Kids x 3 (17, 15, 11) will be finishing 6th form, doing GCSEs and finishing primary next year, so we are looking at a 3 week trip before they b@@@er off (theoretically)

Criteria
– cheap when you are there so not aus / us etc
– culturally / ethnically interesting
– would like to tie in with doing some diving

My thoughts are Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico (yucatan) or maybe Ecuador, or Costa Rica

Any other ideas?

Thanks

Thailand. Very cheap. Friendly people. Some great diving. Loads of history and culture. Good food. Very diverse country from beaches to jungles so 3 weeks will give you a good chance to see a lot.

About 5 years ago I would have recommended Southern Red Sea. Not so much now…

Cambodia / Laos / Other SE Asia?

I did my best ever dives in Fiji, but that was a) a long time ago and b) not cheap to get to.

I had a couple of rubbish dives in Vietnam but with that much coast – some must be better than we got

Only trouble with Equador is that you HAVE to go to the Galapagos the most amazing place, which can be an acceptable price if you book locally. Even a land based tour should be able to throw in a few dives, it wont be as good as the proper diving trips to the outer islands – but still good.

To clarify we booked our Galapagos tour when we were in Equador and it was many hundreds of pounds for the week but not thousands as it is booked from here.
The guide on our boat was dive qualified so while the other 10 guests only did the land trips, we sneaked in three or four dives on top of that.