh Bon
Located just between Mu Koh Similan National Park and Mu Koh Surin National Park, Bon is a small island that features underwater sharp rock walls. Technically it is part of the Similan Islands National Park – but it is geologically separate.
The Wall on the inside of Koh Bon Bon is covered with soft corals that are shorter in size but more colorful than normal, which is their uniqueness at this site. Great place for seeing small critters.
Turn around and look into the deep and look for Manta Rays and Whale Sharks. They can Occasionally be found here at around 25 to 30 meters deep.
Always choose a dive center that has staff speaking your language, have insurance and are certified.
Breath holding and diving animals
Nature has shaped through evolution they way animals behave. This means that some animals have adapted to feed in places where the rest of the animal kingdom living around them cannot go. This naturally then eliminates a large part of the competition from the food chain.
The Similan Islands have whales, dolphins, turtles, birds and many other non-aquatic species that dive under water
So how are they able hold their breath for so many minutes without losing consciousness or dying? First, let’s revise some other physiological principles in order to understand more clearly what is happening.
Oxygen (O2) and CO2 are carried around the body by the blood in two different ways. One is simply the fact that both O2 and CO2 can dissolve in the blood. This will account for a small fraction of the whole transportation process. The other method uses the haemoglobin, a protein present inside red blood cells. Both O2 and CO2 molecules have the ability to attach themselves to the haemoglobin, but the carbon dioxide has a much greater affinity to do this. Therefore, whilst haemoglobin can carry up to four molecules of O2 it carries a much larger amount of carbon dioxide, normally about 23 percent is transported in the blood. However. The main point is that in most animals the O2 reserve is solely in the lungs and the blood. Once this reserve is depleted, the animals will need to breathe again to exhale CO2 and inhale new O2.
Breath holding diving animals have the advantage of an additional mechanism which, relies on another very similar protein called myoglobin. This protein is located inside muscle cells. In humans it makes up for only a very small percentage of the muscle mass. This percentage changes drastically in the animals with the need to hold their breath and it goes up to 45% of the muscle mass in sperm whales, animals that can hold their breath for up to two hours.
How does it work? Simply the blood will carry O2 to the tissues and the extra oxygen that is not used “immediately” will be stored in the myoglobin more or less in the same way as in the haemoglobin. Once the animal is under water and can no longer breath, the O2 stock of the blood will become depleted, the myoglobin will then release its O2 in to the blood that will carry it around where it is needed. At the same time the myoglobin will “catch” the excess CO2 in the blood restoring to a level that does not trigger the need to breath. When eventually the animal returns to the surface to breath air, the myoglobin releases all of its stored CO2 and replaces it with fresh O2. The amount of myoglobin present in the animal muscles will determine the maximum time the animal can spend underwater.
The more the animal wants to stay under water, the longer the period it has to stay at the surface for the gas exchanges to take place. A dolphin needs to breathe a few times (about two to four minutes) to stay submerged 20 to 30 minutes. A sperm whale will breathe 4 or 5 times per minute for up to 15 minutes at the surface to stay two hours under water. Sea birds normally dive for 3 to 10 minutes according to the species they belong to and need to breathe for about 2 to 3 minutes before diving.
Why I love Diving in Thailand
I Asked Marcel from Similan Diving, “Do you ever get bored of diving the same dive sites each day?”
As a dive instructor I have made over 2000 dives all over the world. Most of the dives were in Thailand, but I have also dived a lot in Holland, Indonesia and the Caribbean.This question is quite simple to answer: NO, I never get bored of diving and it doesn’t matter if I do the same dive sites over and over again. First of all, compared to the office I used to work in day in – day out, the underwater world is much more exciting. Second: conditions are never the same and you never know what you can expect underwater. And third, the people we teach or take our diving are different each time. So it doesn’t matter how many dives you make, no dive will ever be the same.
OK, you don’t see whale sharks, mantas, sharks, turtles or seahorses on each dive. And visibility is not always 30+ meters, it can be 2 meters as well. It can be cold and there can be currents or you have to share the dive site with 200 other divers right in front of you. Your mask might be fogging up or your buddy can be quick on air. In fact, I think that on most of the dives there has always been something, but that just comes with diving. I remember one dive in Holland where the only living creature I saw during the whole dive was in fact my dive buddy. But it all doesn’t matter. Give me some dive gear and water and I am happy. Being submerged in the water, breathing and weightless calms me down and gives me a great feeling, over and over again. So anything you experience on top of it, is just a bonus.
And next to that, there are many different things you can do, to make each dive even more interesting. If the visibility is “less than ideal” (3 meters), you can practice your navigation. If you can find the boat back in these conditions, you can find it back anytime. Or when there are no big fish to be found, you start looking for the smaller stuff. Everyone can spot a Manta Ray, but you have to be very good to find a tiny Nudibranch or a Frogfish. And if I do find yourself with more divers than fish in the water, I just start watching the divers, they too come in all colors and shapes! What if your buddy is quick on air? Well, then we just go a bit shallower and maybe we can do some bouyancy exercises to improve the air consumption for future dives. And if you feel you are running out of options, well why don’t you try out Technical Diving? Or under water photography? Or even Freediving? There are so many possibilities and so many dive sites all over the world that you can spend a lifetime under water without getting bored. Once you become an Instructor it’s even better! You can share your passion for diving each day!
Another interesting thing is the choice of the dive ites. I really don’t mind doing a certain dive site twice on the same trip, especially if conditions are good or let’s say there is a whale shark hanging around there. I also don’t mind doing exploratory dives, jumping in at new places. This is great fun, it can be all or nothing. And a good site doesn’t only depend on what’s written in the guidebooks. It depends on the conditions at that moment, how may other boats you see there and also on the interest and experience level of the other divers in your group. But again, in the end it doesn’t really matter for me where we jump in, as long as I can be under water… in a safe way of course!
Marcel is an Instructor Trainer in Khao Lak. There are Instructor Courses starting in October of 2009!
Thanks Marcel
-Similan Diving
