At South Siam Divers, located at 459/1 The Best Villa on Patak Road in Thailand, we specialize in providing exceptional diving experiences for explorers of all levels. Our experienced instructors guide you through the vibrant underwater world, showcasing the rich marine life and stunning coral reefs that characterize the region. Join us to create unforgettable memories under the sea.
Welcome to South Siam Divers, one of Thailand’s premier dive centers, situated at 459/1 The Best Villa on Patak Road. We are dedicated to offering fantastic diving experiences that cater to both beginners and seasoned divers. Our experienced team of instructors and dive guides is passionate about sharing the beauty of Thailand’s underwater world.
Our dive center provides a warm and welcoming atmosphere, perfect for both individual divers and groups looking to explore the fascinating marine ecosystems. With a commitment to safety and environmental conservation, we ensure that every dive is not only exhilarating but also responsible.
Our range of diving experiences includes guided dives, PADI certification courses, and snorkeling tours that allow you to discover the vibrant marine life, including colorful coral reefs and diverse species of fish. Whether you wish to explore the underwater landscapes of the Andaman Sea or are interested in learning how to dive, we have something for everyone.
South Siam Divers prides itself on its top-notch equipment and facilities. We use the latest diving gear to ensure your utmost safety and comfort under the water. Our team provides comprehensive pre-dive briefings and ensures that you feel confident and prepared as you embark on your underwater adventures.
Beyond diving, our location on Patak Road places you conveniently near several local attractions, beautiful beaches, and vibrant nightlife, allowing you to explore the best of what Thailand has to offer above the water, too.
At South Siam Divers, our goal is to make every diving experience memorable. Join us and immerse yourself in the majestic beauty of Thailand’s underwater realms. Dive with us and witness firsthand the breathtaking sights that await beneath the waves.
For those looking to experience the magic of the sea, South Siam Divers is your ideal partner. Discover, learn, and explore with us today.
เซาท์สยาม ไดเวอร์ (กะรน, ไทย) - รีวิว - ThailandAgoda.com
Attractions
6 miles
0.00 miles
0.04 miles
0.09 miles
0.10 miles
0.14 miles
0.23 miles
0.28 miles
0.31 miles
0.31 miles
0.39 miles
South Siam Divers is perched on a picturesque hilltop overlooking 459/1 The Best Villa, Patak Road , 83100, Thailand
Go with this company and boat.We traveled as two mid-aged European women with decent physical condition on South Siam Diver boat Somboon 4. This is my very first post on the review site and I am posting the review because the people working onboard the boat deserve it.We are not expereinced divers. I had 27 dives before the trip and 42 after, I didn’t miss a dive. My companion also is similar. We are loving it so much. We made a 4D/3N trip.We booked through an 3rd party diving agency who was very good at explaining to us about the itinery, what to expect and about the company we would be diving with South Siam Diver. This we realized was essential and after reading some review below I think its important to find the right diving agency who will be honest to you.The boat is big, tidy and has alot of space.There was around 20 of us for the trip to north Andaman but a little more busy during a couple days at lunch time due to the operation of the boat and new people arriving and some departing. The cabin is nice with 2 beds, air conditioning, low level lighting, blankets, plug sockets. We stayed on ‘A’ Deck which is the bottom row and has 2 toilets/shower there and is very fine but I would however recommend to request an ‘B’ deck cabin when you book as there is bigger windows and 4 toilets/showers there. There is a snack bar upstairs, fresh coffee expresso, fresh milk, tea, chocolate, soda, beer, cold water. A fridge for your own belongings if you need it. The food is just great. So great and plentiful with fruits, salads and snacks served throughout the day. We didn’t go hungry throughout our trip. Breakfast lunch dinner is a mix of East and West foods.The diving was fun and fabulous. We dived with a Thai local guide called L. He was very sweet and patient man. He was a little shy but tried his hardest with us and let his diving skills do his talking. We needed his help as we are not that good divers when we arrived but he made us better divers at the end. So calm and so safe he guided us through strong currents and showed so many stuffs including cute seahorses to bigger sharks all with a famous Thailand smile.The professional and safety here is 100%. I read some review below and don’t understand, what are people expecting? Somebody to make the red carpet for them?. Every staffs on board is fantastic and organized, so friendly and welcoming. I congratulate every one of them. I can see they are tired but they kept going and kept smiling. Inparticular I congratulate L our Guide and boat master Sean, a British man who knew what hes doing and I think been around a long time. The briefings are brilliant and delivered in the best humorous way. Delivering important serious rules and safety information but remembering we are on holiday and making us laugh. Currents are discussed and what to do in them, divesites information by using big professional printed map, what fish can see (each fish promised we saw), no breaking coral etc. Even on first briefings its included in rules to clean in toilet if you make them untidy. All very detailed, professional, organized and safety orientated. Just remember to book with the right and truthful diving agency, I can see that it is important! Our best experience and our pleasure to write this reviews for you. Thank you so much.Congratulations to staffs onboard and South Siam Divers!!
My fiance and I who are novice divers scheduled a live aboard through Merlin Divers in Kamala Beach. They were excellent but I’ll digress. We were picked up by a bus on time at our air bnb. Shuttled to the speed boat and once on the big boat had a snack and were briefed for our first dive. Big’s was the name of the Dive master and he was very professional and focused on safety and fun. This was our first liveaboard experience and we were the most novice divers on the boat by a margin. The sites were beautiful. People were saying that visibility was worse than past years but hey, mother nature always wins the day. And even if visibility was not the best we still had the 100% aquarium experience seeing octopus and cuddle fish as well as all the beautiful reef fish and turtles. We had a great time on this trip and the crew was amazing. Food was great, they even traded a fishing vessel a case of cola for some fresh caught squid that we ate that night and it was soooooooo good. There was one dive site with a strong current that was pretty difficult to access but all groups were gathered and accounted for . It was a bit exciting for us as we are pretty new to the sport but again, mother nature rules the day. All in all our experiece was top notch and for a “budget liveaboard” we felt pampered and were very happy with our trip. I would book with them again 100%.
If you google Similans Liveaboards there’s plenty to choose from. This 40+ metres boat with 4 decks would fit nicely in the budget column. Yet at budget prices what we need is efficiency, reasonable comfort, customer-centred services and of course, diving safety. I have been using this company and their boats for more times than I can count since they started in 2002. The key is efficiency. The time you depart, the time of pickups, the time of meals, dives etc, amazingly on time and no surprises in the Thai world of “Mai Pen Rai” or “It Doesn’t Matter”. Though almost 2 decades and their boats are a little tired and can use some refurbishment, try another boat in the same price range and you will come back to them. SSD has 2 daytrip boats that ply the training site of Racha Yai and the 3 dive day of the ever popular King Cruiser, Shark Point and Koh Doc Mai. There’s also 2 identical large Liveaboards with 17 rooms each plying Similans every season. Somboon 3 and Somboon 4, difference being Somboon 4 goes further North to Tachai and Richielieu Rocks while Somboon 3 stops at Koh Bon and turn back South. Only flip side with SSD is if you book directly with SSD, you won’t know whom you will be diving with until you get grouped on the boat. SSD uses a lot of freelancers every season thus you might be diving with an experienced guide with 10,000 dives in these waters OR your guide might have just graduated yesterday since Phuket has a large pool of IDC classes. Thankfully, Phuket has plenty of agents. Dive centres and Dive Travel agents that doesn’t own boats book you on the boats of your choice, and usually these agents or instructors will come onboard to be your dive guide or course instructor if you are taking a dive course. Similans has great diving that sometimes can be treacherous with strong currents, best enjoyed at Advance level or small group sizes. Consider taking up Advance Course onboard if you wish to enjoy Similans properly. Book ahead and speak at lengths with your guide or instructor. Lots to see in the Similans if you dive with the right guide. Especially one that is safe, reputable and knowledgeable with Similans’ diving
DONT GO WITH THIS COMPANY!!!!!!The ship itself and the crew were ok and quite lovely tbh. The rooms were nice.The food was ok, could be mre vegetarian though.But when it comes to safety there is no way I can recommend this company. They dont have any proof on the bottles that they ever checked them for inspection, there is no buddy checks at all, they are always very hectic (quick quick quick) make a lot of hectic and hurry so much you barely get time to check your equipment before you jump into the water. Also I had a dive guide who always made me swim through every strong current, I wasnt allowed to give my opinion on any dive, when I tried to make him understand something was wrong with my air he refused to understand me. Later I explained to him so he knows what was wrong, but he was annoyed by my “issues”. He said I was making everything up. He clearly didnt want to talk to customers, let alone have them their own opinion on what they want to see. He barely showed me anything that he saw. He just later mentioned what he apparently saw without showing me. I barely was shown anything interesting at all. He didnt even know the names of the fish that we were seeing. When later I was asking him a simple question under water (which direction will we go now?) he completely freaked out and yelled at me when we were on board of the ship again. He said next time “I would know everything better than him he would be glad if I just go to the surface on my own, even though i dont have a boye”. Considering we were on the open ocean and the way he furiosly yelled at me this appeared like a death threat to me, surfacing without a boye makes it impossible to find someone when they get lost in the open ocean. Also whenever there was any kind of problem with other divers they always belittled it. I didnt have the feeling anyone of the crew would know what to do in case of a serious incident. I definitely dont recommend this company. They lack any kind of security standards! My dive guide said: “stop asking all these questions (about safety). you make me feel uncomfortable, now i have to think about all these issues everytime when we go to dive. you ruin this for me”. In my understanding he SHOULD think about this EVERY SINGLE time before diving. He even wanted me to change my dive computer limits because my dive computer annoyed him. He always wanted to dive super deep. I asked him to not do that all the time, It made me feel uncomofrtable especially with the uncontrollable washingmachine-like-currents. He just didnt care about my wellbeing. When I was asking about how the compressor worked (because I sometimes had the feeling my air for diving smelled and tasted like dirty engine air) they didnt give me any answer.Especially for dive beginners, this is unsafe as hell. And I am an AOWD with more than 100 dives. I was staying 6 days and I was afraid of the temper from that dive guide I just mentioned. Also they made divers swim through very narrow paths and tunnels which were covered in corals. Due to the beginners and the strong currents I saw many divers destroy corals by accident. This is not good from the company neither. JUST DONT GO WITH THIS COMPANY!!!!!!!!
Would not recommend. No certifications were checked and they were taking open water divers down to 25+ meters. We were yelled at for bringing up fishing nets that were destroying the reef and yet boat boys were throwing their cigarette butts off the boat into the water. Our dive guide also didn’t speak much English and barely communicated with us during our stay as well as a single dive briefing that’s done to the entire boat in one go regardless of certification levels by someone who isn’t even getting into the water. The company is also very happy handing out dozens of single use plastic bags for customers to keep their shoes in rather than having a box to keep them in. If you care about the ocean and what ends up in it, avoid these guys.
As a long term customer of SSD have to say I was disappointed with my most recent trip.I was travelling with two friends who are both Phuket residents, and my daughter who is a dive professional and holidaying here. We took an overnight liverboard, and all started well boat was in good shape, and crew very helpful. On our first dive as we were about to commence our safety stop my daughter and I noticed a fishing net from illegal fishing wrapped round a stag horn coral, we carefully removed it as it seemed quite recent – And we took it back to the boat – on our third dive my daughter grabbed my dive knife as I was on my safety stop and went down and retrieved another large net with the help of a DM from another group. When she returns to the boat later than the rest of the divers, probably 10 mins – she was spoken to by the boat master and he said she should not be removing the nets from coral ,as it ‘disturbs the fishes habitat ‘ really ? How misguided or probably concerned about his schedule. Later that evening we observed from the upper deck , boat boys discarding cigarettes butts in the ocean. When we boarded the boat instead of our shoes going into plastic box, we were each given a plastic bag to put our shoes in – how many of these bags will be recycled or disposed of responsibly. The dive industry should be taking a lead role in protecting our ocean environment – saw little evidence of that this weekend – very poor show and I hope this feedback is used constructively.
This is an email that I sent to SSD after returning from a dive on 12FEB2023. I am a PADI OWSI, but am still learning about diving and dive operations:Good day SSD, I completed two dives today as scheduled with your operation out of Phuket. Moa was the DiveMaster and he was great. Attentive, safe, conservative, and service oriented. The breakfast and lunch were good. My BCD was entry-level, which is what I expected, and it did the job. It was in good repair.I paid an additional 600BHT for Nitrox and both tanks were low. The first tank was 195BAR which I didn’t say anything about, but the second tank was 180BAR. In the interest of safety I made sure Moa knew this before we dove. I have never been on a dive boat where the deck hands drink beer. I am a safety professional and I have never seen this before. Also the deck hands were constantly smoking. I don’t smoke, because I care about my health, but I got to today. I don’t have a problem with a guy grabbing a break and having a cigarette, but when a deckhand is filling tanks, assisting people into the water, and other tasks he should not smoke. It was not explained or identified that there was any safety equipment on the boat, for example oxygen/AED, etc. I looked at several tanks that had original manufacture dates in 2003 that had never been hydrostat tested. Not a single tank I saw had a visual inspection sticker on it. All of the tanks had visible corrosion around the necks.Lastly, the boat was a mess. It was dirty and cluttered to the point of being unsafe. It was hard to get around due to the equipment laying all over the deck.Needless to say, as a PADI OWSI I have a very different idea when it comes to safety and diving. I cannot believe that your business can claim to be a “PADI Five Star” operation, because it isn’t. Cancel my reservation for tomorrow as I will not be diving with you, ever.
The company is organized and punctual. The crew spoke multiple languages and accommodated all divers by level. The food was delicious and everyone was friendly.
On Dec 26th, 2023, my wife and I, both seasoned divers approaching our 100th dive milestone, booked a two-tank dive trip to Racha Yai Island from Phuket, Thailand, through the Trails of Indochina travel agency. We were looking forward to an enjoyable and safe diving experience.The day started off on a crowded “cattle boat” with around 30 divers divided into separate groups, each assigned a dive master. My husband and I had our own private dive master, a 3 person group total. We were greeted by the boat operations leader, received the usual pre-dive briefing and safety protocol instructions. Upon arrival to the site, the boat was quite chaotic due to the sheer number of divers trying to enter the water at once. It was a very rushed process as there was a stronger than usual current that day and the goal was to keep groups together however, it was a stressful entry which resulted in divers landing on top of one another. Regardless, we were able to get our bearings and descended into what was a very typical 60-minute dive ranging between 40 – 60 ft depth.Upon resurfacing, we found ourselves approximately 600m away from our boat. Despite waving the safety sausage and the dive master’s whistle blowing, the boat did not acknowledge us. In a desperate attempt to gain attention, the dive master suggested we descend back underwater to swim closer to the boat. Although I had reservations about this option due to exhaustion and the unfavorable current, we followed the dive master’s guidance.I ran out of air within a few minutes, and began breathing off of the dive master’s octopus. I soon realized my own air supply was depleting rapidly and this is when fear set in. Another few minutes pass and I can no longer take a full breath, so I signal the DM to surface. To our horror, when we surfaced, we discovered that the boat had sailed away and was out of sight. With waves hitting us, making it difficult to catch our breath, we found ourselves stranded alone and distressed.Panic began to set in. We surveyed the area and decided our best option was to make a swim to the nearest island with a shore. I was terrified of being carried by the current into the cliffside we were swimming parallel to. After landing on shore, we were able to get assistance from a small resort located there. They called the port, who then contacted our boat. The resort staff had motorcycles with wooden cart attachments that they loaded our gear into, and proceeded to take us to where our boat was anchored on the other side of the island. When we arrived at the new destination, our boat was anchored about 300m out. We could see divers from our boat finishing up their second dive – THEY HAD NO IDEA WE WERE MISSING and were conducting business as usual! We were then informed that they had no rescue boat or dingy on board and that we WOULD HAVE TO SWIM out to the ship with our gear in tow. After all the trauma we had just endured, the thought of swimming was terrifying but we made it back safely.Upon reuniting with the boat crew, we were met with halfhearted apologies from the boat operations leader, who failed to conduct a roll call or provide a headcount list. This level of unprofessionalism and disorganization was deeply concerning. Had my husband and I not been strong swimmers and experienced divers, this could have killed us. They make movies about horrific events like this, and we lived it!South Siam Divers’ response to our subsequent emails showed a lack of empathy. Their generic acknowledgement of our feedback was disappointing, especially when we discovered a similar incident in a review from 2017. Their response said that they were “sorry that we experienced this problem” and “appreciate your feedback”. Our travel agency did end up refunding (though don’t get me started on a travel agency that knowingly books their clients with a company of such poor reputation). Our diving experience with South Siam Divers was traumatic and will forever be etched in our minds. We feel it is necessary to share our story in the hope of preventing others from going through a similar incident. There is no excuse for leaving divers behind in this era of advanced technology and safety protocols.
Having read the reviews of this team the night before we were a little anxious to dive. I had been diving once before in Cambodia and my friend had never dived before.We met our instructor on the boat and it would be just him and us diving which was ideal. My friend was very nervous to dive for the first time and the sea was very choppy that day but she was quickly reassured and the instructor was very attentive and understanding. We never felt rushed or unsafe, we were in good hands.We saw many amazing fish and came away with a great memory and fantastic photos.