Normally at tourist location everybody is waiting to fleece tourists but this was not such. Very well organized trip with decent prices and good services. We did snorkeling and scuba diving. It was our first experience and we loved it. Not too cheap but not too expensive. Value for money and you will not be disappointed.

We would recommend this place to first timers. We saw corals for the first time and we are very happy we did the trip.

Do not book the tours online. go there and explore and negotiate a little bit.

I'm not sure why prices differ from post to post here, but I paid 140RM per person, which seems to be the lower end, but it's still a rip-off. We were herded like cattle to the ferry, which was full so there must have been more than 100 people easily, dumped onto the beach of Pulau Payar and on that small sliver of a beach, we were left there for FOUR HOURS (11am-3pm). The waters were already crowded with our group but half an hour or so later, TWO or THREE MORE groups joined us. To give you a better picture of what that felt like, imagine James Cameron's Titanic scene after the ship's gone down. Before everyone froze to death. I was fluttering around with I'm sure, more than 200 people in the water, bobbing around in their life jackets, screaming.

I'll admit that some of the fish were pretty impressive but there were no real corals to be seen here. I saw baby sharks, a huge garoupa and a sole sea anemone with a single 'nemo' in it towards the end, when all the sand that had been kicked up by everyone started to settle.

Oh and lunch was a room-temperature box of chicken, fried rice and fries. I couldn't enter the bathroom there because I thought I was going in to wash up but instead, the stink of piss sucker-punched me and knocked the breath out of me.

You might be impressed if you have never been snorkeling before but if you've had some experience before, don't bother with this company (though I doubt other companies are less of a tourist mill either).