Welcome to our new PADI partner – Ocean Breeze Resort

Yesterday Tony Andrews (PADI regional manager) met with Stefan and our business partner Mr Kamran (CEO at Ocean Breeze) to complete the contract for Ocean Breeze to become a PADI Resort and official business partner with Khaolak Scuba Adventures.

We will be working together with Ocean Breeze for the benefit and growth of both businesses. Conny, who has been a PADI instructor for seven years and has been working as a booking agent within Ocean Breeze for two seasons, will continue to promote diving there and assist our instructors at the pool side when they are conducting confined water training sessions. Also, Mr Kamran has generously offered Khaolak Scuba Adventures staff and students a 20% discount when they use the poolside restaurant before or after training sessions :)

By Alex Leeming

Khao Lak Scuba Adventures management are taking care of their staff and the community:

At the moment we are working hard, behind the main dive centre, to install a proper Kitchen with two professional Gas cookers, a big sink, a preparation area, some fridges and a store room. The purpose of this kitchen is to prepare food for Manta Queen I, Manta Queen II, Manta Queen III and Flying Manta I. It will also be available for our Thai staff to cook their own lunch. It is important to us to provide the means for our staff to have healthy food and clean facility to cook in their lunch break. This way they have enough energy for the demanding days of high season. We all know how those days feel ;-)

 

Our friend (and new colleague) Felix was the Chef Trainer and assistant Head Chef from the Marriott Hotel in Munich, Germany. As you can imagine, Felix was pretty excited to hear about this opportunity from Stefan to work for Khaolak Scuba Adventures and also do some charity work in the Khao Lak Community. Stefan and Felix came up with a great plan to give orphans in the area the opportunity to train to become professional chefs.

 

We want to give something back to the beautiful Kingdom of Thailand where we are welcome and given the opportunity to live our dreams. We believe that the best way to do this is to invest in the education of local children.

Felix, welcome to the Khaolak Scuba Adventures team and we wish you many successes with your future trainees here!

By Stefan Kasweber

 

Message from John.

Hi everyone...My name is John and I'm the Retail Manager for All 4 Scuba; which is the retail arm of Khao Lak Scuba Adventures.

For the upcoming season we are significantly expanding the range off products that we stock.

These include equipment from Scubapro, Aqualung, OMS, Intova, Sub Gear, Uwatec, Sea and Sea and many many more.

With this expansion, we now have one of the largest displays of dive gear available in Southern Thailand !!!

So, whether you are looking  for snorkeling sets, a finger reel or a complete set of dive equipment; stop by and see us at 'All 4 Scuba'. A warm reception and expert advise awaits you.

We are located just above McDonalds on the main street in Khao Lak.

We are ready!

The offices are complete (nearly!)

Now that Annelies has arrived and started working with our full time office staff the team is complete. Alex has moved into the Tech Shop and it already looks great even though the signs have not arrived yet.

So let me introduce the official team to you:

Stefan Kasweber, General Manager, you know this Bavarian already J He doesn’t drink a lot of beer and he does smile a lot, are we really sure he is Bavarian?!

Lars Pohlmann, Operations Manager, we have another German to keep us super organized and on time for everything.

Annelies Fleers, Sales and Agent Representative. From The Netherlands and speaking many other European languages, this lady will keep all our agents happy.

Alex Leeming, Head Instructor and Tech Shop Manager. From England, supporting all the dive staff liaising with the PADI guys and in charge of Khao Laks’s first technical diving centre.

John, Retail Manager. Also from England, will be the “go-to-guy” in Khao Lak for everyone’s equipment needs.

Ryan Scheemaker, Web master. From The Netherlands, this is the man behind our beautiful new website and providing our essential database.

Bee, Manager’s Assistant. This lovely Thai lady keeps us all sane, liaises with the Thai staff and keeps, facebook and our blog up to date.

We all have brand new Macintosh computers to work from and are very excited about the new website and database that Ryan will deliver to us very soon. We are also working with a professional Apple Mac service engineer from Germany who will install our office network, server, firewalls etc.

I am VERY excited to announce that Ben and Simone Reymenants will continue their partnership with Khaolak Scuba Adventures and help me run the Tech centre. They will be opening their new office in Chalong this weekend despite delays to the work from the beautiful monsoon weather!

Of course these are not the only people working here in low season, Pa Faan and Oi are in accounting and Phi Toun and all the Thai taxi drivers are busy with building an extension out the back of the dive centre. 

Chris is also busy checking on the progress of the boat refurbishments having already worked hard to service all the dive equipment.

Come high season Phi Toun will be helping Lars with operations, with bookings in the main dive centre and the tech centre and with hotel advice for our guests. Chris will be the technical support offshore, so he is on all the boats making sure compressors blending systems and diving equipment are all in tip top condition.

So, we can’t wait to get all our dive staffs back to Khao Lak for a big celebration in October - we miss you guys! And we will need lots of tourists to take diving and snorkeling too.

See you all soon J

                   Story by Alex Leeming