Dive Review of
South Siam IV in
Thailand

 Carribean, Mexico, Florida, California 

Dive Conditions

50 Bar or 50 Minutes  

Rinse Tank available.  No dedicated area for UWP  

Overall Rating

My second trip with South Siam.  This time on their liveaboard that travels
to Richelieu Rock South Siam 4.  This operation allows maximum flexibility
for divers with rigid time schedules.  The boats remain in the Similans and
daily speed boats take you and day divers to the boat and return you at the
end of your stay.  You can pick the number of days but can't get on or off
the boat on the two days it is at Richelieu.  We wanted to spend maximum
time diving and started our trip on South Siam 3 when SS4 was up north.  We
made the transfer on the second day when SS4 returned.  SS4 doesn't seem to
have as many day divers and we had 4 of 5 days with only 9 divers on board.
 5 dives are scheduled daily and you pick from 4.  I recommend you skip the
night dive, limited stuff to see.  On the third dive of the day you will
dive with any day trip divers.  On SS3 this meant about 20 plus the divers
on board. DM's are very knowleagable and know about finding small stuff. 
We saw all of the big stuff in large numbers but visibility issues made
seeing anything big difficult.  At Richelieu Rock visibility was at best
30' There were great macro photo oportunities of seahorses, pipefish and
nudibranchs but the larger fish were almost impossible to photo due to the
heavy plankton bloom.  Koh Bon had large numbers of Manta's with 6
different encounters at less than 20' with them.  There was a report of a
whale shark but we didn't see it.  Leopard sharks, Morays and turles were
common with occasional reef sharks spotted on early dives.  Food was
plentiful but not gourmet.  There was always something western and always
something Thai.  Rooms were basic and toilets were shared.  Hot fresh water
was always available in the showers.  Two fresh water spray nozzles were
available on the swim deck when you came out of the water. Entry was always
a giant stride of the swim deck.  recovery was usually to the main boat but
a zodiac patrolled to recover divers or groups that drifted too close to
the islands or too far away.  Strong currents were commonplace during this
trip along with cold water upwellings that produced 10 degree temperature
changes.  I was OK with a 1mm suit but wore a vest on the last 5 of 23
dives. Great diving, cheap prices, but not luxury.  

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