Cambodian Diving Group, Sihanoukville

Spent a super nice day with Tom and his crew in the spots near Mpay Bay. Great organization, they picked me up at the ORchid pear in Saracen Bay and brought me to the diving, nice place and good gear to rent. The spots are just 10 mins by boat from the diving and despite the low visibility, the dives have been amazing! Lot of fish, great spots. Highly recommended!

Took the advanced open water course. It's quite expensive here, but well it's a small island with not much infrastructure, so that's justifiable. The dives were good, especially the night dive. The problem with Cambodian Diving Group is, that they never finished the paper work for the certification in over one year, even though i contacted them a few times. First they told me, that they were going to do it, now they are not even answering anymore. Because of that i cannot recommend doing a certification here.

We did 2 dives and would describe it as chaotic and unsafe.. This was purely due to the fact that 1 divemaster took 10 people to go diving. The visibility was not so good and some of the participating people were clearly not experienced. This led to a chaotic first dive (which only took 32 minutes) with people continuesly bumping into each other and two people even getting behind for a moment. This is obviously not a safe situation for divers, especially for the beginners. Besides this, it should be noted that the staff is very friendly and open for suggestions. I don't have any doubt that they are all professionals that try their best for a nice diving experience. After some feedback, the secobd dive was already better. However, due to the choice of bringing 10 people at once, including a few beginners, it was not the experience we wanted, especially considering the prices that we paid. Nevertheless, i do recomend diving with this organization, but be sure to ask about the number of people in the group (maximum 4 or 5).

Go with a different dive company in Cambodia. Visibility was terrible, they never should have taken us and should have suggested going another day. Our dive master went so fast none of our group could keep up, spent both dives just trying to see his fins, so didn’t see anything. Stopped once to look at a sea slug for less than 10secs and looked up and had lost him. My friend and I had to surface alone. She said in her 60+ dives she’s never had to. We asked him to slow down so we could look at things the next dive, he didn’t. Spoke to the rest of our group on the way back and they were all disappointed in not being able to stop and look as well, so it wasn’t just us. Also, not professional at all. Had to pick out our own dive gear, most of the items were broken or ripped and not stored well. Had to put all our own gear together and carry all our own tanks onto the boat (for both dives), take it all apart, wash it, and return it. It was good practice I guess, but not sure why we were paying them $85. Worst diving experience ever. Can only go up with another company.

I was very lucky to be at this diving spot in the rainy season. Okay, honestly the weather wasn’t the best. But I knew that before I got there. I was lucky because due to the low season I was the only student in my 4 day Open Water Diving class. I was even more lucky to have the charming, very enthusiastic, always cheerful and very professional Anne as my instructor. She taught me well and I’m sure I could not have a better start of my life as a diver then I did. She told me that they only do max 4 per group, so that’s great anyway. The diving center itself is also a very social place. I was served coffee by a very friendly New Zealander who can also arrange a very nice burger for you. (the best of Cambodia, according to an American burgerlover I spoke to). I chose the veggie one, which was also good. I also did a dive together with the man who is called ‘the grumpy old diver’. And guess what? He is not that grumpy at all! He is actually a very nice guy. If you are very lucky, you also meet an Irish guy who is a magician on the side. He can show you some cool tricks! Aside from that there are other people too, that hang around the center, but this is getting to long as it is, so I have to leave some people out. Last but not least there are a couple of friendly dogs around that keep you company when the weather isn’t good enough to dive. Which is almost never. And by the way, they also do movie nights when it gets stormy at night. And when I walked in on that, the gang was watching Love Actually. The greatest movie ever. I had a blast!