Palong Wall

Divers drop onto the wall and follow it with the rock on one shoulder. The face is not uniform — cliff in some stretches, sloping reef in others, sand at its foot — and the deepest the site goes is around 21 m, so there is no need to work the profile hard. With currents typically mild you can hold position wherever the rock is worth looking at instead of being pushed along it, and Kuhl's stingrays rest on the sand near the reef edge.

The small caverns and swim-throughs cut into the rock are the feature here, and they run through the southern stretch towards Maya Bay. Blacktip reef sharks pass through the shallower water and hawksbill turtles turn up at almost any part of the reef; the species here are unusual enough compared with neighbouring sites to make it the better macro dive of the group. Because nothing is deep, gas usually decides the turnaround rather than depth, and the ascent happens over the same reef you have been diving.