Level
Advanced
Course
Duration
2.5
Days
Cost
฿12,000
Thai Baht
Designed for certified divers eager to expand their skills, the SSI Recreational Sidemount Specialty Course immerses you in the unique advantages of sidemount diving. Through classroom instruction and hands-on practice, you’ll master buoyancy control, equipment configuration, improved trim, and the art of navigating tighter spaces. The supportive learning environment fosters both skill development and confidence as you explore the vibrant underwater landscapes of Koh Tao.
09:00-10:00 Sidemount academic session
10:00-12:00 Sidemount equipment set up
12:00-13:00 Break
13:00-17:00 Confined shallow water session
17:00-17:30 Debrief
08:00-12:30 Sidemount dives 1+2
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13:30-14:00 Exam
14:00-15:00 Dive Planning
15:00-15:30 Debrief
08:00-12:30 Sidemount dive 3
12:30-13:00 Debrief and certification
The SSI Advanced Adventurer Course is the perfect follow-up to your Open Water certification. Designed to enhance your confidence and abilities, this course introduces you to five different types of dives, including deep diving and underwater navigation.
In just two days, you’ll gain the skills to dive deeper (up to 30 meters) and explore more advanced dive sites around Koh Tao and beyond. Whether you’re interested in night dives, wreck exploration, or perfecting your buoyancy, this course is your gateway to becoming a more skilled and adventurous diver.
Unlock a new level of underwater exploration with the SSI Recreational Sidemount Course! Experience the freedom and flexibility of sidemount diving, enhancing your buoyancy and movement in Koh Tao’s breathtaking dive sites.
Amazing day ! Diving for the first time, all the crew were amazing, thank you to Carmen out instructor for her patience and thank you to Viny, Fabio, Anna and the captain for organizing that super day
Great dive company. Did two fun dives and it was good. Had Ben as the dive master/guide and she was great. Thanks!
Had a great time diving with Ben at White Rock and Twins after helping the Goodtimes team do beach clean up! Ben was a great dive master and helped us identify a lot of cool fish and made it a super fun experience. Also huge shout out to Mike for joining our dive today and doing an awesome photo shoot for us!
My partner and I completed two fun dives with Goodtimes and had an amazing time! Our dive master, Ben, did a great job and made sure we had so much fun. Additionally, we also had Mike take photos of us and it was so much fun! Everyone was so friendly and we absolutely loved the vibes. We also joined the group clean-up earlier which was nice as it was sad to see so much trash around the beautiful island. We really enjoyed our day with Goodtimes and had so much more fun on the dives compared to our open water cert that we did with another shop. If you are thinking about diving here or getting a cert, I would recommend! If we had more time on Koh Tao we would come back.
Just Dive with Good Time 🤙 We did our Open Water with them. Such a lovely group of people that work here, especially our Instructor Lydia! She is so so good at what she does, she has a great way of teaching, really methodical in showing and explaining everything we needed to know to be safe divers. Lydia was patient too, and really made me feel at ease as someone who has a long-standing fear of drowning! If you’re in any way unsure of whether it’s for you, just talk to this crew and they’ll put your mind at ease and you absolutely won’t regret it! Owners are super sound and have created a lovely little community around it. Food is immense there too in their restaurant, lamb burger was outrageous. They often host international DJs, or an open decks sessions on a Sunday, so you can spend morning, afternoon and night perched there.
I recently did a refresher dive here after not having dived for several years. The instructors were friendly, patient and extremely knowledgeable. Highly recommend.
Scuba Diving in Koh Tao has been very popular for years, we have some of Thailand’s best dive sites and great diving conditions all year round. Our most popular course is the SSI Open Water Diver course which takes 2.5 days to complete and allows to to dive all over the world once you are certified. This course is ideal for beginners who want to get Scuba certified on Koh Tao.
If you are short on time the SSI Basic Diver is for you! This is a half-day experience where you can dip your toes in and explore the underwater world.
Any of the dive organisations in the world can give you the Open Water license, and with it you can dive in every dive centre in the world for the rest of your life – an SSI diver can of course dive in a PADI centre or the other way round, for example.
However, with SSI you do get benefits:
Online Learning
While most organisations offer online learning, not all of them offer it free of charge and can end up racking up quite the bill. SSI offers your learning materials for free as part of your course registration and is easy to navigate using the MySSI app. The app is regularly updated and also offers additional free courses like the ´Try Diving´ and the ‘Blue Oceans‘ for you to enhance your scuba diving knowledge.
Recognition Ratings
SSI do things a little differently to other diving agencies, they continue to recognise your advancement in diving whether you are enrolled in a course or not. When you reach certain milestones you will be awarded recognition status. This is why we encourage specialities over the SSI Advanced Adventurer or Advanced Open Water courses. With SSI once you complete 4 speciality courses and 24 dives you will automatically be rewarded with Advanced Open Water recognition status. Taking this route allows you to explore your passions underwater without being restricted to one exploration dive per specialty! Don’t forget we offer discounts on bundles too!
Flexibility
SSI allows its professionals to teach with an 80/20 approach meaning that the instructor can adapt 20% of the course to fit the pace of learning, ensuring a student focused training programme worked around the needs of the students – after all everyone learns at different paces.
