Hi,
I just thought I would give my opinion about the dive school where I took my EFR-Rescue-Divemaster along with my girlfriend. To warn off potential students who may be considering parting with their hard earned cash to this company.
After meeting the main instructor on a previous trip to Phuket we decided to book the whole lot with him at the beginning of this year, something I now regret.
After getting some information, I got promised that we would each do at least 30 open water dives during our divemaster course and the 6 weeks we planned for it. I also emphasized the fact that our main reason for taking the courses was to get comfortable underwater and know what to do if a situation occurred, as my girlfriend and I were going to travel in Malaysia and Indonesia afterwards. That agreed, we assumed that most of the diving would be done together.
Before starting the course, we decided to go for a similan liveaboard (which we did with south siam divers and was great) and a day trip from Phuket, after a call from Sharkey Scuba offering us a good price for a day trip to Racha Yai we booked it with them. On that particular day, we went for 3 dives (2 in Racha Noi and 1 in Racha Yai). On the firt dive, the sea was a bit rough and I got sea sick, and therefore decided to skip the first dive. This to my surprise was later included in my DM course number dives even though I paid extra for it over and above the price of the course, also sharkey scuba told me it was my own fault I had missed the dive, therefore promoting diving with an illness, something which is abhorently stupid. I had a repeat illness a week later and choose not to dive that day, I was then told that this would be logged as 2 dives towards my DM course, I m not sure what the PADI recommendation is for this practice.
We started with our EFR and Rescue course, which went fine apart from the lack of planning, we asked for a detailed planning of the week, but everything was done on a day-to-day basis, with some late changes usually shifting morning "classrooms" sessions to the afternoon. The conditions for the classrooms were far from ideal as the classroom is actually the kitchen of the owner's house, with everything it comes with: other family/customers/instructors/trainees coming back from dives and chatting around you when taking exams. My girlfriend actually failed the physics exam (which the instructor openly gloats about on his website by comparing our performance with other DM performance - some people understand things, some people dont), she wasn t bothered about failing but really wanted to understand the basics, this she found was extremely stressful under the noisy conditions.
During the DM training, we found ourselves diving a lot separately, which I guess is fine,we have to be flexible, but we thought we agreed differently. One of my "problems" as a diver is that I consume a lot of air, I don't really consider this as a problem, but really felt like it was one when it came to taking customers out, as I was confined to having most of my dives at Kata Beach with the students (max 9 meters) when my girlfriend was out on day trips most days, and this seemed to be a surprise to the instructor when pointed out, proof he wasn't keeping track. I don't believe this is consistent with the information we had obtained prior to the course, telling us that the course was about diving in different conditions with different people. I also got told that my heavy breathing might be due to diving with my girlfriend as apparently she stresses me out (unbeknown to me), which I thought was ridiculous, but even if it were true, I would need to work on it diving with her instead of avoiding it as we are going to dive together for a long time.
We also found ourselves diving with a different instructor quite a few times, as, we were told, our instructor had an ear problem, but then we found out that Arsenal had been playing the night before or he had just been out, and our instructor was just simply hungover. A lot of times we would turn up in the afternoon for our "clasrooms" sessions at the office/house, and we found ourselves locked outside and had to shout from the street to wake our instructor up from an afternoon nap.
Also, during the course, my girlfriend found she had a problem with her reg, and our instructor offered very kindly to take it to DiveSupply for it to be checked, and considering mine had been checked at the same place as hers previously I decided to give mine in too. This ended costing us quite a bit, but it took about 2 weeks for our instructor to drop it off at DiveSupply , everyday we would turn up and see our regs still hanging there in the office , and we'd remind him to drop them off "Yes I'll drop them off tonight" ... a bit frustrating to dive with rental kit for almost all your DM course when you have your own equipment but it is left hanging due to laziness.
Towards the end of our course, we met with another DM Trainee who had to go back to America in the middle of her course and resumed her course then. For some reasons, we didn't get on with her. (This happens in life). The girl turned out to be the one who got "lost" at GBR a few months ago.
When this happened I decided to give my opinion of this story (and about her) as a lot of others did on this forum. I described how she went solo diving on one occasion telling us she was going to do her mapping project by herself (as she was told before), and also defending the fact that, from the photos I had seen, the thick suit she was wearing is what she always used to wear. I actually doubt she got herself lost on purpose, I don't believe she is that stupid.. But who knows what happened out there....
Anyway, after posting this message, I was amazed to find the following still on the gossip column of the website:
I just would like to know how someone can be rated as a superior diver.
After seeing this I decided to write to our sharkey scuba instructor to get some explanations, and also tell him what we thought of our course (as he had asked us to do). But up to this day I never received any response to this email or the previous ones I had sent with some news of our travels and asking for news of his family. I suppose our emails didn't include any bookings and therefore uninteresting.
I guess the goodbye he gave us was fake and he wasn't that sad to see us leave, this would also explain how only some customers get quoted on the sharkey scuba website.
Now I hope this message does not seem like a desperate attempt to get back at him, I live far away from him and have a very happy life. The point is that for a man who is suppose to be running a professional business he has become fixated upon defending this women on his company website, something that happened a while ago. Fair enough but why mention and compare the performance of my girlfriend and I to others? Is this what you want to pay for? Is diving quantifiable? hat makes a good diver? Is it the ability to pass your DM exams 100%?
When running a business in diving, I presume standards should be high and professional, when considering a dive operation in Phuket (for which there are hundreds) would you be happy with the standard of care that we have recieved? Would you put up with a company that supports idle chit chat and gossip, after all you are there for a holiday, without hassle, lies and petty mindness. Just an opportunity to get in the water and forget about the world above....
We have dived with a number of operations in Phuket and would recommend scandanavian divers or dive asia for courses and day trips, (after all if you go through sharkey scuba you end up on these boats anyway as they don t have a boat of their own) These 2 other diver operators give more value for money to my personal opinion, although it is not a "personal" service, you will get out on the boat more often (which is what matters) and won't be at the whim of the owners moods....
I am sure that some customers were happy about diving with sharkey scuba, as we were the previous times, but I guess we sticked around a bit too long.
In the end we passed our DM and we went to sipadan (wey heeeeyy)...
Jim.
