The islands off the coast of Cambodia provide excellent diving locations and white sand beaches: perfect retreats to get away from it all. Already close to the mainland there’s some great diving, but for those who want to stay a little longer and venture a little further, there are world class dive sites such as Condor Reef and Poulo Wai waiting to be explored.
Obviously one of the main attractions to diving here is that it has been so little dived that most of the dive sites are unmapped and lots of the diving is still at exploration stage.
It’s a pretty exclusive stamp to have in your logbook and you might even get to name a reef!
The diving season is from October to June, with water temperatures a tropical 27-31 degrees Celsius. and visibility typically ranges from 10-25+ metres.
Diving Schools
Scuba Nation Diving Centre is the only authorised PADI 5 Star Dive Centre in Cambodia, with offices in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville.
They have Cambodia’s only purpose built, stay-over Dive Boat with a fully trained staff of diving instructors from Europe, Australia and North America. The captain has 25 years experience at sea.
The 16m, 2 deck, custom-made boat is equipped with 2 fresh water showers, western toilet, dining area, cooking facilites, GPS, radio and fish-finder. You sleep on mattress beds on the lower and upper deck with sheets, blankets and pillows provided. There is nothing similar in Cambodia.
Scuba Nation offers daily diving trips and dive courses from beginner to instructor levels and teach in English, French, German and Dutch. Groups are kept deliberately small to ensure a truly personalised course. Teaching takes place in an air conditioned classroom, using the most up-to-date training methods and educational materials available. Use of the training pools makes learning to dive a very safe, relaxing & enjoyable experience.
Scuba Nation Diving Centre
18, Sothearos Blvd, Phnom Penh
tel: 012-715785
and at
Mohachai Guesthouse, Sihanoukville
tel: 012-604680
Contributing to community
Of course the buzzword nowadays is eco-tourism and PADI is all about contributing to the local community through diving and education.
Scuba Nation takes trips from local schools every year where the kids learn about preserving the reefs and looking after the environment (they also have a lot of fun in the water!).
Their involvement in the development work here resulted in doing a free Discover Scuba Day for 21 kids from the Friends/Mith Samlanh project. This is an NGO that deals with street kids and provides training for jobs, English lessons etc and Scuba Nation hopes to get their first Cambodian Divemaster trainee from this organization.
Recently, Scuba Nation was awarded by PADI as the only National Geographic Dive Centre in Cambodia. PADI recognizes the business as a progressive dive operation that offers the best customer service, education, equipment and dive experiences. Their commitment to advancing a premium-level of adventure and environmental awareness in the education programs is exciting and commendable.
© pictures: Scuba Nation