Quero

Yes, the price is THB 30,000 for a standard cabin; THB 35,000 for a deluxe; THB 45,000 for the master cabin. This is per person.

Okay, well the "passport" thing is already in the works, then. The blue book is getting translated now. They do require a translation for Malaysia since they can't read Thai script.

oops. double post.

Don't you need to get a Thai vehicle passport to take your vehicle out of Thailand?

Vehicle passport? What's that? I've got the blue book, which is being translated to English for the purposes of the border crossing....

Thank you all very much. Extremely helpful replies!

And the drive from Phuket takes how long?

Thanks phuketrichard. How long was the drive to the border? Did you stop overnight someplace?

Thanks TJ. I assume some of those places such as the vehicle registration office near Regents School you're talking about are in Bangkok? I am on Phuket island. I'm getting my paralegal to have the paperwork translated, and I'll have the dealership tell me about the window tinting, so no worries about that. But for the Malaysia road permit, is that at the border? Meaning I need to get three things at the border: road permit, insurance, English lettering for the number plate. Correct?

I'll see if I can find the paperwork for the window tint. That's very helpful. Thank you!

Thanks. What are the limits? When I bought the car I had them put the minimum tinting on since I really detest the super dark windows for night driving.

I'm planning to drive to Malaysia in a few weeks' time, and I'd like to confirm what the formalities are. Below is what I understand I need to do--is it all correct? Am I missing anything?

Get my vehicle registration translated from Thai to English by an official translator.

Buy Malaysian insurance for the car; this can be done at the border.

Buy the translated number-plate letters and name of province to paste over my Thailand number plates; this can be done at the border as well.

Are there times of day to cross or not to cross?

Thanks for any insights!

My pleasure.

Yes I do, at least I do for the ones I use for air/nitrox backgas rather than for stage deco tanks.

I've got six Apeks first stages and six second stages. The ones that are dedicated to rich deco blends are never put on plain air tanks, but they're configured differently anyway (one first stage, one short hose second stage and a pressure gauge only), so there's not much risk of mistakenly putting them on an air tank and then having to re-clean them for use on deco bottles.

No, the air pumped on Phuket boats and at air fill stations cannot be said to be universally more filtered than Grade E. This isn't a problem, though, if you're diving recreational nitrox, up to 40%, with those regs. If you want to use them for richer mixes, say for deco gas, you would want dedicated O2 clean regs for that purpose.

Force Fin ships from California to this part of the world. There is no distributor in the area.

If you are considering a regulator which offers you the option of either a DIN or a yoke fitting on the same model, it should be possible to convert it fairly easily later. If you're handy and service your own equipment, it's not hard to do the conversion, but if you generally send your regs in for service, as most people do, you can just ask the tech to change the fitting at that time. In other words, it's not something you'd want to be doing every other week, depending on what sort of tank valve you expect to encounter, but fundamentally, it's a simple process.

As for the tank valves with the inserts, when you find them, the inserts are not that hard to get out. It just requires a hex key of the correct size. Not all boats have this sort of valve on their tanks, though, so if you were to decide to buy a DIN reg, I'd recommend also getting a DIN adapter for those cases in which the tanks are NOT the sort that have the removable insert and are only yoke valves.

Sorry, Ivan, it's just the opposite. DIN tank valves are not exactly common in Thailand, and most people who show up with a DIN reg need a DIN adapter in order to make the reg fit the yoke-style tank valves that are the most common here.

So my reply for Simon is to buy the fitting that you will use most often. If you will be diving in a place where DIN is prevalent, like in Europe and the Med, buy a DIN fitting; if you are going to be diving mainly in Asia and the Americas, buy an A-clamp yoke fitting. Also, keep in mind that this isn't written in stone. You can get it switched later if you want by buying the parts and just switching it. I have recently converted one of my own Apeks DIN first stage regs to the international (yoke) system for recreational diving here in Asia because I don't want to fuss with the DIN adapter and I do want to dive the regs sometimes!

Before you can enroll in the DM course, you need to have completed the Rescue Diver course which in turn requires a current CPR and First Aid provider certification. It's also helpful to have the Deep Diver, Underwater Navigator, and Search and Recovery specialty courses before starting the DM course, though there are ways to incorporate that training into the DM course.

I agree with commande in as much as avoiding buying any training package that includes equipment purchase bundled into it. You don't get to choose what equipment the package includes, and if you want to substitute certain items, you end up losing control of the costs since you've got to pay some surcharges in order to switch. Having said that, yes, normally you can expect at least a 10% discount when you purchase gear here through your instructor/dive school, and in addition, you can get a rebate of the 7% VAT tax when you export the goods on your departure from the country (not sure what the exact rules are for a delayed departure months after the original purchase, but it's worth looking into).

If you already own gear that you are used to and that you like, make an effort to bring it; if you don't own gear and perhaps don't know what you want to buy and need guidance, then just come, start in with your training in rental gear, get a better sense of what you'd like to buy, and take your time with your purchase. I actually bought a lot of gear in Thailand when I was living in Malaysia and doing my training there. At the time, there wasn't much selection in Malaysia (now there is, but that was years and years ago), and I couldn't get to the US to make my purchases, so since the big shops on Phuket offered a pretty good range of products and I could get both a small discount plus the VAT tax back, it made sense for me at the time. You need to decide what makes sense for you--while you have access to everything you could want in the US at better prices than you can hope to get here (even with a discount the prices are usually much higher than regular retail prices in the US) perhaps you're unsure of exactly what it is that you do want. I'm about to invest in some new equipment for sidemount diving, and I plan to get it in the US next month and bring it back since it costs about 1/3 less there than it does here--for now I just rent

Estimating a cost of about $20/day for rental fees and multiplying that by the number of days you plan to dive--an average of one day per week for six months gives you around 25 rental days--yields a total cost of about $500 USD. Seems to me to be a lot of money to spend when you could bring your own equipment (especially if you like it and are comfortable diving with it) and spend the rental budget on more diving, training, etc. If it were me, I'd carry my gear along and leave most of the clothing at home, buying whatever I needed along those lines locally.

Yes, he does--very nice and helpful guy. And as I'm an Apeks tech myself, I also buy all my supplies for Apeks service from Scuba Market. Anything they don't have in stock they get for me in a couple of days. Very good service.

Who said anything about Aquamaster?

The Aqualung/Apeks merger (actually both lines are owned by parent company Air Liquide) took place over 15 years ago, as I recall. Since Aqualung had a much larger distribution network than Apeks at the time, the flow of parts and service kits for Apeks products became easier. There have also been manufacturing impacts on the Aqualung line of regs as a result of the merger, and in fact the design of the Legend, the topic of this thread, was hugely influenced by the excellence of Apeks engineering.

Yes, that's true. But it's also true that the merger between Apeks and Aqualung took place before Scuba Market opened its doors, so it's actually irrelevant that Scuba Market has been furnishing Apeks parts for these past few years that they've been in business.

Ivan, Apeks is a highly regarded brand from a manufacturer that was acquired by Aqualung some years back. One outcome of that merger is that service kits, parts, and maintenance are all readily available.

My main recreational reg set is a Legend LX Supreme, and I've been diving them for over 10 years. The are great regs. The only regs I own that I like better are my Apeks ones, and this includes my Scuba Pro Mark 25/S 600 set.