Koh Pai or “Bamboo Island” is controlled by the Royal Thai Navy, who restricts the use of the beaches, but the fairly large sheltered bay at the south of the island is ideal for beginners. While beginners are using the South Bay, more experienced divers have opportunity to follow the southern most part of the island down to 24 meters where they will find some larger fish and a few outcroppings of rock formations and a spattering of coral. It could be a decent dive but the area unfortunately has quite a bit of discarded bottles, fishing boat parts and some nets, old tires and other trash. We have had some interesting dives in the deep in spite of this.

Koh paiThe east side of the island has a shallow (4 to 9 meters) line of corals which is also pretty good for beginners and the HTMS Khram is just 500 meters from the east side as WELL. We have on good currents dropped off the beginners on the beach and taken the advanced divers to the wreck, then picked up the beginners. It works pretty well and gets two dives done in the same time.

The north side of the island boast actually a very nice line of shallow corals seldom visited by diving boats. Very shallow though and not good in an outgoing current.