Our gap year internship includes all courses from beginner up to PADI Divemaster.

You'll also receive all required diving manuals, your own full set of scuba equipment to keep, unlimited diving during the internship and student materials (for example dive planning tables) plus all application fees.

Read more: Steps for PADI Divemaster Internship

Getting a Visa for your Scuba Diving Internship in Thailand

Lets now take a look at the visa regulations in Thailand & how to get the best possible visa for your diving internship, plus discuss some frequently asked questions:

If you make no prior arrangements & fly straight into Thailand you'll be issued with a 30 day 'Visa On Arrival'. Since the duration of the internship is several months you'll make 'visa runs' in order to remain in Thailand.

This means crossing the border out of Thailand, then re-entering however over a land boarder the visa which is currently issued is a 15 day tourist visa. It takes one and a half days of constant traveling to get to Burma and back and costs around 2,000 baht. Alternatively if you go to the Thai Embassy/consulate in somewhere like Malaysia, Lao or Cambodia you can apply for a 60 day tourist visa.

This is ok, but there is a cheaper and easier way of doing things.

It can work out much better to apply for a one year Non - Immigrant visa (currently the favoured visa for coming to undertake dive training in Thailand is the category B type, however the favoured visa does seem to change on a fairly regular basis so it is worth checking with the embassy/consulate). This allows you to remain in Thailand for 90 days at a time, only making a visa run every three months.

The best way to get this is to apply for it at a Thai consulate in your country of origin.

You'll need a couple of documents from us (which we e-mail to you once you have paid your deposit for the internship as we are confirming that you are coming to take the training with us and so essentially acting as your guarantour for the visa). There is an application fee but it works out much better than going down the 'visa on arrival' route.

You need to contact your local Thai consulate for the exact fee, but expect it to be a little over 130 US dollars.

Our advice is don't leave things till the last minute - sometimes these things take a while to organize so be proactive, however you can't apply too early either as you have to enter Thailand to activeate your Non-Immigrant visa within 90 days of it being issued.