Name your favorite diveshop or site

[Brink15]

What is the best shop, in Thailand or elsewhere, with whom you have been on a trip?

or

What is the best dive site you have seen?

 

My favorite dive sight is Twilight Zone Pinnacle on Saba Island in the Dutch Antilles. Absolutely amazing site.

My favorite Thai site is the space between Bida Nok and Bida Nai off Koh Phi Phi Lei. Lots of lionfish, morays, and beautiful coral. Average depth about 16m.

My favorite dive shop, Racha's on (funnily enough) Racha Island (don't know if it's Racha Yai or Noi - I assume Yai). Sorry this is a shameless plug. Racha said he'd show me all the good dive sites on Racha. Unfortunately I went to the same four sites, over and over, teaching open water classes.

[ June 10, 2001: Message edited by: Brink15 ]

[racha]

Brink, Thanks for the plug and you know my favourite dive shop is Raya divers on Racha Yai Island. Racha Noi is an uninhabited island but has some great diving there and easily compared to the Similans with loads of colourful soft corals ,huge fish ,sharks,huge stingrays,manta rays & also whale sharks passing by in the summer months.

A lot of people are confused by Raya Yai and Racha Yai but actually it is the same place.

In the Thai central or main Thai language it is Racha and in the southern dialect Raya.

The nice thing about Racha island is you can suit up with your gear and walk in to the water right from the beach and return back to the beach or arrange for a longtail boat to pick you up. On Racha there is all year diving as the island always has a leeward side out of the wind. The trip over in the rainy season can be rough sometimes but once there the sea is like a mill pond.Staying on Racha is a great place for divers as you can make a plan when you want to dive and not have to go on long boat trips make 2 dives then go home.If you want to dive once or five times a day is up to the customer. (within the dive profile limits of course)A lot of people just go there specially for the night diving as there is limited good places to go from Phuket in the night time. Its a great place to do Padi courses as well as there are easy dives for beginners and places were there are strong currents and deep water for advanced divers.

The greatest experience I have had while scuba diving was on a dive trip with all the staff from Raya divers we went to the Osprey reef in the Coral sea outside the Great Barrier reef in Australia. The shark feeding was amazing to see and the thing was the giant gropers that actually got more of the food than the sharks. These giant gropers (Australians call them Potato cod) are growing to about 70 kilo's and you can (when you have no food) touch them they are so used to divers. While we were on the trip one instructor working on the boat came back with us to Thailand and worked with us for a year and he admitted that no one working on the boat was scared of the sharks but they always drew straws who would do the groper feeding as when these gropers see food they go nuts and have knocked a few instructors and divemasters unconscious. There was one infamous groper called fingers as he had taken a bite out of quite a few guys fingers over the years.