Rod spent a while researching the best place to learn to scuba dive. There are many world-class dive sites in Thailand, but many of the sights are deeper than beginners will go. So after searching based on beauty, water depth, dive centers, PADI certification and price, we headed off to Koh Tao. Here's a good description of the place: http://www.archipelago.nu/SKARGARD/ENGELSKA/THAILAND/koh_tao.htm
It turns out that many other people must use the same criteria. Koh Tao is a small island --just a couple of miles long --but more people learn to scuba dive there than anywhere else in the entire world. Several percent of the total worldwide PADI certifications are done in Koh Tao.
The entire island is based on diving. Many of the bungalows are owned by dive shops and the pricing is simple --free if you are diving and not available otherwise.
We signed up with Big Blue, the second largest operation on the island. www.bigbluediving.com . They start several courses every day, have several dive sites, and are quite flexible. We also signed up because of Paul! Paul is an instructor who is temporarily out of the water with a health problem, and is stuck in the Big Blue office in Kampong. We met him there, and figured that if the other instructors were as good as Paul, we were in great shape.
Our class started with seven people. One failed the medical check the first day (history of asthma), and two others dropped quickly due to the work load (there is a lot of reading, study, and exams). Most everyone stayed together however, and snorkeled on the surface while the others went diving.
Big Blue is an interesting operation. They are big, and it shows. At first you feel a bit like a number getting processed. However that doesn't last long, and soon the size has advantages. For example, there are enough enthusiastic instructors that when someone falls behind, private arrangements are made to help them out. There is an amazing amount of logistics getting everyone fitted properly, assigned to the right boats, tanks filled, etc. And yet Big Blue was also quite flexible, to handle changes. It seemed to always be right on the edge of chaos, but never quite spinning out of control. A great group of people.
Our instructor was Keith. Hi Keith! He is highly experienced (was that 200 dives?), and very easy going. He was quite helpful. Sometimes you got the feeling that he was a bit laid back ("Oh, that will work out okay tomorrow."), but he always seemed to get things figured out behind the scenes and keep it moving.
The diving was not particularly good. The visibility of the water was poor --often under 5 meters. Of the four dives for the Open Water Scuba certification, only one was really great. The visibility was just good enough that with Keith knowing the way very well, he was able to take us to see lots of cools stuff: rays, parrot fish, butterfly fish, brain coral, lettuce coral, stag horn coral, and a zillion other fish I didn't know.
We stayed on the island one extra day and went snorkeling on the far side. It turned out to be the clearest water we encountered and was wonderful. It was a bit ironic that we saw more when snorkeling that we had diving! The only problem was that Fran forgot to put sunscreen on the back of her legs, and got nasty sunburn. That was particularly annoying since we took pains to grease up before going in --we just forgot that her legs would be floating up there too! Oh well, eight ounces of Aloe Vera and a couple of days later she is doing fine.
Koh Tao is another example of the rapid development of tourism in Thailand. (Again there were few Americans --Thailand seems to be a vacation paradise that only Europeans know about.) Just a decade ago, there was essentially no tourism on the island, and the only residents were some coconut farmers. Today it has a paved street the length of the island, much of it with bungalows, shops and dive centers. An entire new street is being added next to the pier, with several blocks of buildings all at once. Where we stayed further north on the island, the sound of construction saws was constant.
The first bungalows were the usual bamboo huts, but the most recent construction is concrete base, tile floor, and wood panel sides. There are aluminum frame windows instead of just loose shutters. It is rapidly moving upscale. Near the dive centers is now a mix of less expensive (300-400 Baht, $8-$10) bungalows along with places several times more expensive. Unless you are staying with a dive package, accommodations are quite expensive by Thailand standards.
The pace of construction exceeds the learning curve of the locals. While wiring a building, one local was short on wire --no problem; instead of going within the walls around the room he just strung the wire directly through the room to the other side! You see water pipe that is dangling from one building through the air and along the ground going to the next building. It is also a bit scary to see people running backhoes and bulldozers when you know they hadn't even heard of one just a few years ago.
It is hard to imagine the pace of change for the locals, who lived in quiet family coconut plantations ten years ago and now are serving foreigners at restaurants, driving pickup trucks as taxis, hauling diving gear, or loading and unloading the beer and supplies from the boats. Unfortunately, the famous image of smiling Thais is not preserved in Koh Tao, or most of the other heavily touristed areas. You can view development as good, and see the economic progress of the people. Many now have electricity, running water, even a motorbike or TV. But you can't help but feel like they are instead quite downtrodden and unhappy. They work long and hard. They do not have the happy faces of the people we saw in the fishing village of Koh Lanta --well away from the tourists.
