Do you have any dive travel regrets?

[RainPilot]

Off topic a tiny bit, but with my students who want to film their dives I recommend the following:

Get extended battery pack for the Go-pro
Mount on top of shoulder strap of BC
Turn on before going in the water
FORGET IT!!
Turn off once back in the boat

Upshot? No additional task loading as you cant see it or work the buttons
We often get stuff filmed that we didn't even notice on the dive
If you work out the correct position on the shoulder, it forces correct trim because if you aren't horizontal, you get an hour of video of the surface.

 

[NYCNaiad]

The day after I posted this thread originally, I wrote up an article on the subject & then submitted it to Scuba Diver Life. It was just published! Thought you might enjoy, but please be kind. (It's nerve wracking especially since this was my first ever dive-related article....and no, this wasn't for money, just fun.)

Top Nine Dive Travel Regrets

 

[Scubagolf]

1. Not starting to dive at a younger age (50.)
2. Spending a week at Reef House Resort - the diving was good, but the accommodations, food, everything else was disappointing. My buddy/wife hasn't let me forget it 5 years later, which is why this place is on my list.

 

[Dan]

1. Place that is thick of sand flies (noseeum).
2. Saw no whaleshark in supposedly known for & came there for.
3. Went diving with an unknow dive operator.

The last one is quite an experience that is not worth repeating. I have no choice to look for another dive operator. The old dive operator who was recommended by others & I had gone with, 2 years previously, had sold his business to this new dive operator, including the deposit that I already gave to the old dive operator. So, my group were stuck with this new dive operator.

We went in with 2 boats, the girl's boat (where all the woman divers with woman DM were in) and the boy's boat (where the man divers with man DM were in). There were not much of briefing, the DM just said, "there is an arch there that we'll go under", once everyone was ready, we all went down. He went down with speargun.

The arch was pretty deep, about 110'. It was pretty long of finning to get there. Then he saw something. He asked me to wait for a few seconds, went under a ledge and came back with a fish on the stake & asked me to hold his net bag so he could shove the fish into. Again, this was at 110' deep. I ran to a couple minutes deco at the end.

On the second day, the captain couldn't find the wreck where we were supposed to dive into. There were no GPS on the boat, just fish locator & radio (at least they had the radio). Both boats were spreaded out to find the infamous wreck. The boy's boat captain thought he located the wreck after 10 minutes of wondering on the sea and asked everyone to jump in. We went down to about 60' to the bottom & found no wreck, but rocks & sands, so we went back up. When we were back to the surface, I saw the girl's boat was about a size of cigaret lighter & their captain radioed the boy's boat captain that they located the real wreck. So, my speargunner DM had a bright idea, instead of us getting back up on the boat, asked our captain to throw a rope so the boat could "tow" us to the right spot about a mile away. I was at the end of the rope, unfortunately, so the weight of everyone hanging on the rope (5 of us) was enough to keep me from floating with snorkel. I was on the deepest end of the tow basically. I had to fin up to the surface to breathe, while holding on the rope at one hand and my camera on the other hand, while being towed. Finally after a couple of minutes struggling to breathe, one of my diving buddies, after observing my head popping in & out of the water, yelled to the DM to stop this nonsense. We all took our time to get back on the boat. We lost about 30 minutes of monkeying around with this circus on surface & wasting about half of the tank air. On the bright side, our short dive time in the wreck was fantastic with tons of fish and with 22 hours no fly time still remaining.

Unfortunately that was not the end of our diving adventure of the day. All of the monkeying around to find the wreck, was wasting our "just enough" fuel on the boats. On our way back to the resort (about an hour of boat ride), the girl's boat ran out of gas. So, our captain said, "no problema, we tow their boat". After about 15 minutes of towing the girl's boat, our boat ran out of gas. So, we were floating on the sea. Our captain called his shop to bring some fuel back to our boats.

In the meantime, a fancy fishing boat came by and rescued the girls & took them back to our resort, but just the girls, not the boys. We were not pretty enough to hangout with the fishermen. We waited another 90 minutes for the mobile gas station to come over.

When the mobile gas station arrived, it was a pretty interesting scene to see how they transfer the fuel from the plastic 200 gallon tank to the boat fuel tank. The captain did the good-old day method of syphoning the gasoline with a hose using his mouth.

In the end we, the boys were about 3 hour late getting back & were so hungry. I could easily devour a meal in a minute like my puppy dog by dinner time.

 

[Centrals]

The only regret is that I can't dive more often because of age and retirement.

 

[chillyinCanada]

1. Place that is thick of sand flies (noseeum).
2. Saw no whaleshark in supposedly known for & came there for.
3. Went diving with an unknow dive operator.

The last one is quite an experience that is not worth repeating. I have no choice to look for another dive operator. The old dive operator who was recommended by others & I had gone with, 2 years previously, had sold his business to this new dive operator, including the deposit that I already gave to the old dive operator. So, my group were stuck with this new dive operator.

We went in with 2 boats, the girl's boat (where all the woman divers with woman DM were in) and the boy's boat (where the man divers with man DM were in). There were not much of briefing, the DM just said, "there is an arch there that we'll go under", once everyone was ready, we all went down. He went down with speargun.

The arch was pretty deep, about 110'. It was pretty long of finning to get there. Then he saw something. He asked me to wait for a few seconds, went under a ledge and came back with a fish on the stake & asked me to hold his net bag so he could shove the fish into. Again, this was at 110' deep. I ran to a couple minutes deco at the end.

On the second day, the captain couldn't find the wreck where we were supposed to dive into. There were no GPS on the boat, just fish locator & radio (at least they had the radio). Both boats were spreaded out to find the infamous wreck. The boy's boat captain thought he located the wreck after 10 minutes of wondering on the sea and asked everyone to jump in. We went down to about 60' to the bottom & found no wreck, but rocks & sands, so we went back up. When we were back to the surface, I saw the girl's boat was about a size of cigaret lighter & their captain radioed the boy's boat captain that they located the real wreck. So, my speargunner DM had a bright idea, instead of us getting back up on the boat, asked our captain to throw a rope so the boat could "tow" us to the right spot about a mile away. I was at the end of the rope, unfortunately, so the weight of everyone hanging on the rope (5 of us) was enough to keep me from floating with snorkel. I was on the deepest end of the tow basically. I had to fin up to the surface to breathe, while holding on the rope at one hand and my camera on the other hand, while being towed. Finally after a couple of minutes struggling to breathe, one of my diving buddies, after observing my head popping in & out of the water, yelled to the DM to stop this nonsense. We all took our time to get back on the boat. We lost about 30 minutes of monkeying around with this circus on surface & wasting about half of the tank air. On the bright side, our short dive time in the wreck was fantastic with tons of fish and with 22 hours no fly time still remaining.

Unfortunately that was not the end of our diving adventure of the day. All of the monkeying around to find the wreck, was wasting our "just enough" fuel on the boats. On our way back to the resort (about an hour of boat ride), the girl's boat ran out of gas. So, our captain said, "no problema, we tow their boat". After about 15 minutes of towing the girl's boat, our boat ran out of gas. So, we were floating on the sea. Our captain called his shop to bring some fuel back to our boats.

In the meantime, a fancy fishing boat came by and rescued the girls & took them back to our resort, but just the girls, not the boys. We were not pretty enough to hangout with the fishermen. We waited another 90 minutes for the mobile gas station to come over.

When the mobile gas station arrived, it was a pretty interesting scene to see how they transfer the fuel from the plastic 200 gallon tank to the boat fuel tank. The captain did the good-old day method of syphoning the gasoline with a hose using his mouth.

In the end we, the boys were about 3 hour late getting back & were so hungry. I could easily devour a meal in a minute like my puppy dog by dinner time.

Why were the men and women split onto different boats? I've never experienced sych a thing before even in traditionally Muslim areas.

Sounds like a horrible trip but not one you could have avoided by prior knowledge. Not so much a trip you regret taking but more of a trip that turned out to be disappointing, yes?

 

[Dan]

Why were the men and women split onto different boats? I've never experienced sych a thing before even in traditionally Muslim areas.

Sounds like a horrible trip but not one you could have avoided by prior knowledge. Not so much a trip you regret taking but more of a trip that turned out to be disappointing, yes?

Yes. I was there in 2011. The fiasco was in 2013. Went back there again in 2015 with different dive operator obviously. It's Cabo Pulmo, Mexico. It's a bucket list place to go diving in my book. Check out my dive buddy tunneling through schooling jackfish with his short & T-shirt instead of wetsuit, above.

Why the boys & girls were splitted? It just worked out that way at the time. The stars might have been aligned in such away that the girls left their hubbies behind. So did the boys with their wifes. Some of the wifes were non divers, so they were happily chilling in the resort pool. Probably shooting the breeze with some other tourist & locals. It's funny how life goes sometime. I just go with the flow.

 

[muzzon]

Interesting article. I think my biggest regret in general would be not doing an activity while travelling because of money. I hate how I've cheaped out on some experiences, even though I could've afforded it. Diving is included in this.

I thought the part in the article about giving money/gifts to the locals is a major issue. It seems pretty well understood that people begging are often involved in some sort of scam or the money is used in some other way than intended; I always cringe when I see people donating stuff. Yes, many of the locals in less-developed countries don't make much by our standards, but it's all relevant and most survive just fine.

I remember in particular a kid that latched on to me in Cambodia asking for food. He was so persistent I finally gave in and tried to give him the equivalent of $3, basically just to go away. He refused and said he just wanted food. At that time I started to believe he was sincere, so I went to buy him some noodles from a street vendor. He refused again and demanded that he I take him to this nearby little restaurant and nowhere else. At that point, I put it together that his parents probably owned the restaurant and sent out their kids to bring in customers. I would bet that if I did buy him a meal there, that as soon as I left they'd probably dump the food right back in pot to serve again.

I also did some research for a paper in school. A lot of those programs that advertise "go to Africa or South America and help build homes for the natives!!" are borderline scams. They charge a lot to "volunteer" and take you to a tribe or wherever, where you help build a mud hut and feel really good about yourself. Then as soon as you leave, they tear it down, so the next group can come in and do the same thing. The homes built by a bunch of Westerners are usually not up to standard anyways, they wouldn't hold up through a storm. The tour organizer gets the majority of the money and then pays some to the local group.

It's important to use your own wits, but just be aware you very well may be doing more harm than good or just fuelling an ongoing scam.

 

[Wingy]

The Cambodia kid thing is hard to deal with. Its a whole other conversation but many of the feel good programs abroad etc are scams as are sadly way too many orphanages - do your research - not just a Cambodian problem. The kids in Cambodia are often experts at manipulation...I got followed around the killing fields by a poor boy with the most mournful pleading I have no money, I have nothing, my brother have nothing - unfortunately at the time I had nothing either other than three bags of toys and pencils and books id dragged through 5 countries waiting in the tuktuk. The boy and the other kids who beg there were waiting at my tuktuk being swatted away by my driver who I told off for hitting them....until they spotted the bags of toys and swarmed over the top of him. The kid who had been telling me he had nothing ended up actually getting nothing because the other kids tore the bags open and scarpered with everything before he could get his arm into the tuktuk. He looked at me and said.....Well just give me your ring then! you not nice person!

Suitably admonished and feeling about 1 inch tall I took a bag of rice to an orphanage (NEVER give money and never sign the guestbook and let them show you around - you will be very much lighter in the pocket by the time you get out) and took it into the kitchen and opened it so it couldnt be resold. Thinking at least these kids will eat tonight I took my spoiled not nice person to the FCC for dinner where I spotted the you not nice person kid with a bunch of others divvying up the spoils of the day with a man who obviously had these kids working for him. A few months later I was horrified to see the orphanage I took rice to on an Al Jazeera doco as one exposed as a scam where kids were either false orphans or in the sex trade.

I like to do random things to help. Ive painted a boat with an old man in Cambodia who looked at me like WHY are you painting my boat, moved a shop in Thailand, got in line and passed sandbags around in Laos and jumped up on the back of a unicef truck and thrown bags of rice in Sumatra. I also helped a woman hanging out her washing with a screaming baby under her arm by jumping the fence and taking the baby so she had both hands free. After she realised I wasnt abducting her child she smiled gratefully and we had a lovely few minutes together without a word being exchanged.

If you want to help, theres ways of doing it everywhere just by opening your eyes.

One thing I always travel with is bubbles....its an international language. Stick a $2 sealed bubble blowing kit in your pocket so when you see those kids without a smile, whip out your bubbles and start blowing bubbles and watch the wonder and laughter. Even funnier when you have adults come to chase bubbles and pop them when they are wearing nothing but a nambas

 

[muzzon]

Hey Wingy, I always like your stories.

I didn't intend to say that the volunteer abroad "scams" were strictly a Cambodian thing. As I said, the majority of the programs I see are located in Africa or South America. Actually the one I focused on was located in Tanzania. I know a girl who swore by volunteering internationally, until she returned to a tribe in Tanz, less than a year after she volunteered there. All the stuff she built she found was taken down. I was like: "I hate to say I told you so, but...".

I agree, if you just keep aware and actually read the situation, you can tell how you can provide a bit of happiness. Whenever I see a small soccer ball for sale - wherever I am - I usually buy it: 1) 'cause I want to play with it myself; and 2) 'cause you should see the look on the kid's faces when I pull that out of my bag. There's no scamming there.