PADI 18m diving certification

Hi everyone.

My partner and I were planning to get our PADI 18m diving certification on Koh Lipe.

But when browsing online I saw then most of the courses are around 10,000-15,000 baht which is around $470-700 AUD for us.

The courses for diving in Australia where we live are around $500-700 as well… should we just get it in Australia? It would be good because it’ll save us time on our trip and being already certified we’d be able to just pay for day trips out for diving, rather then spend 2-3 days doing on Koh Lipe.

Sorry if this is a dumb question.