Diving the similan Islands

“Paula just made the whole vacation a piece of cake!”

“I’m an avid diver who planned a spontaneous trip to Thailand for my best friend’s birthday. Arriving in Khao Lak we hadn’t booked our diving package and were still a little jet weary our first day out searching for the perfect way to explore the Similans.

I had heard there were a lot of diving options in Khao Lak, but I was completely unprepared for the numbers of shops offering different packages. I was blessed by great fortune to have my hotel just down the road from Pirate Divers. My friend and I were shopping at the market for some local fruits and just adjacent the market we found Pirate Divers. We were instantly drawn in by Paula’s friendly hello and laid back attitude. Paula was so kind and helpful!

With Pirate Divers, we got to look at all the Liveaboard options, and rather than wandering around to each shop in the heat, paula give us all the ins and outs, and ups and downs of all the options! She seemed to know someone personally on each and every boat and worked so hard to make sure we found our perfect match. We ended up booking a 4 day/night live aboard on the Vilai Samut and had an amazing trip.

We got to go to the Similan’s most famous beaches before they got crowded by all the day tripping speed boats, we got to dive sites that only the captain of the ship knew about, we had amazing food, great dives, and the crew were so accommodating. All the Thai boat crew were a family and were so friendly and you could tell the guides really loved their job and worked very hard to make sure we got all we could out of our trip.

All in all it was the perfect trip and from speaking to some of the other customers on board we found out how lucky we were to have Paula organize it all for us. Another couple we were on the boat with had spent two whole days trying to trek back and forth between all the individual shops to compare prices, boats, packages and dive sites, another had been through five booking agents who didn’t speak English and had tried to sell them packages based only on price before they gave up and just picked one at random.

I’m all ready planning another trip back to Khao Lak next year, and I’ll be using Pirate Divers again without a doubt, paula just made the whole vacation a piece of cake!

Kate Clark”