How I chose where to do my Dive Masters

Spending two months on the beaches of Koh Lanta isn't all bad. Koh Lanta is a larger small island on the west cost of Thailand. It is definitely one of the calmer beach places one can find in the region.
There are plenty of foreigners on the island but since it's all quite spread out the beaches always seems quite empty.

Before coming to Koh Lanta I was looking for a place to do some serious diving. To get my Dive masters. I tool a couple of requirements and places into consideration before I decided.

Requirements.
Cheap living, Convenient travel, Friendly people, Good food, Good diving.

With these I ruled out the Americas, Africa and Europe. Egypt was in fact a candidate but since there where ongoing riots throughout the nation I decided not to.

Looking at prices and dive spots it came down to three countries.
the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Although Indonesia has plenty of great diving is also have plenty of corruption and little annoying things to deal with. Besides I was planning to spend the following two months after my Diving in Indonesia so Some variation was required.

So what where the differences between the countries in question. Well a good thing about the Philippines is that it's Christian or rather not Muslim. The implications of this is that beer and pork dishes are commonly available. This also goes for most of Thailand as they are Buddhist.
When if comes to food I have to say that the Thai food is on an un-threatened favorite among these countries.

The cost of living is cheapest in Thailand compared to the others.

Language wise Malaysia is definitely a favorite. Since I speak the language or at least enough to interact with the locals quite easily. This would mean that I cound integrate with the community fast and easy, a big bonus.

So basically it was down to Thailand vs Malaysia. Personally I think the best dive sites in the area are around Borneo. But then again the simian island and north of there in the Andaman sea are not too bad either.

Taking the living environment into consideration I decided I wanted to try out the island life and so I listed a few options.

Location	Cost of Living	Quality of Diving	Beaches	Cost of Diving	Food	Cummunications
Phi Phi	High	Medium	Medium	Medium	OK	OK
Koh Lanta	Medium	Medium	Good	Migh	Good	Good
Perhentian	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium	OK	Good
Sipadan	Medium	High	Small	High	OK	Good
Tao	Medium	Low	OK	Low	OK	OK
Similan	High	Good	OK	High	OK	OK

Having this in mind I decided to just go down and try out a few places before I decided.

That's when my girlfriend informed me that she got a volunteering gig at Koh Lanta. And soo it was all decided. Haha.

Here are some of my photage from one of the dive sites. Koh Haa.