Sairee Cottage Diving

Come here for the diving first and the room second. This is a dive school on the Koh Tao beachfront with accommodation attached, which means you can sort a course or a guided dive without walking anywhere. If you want a resort where the pool is the point and the sea is scenery, this isn't it. If you want to be wet by nine in the morning, it makes a lot of sense.

Rooms are straightforward rather than luxurious, which is the right call for a place where most guests are in a wetsuit by breakfast and asleep by ten. There are two pools and somewhere to eat on site, so you're not hunting for dinner after a long day of dives. The mood is informal in the way most of Koh Tao is. Nobody's dressing up.

April to September usually brings the calmer seas and better visibility, so that's when the island fills and the courses book out. I'd lock in the room and the course together, and do it early.