Diving in Phuket Island, Thailand

Phuket, as I have mentioned before, is a great island to have a laid back holiday. She contains all necessary ingredients: tropical weather, golden beaches, turquoise sea, gorgeous people, good food... On top of all, there is another great feature of the island. That is the beauty of Andaman Sea's underwater life and uncountable number of diving points which are accessible from the island.

When I get to Phuket, I am not gonna lie, I didn't think to dive. I had good time under the Balinese sea and I hadn't had the time to make a search about the dive centers there. However, I hadn't also know that there was no way to hide from my destiny. As soon as I settled down in my "temporary hotel room", I realized the dive center across the street. Despite I spent such a long time to recover from long Bali-Phuket flight and the shuttle ride, the dive center was still open. ...and I knocked the door of Rumblefish Adventure. There I met great people. They were quite friendly and helpful. They explained me how diving business runs more or less and it actually has nothing to do with any other place I have dived before. 

In Phuket, the dive boats and the dive centers are almost completely separated. When you go to a dive center, as an experienced diver, they will show you the schedule of the available boats with their route of dive points. Every combination has its own price roughly changing between 1000-1500 THB/dive. According to your preferences and experiences, the guys at the dive school help you to choose the appropriate dive boat. Here the things start to bifurcate. You may be accompanied by the dive buddy/leader from the dive center or you may stuck with the guys of the boat or the buddy might be a freelance instructor, like in my case. So this separation of power has its own benefits and disadvantages, which I will explain later. Anyway, the complete gear is supplied by the school for 500 THB/day. You can also rent dive computer for around 300-500 THB/day. In my case, they were quite cool to me and let me use their good old Aladin UWATEC computer.

In the morning, a shuttle bus picks you and your gear up from your hotel and takes you to the harbor where the boat is. From this point on, you are with the dive boat crew and thus I will try to summarize my experience about the dive boat called Jolly Roger and her crew. I will tell about the three dive points of the day, Koh Dok Mai, King Cruiser and Shark Point,  in separate entries.

She is quite long, pretty new and well maintained dive boat. The main deck is composed of a preparation space for the divers and the dining room. There you can have a fresh and substantial breakfast in with lots of varieties. They also serve the lunch in the afternoon and it is also equally good. Highly recommended! There is also an espresso machine, cold and hot water and several munchies at your disposal at anytime on-board. There is also on-board WiFi which is very convenient. There are two shower/toilets right next to the preparation area. The upper deck is very roomy to socialize with the other divers, as well. Beer is also serve on-board but subjected to charges. From all the facilities provided, she is a great dive boat. But nothing can be perfect right. Here are the beasts inside the beauty!

First of all, the service crew was acting kinda weird! They were shouting to the customers here and there when people were trying to board. The people who guides you talks mostly in Russian because they and most of the customers were Russian but sometimes they forget there are people of other nationalities. I have to say that the order in the boat was a bit chaotic. Of course that was my experience with the customers of that day but it seemed to me that the profile is more or less the same in every trip after I shared my experiences with the other divers in Kata Beach. The space you prepare for the dive, although it was quite large, was stuffed by non-divers. Especially, the moms and the wives were everywhere and messing up with your gear. Coming back to the lunch room, people were leaving their leftovers on the tables and nobody were collecting them. Of course you are supposed to return your stuff but as you can imagine not everyone was taking care of. In the dives, there were no regular order to get in to the sea. I think for that may of diver (more than 30) the dive masters  need to do some planing before the dives. However, it seems to me the ones of the boat were coordinating themselves without letting know the other dive leaders. And finally on the way back, the shuttles were totally messed up. The chances are you may be left in the harbor if you don't understand Russian because they stop doing regular announcement in any other language. Thus you  need to go an ask if your bus is actually arranged.

To sum up, I think Phuket is a great place to dive. The underwater was flourishing. And that was a great boat in terms of all of the amenities inside. If you are a guy of luxury and can arrange the whole dive for his group, you may want to go for this boat. Otherwise, I recommend you to think twice and go for a second best option.