Review of 5d/5n Burma Liveaboard Dive Trip with AICD (Based in Ranong, Thailand)

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"The 8th of April has come and gone and we have heard no further word from Preben. C'mon Preben, I'm not on a witch hunt here but I think there were some serious allegations levelled against you and your company, and you have made a few worrying comments yourself. I honestly think it would be in your best interest to address these issues."

I think the reason for Preben not replyng is that he has just arrived home form a 7 day trip to Surin and surroundings. I kow this because my daughter was onboard and reported home of having a great trip with all agreements held (transport, accomodation, visa run to Burma, etc)

Thanks to Aquamarin for hitting the nail on the head.

But a very interresting discussion now when the personal stuff is under control :wink:
 
I always find it interesting to read threads like this, especially those in which the operator also takes the time to post.

Guitarfish, I'm very sorry to hear of your unpleasant experience. If I paid good money to be on a liveaboard with conditions as you describe, I'd have been livid. We just returned from Thailand where we were on a liveaboard in the Similans with South Siam Divers and I have nothing but praise for them. But in a way we were just lucky. When you book a liveaboard you only have what you can find on their website, other websites and the recommendation of other divers to base your opinion on. It's only once you're on the boat that you really know what it is like. For this reason I get very upset with operators who sell one thing and give you something else.

Aidc, thank you for taking the time to respond in this thread. I'd have to be honest though that your response, so far, hasn't really restored your image as a professional organisation, at least not in my opinion.

Would you mind answering a few simple questions?

1. Do you consider it acceptable that someone is required to sleep in a cabin from where the diesel engine is visible through the floor boards and which smells of diesel fumes?

2. Do you consider it acceptable that a DM continues a dive with half of the dive group missing? From what I understand the DM either knew that the two divers surfaced for extra weights but decided to leave them behind and continue the dive or the DM didn't know what happened to them and decided to continue the dive. Both scenarios sound ludicrous to me.

3. Do you consider it acceptable for a diver in your group to sever a starfish's leg? From your response it sounded like you do.

4. Under what sort of conditions would you consider offering some sort of compensation to your customers? I'm just wondering about stuff like cabins with slits in the floor that opens up to the engine room and a vessel breaking down such that the customers lose 2 days of their holiday. I would find it hard to convince myself (or others) to dive with an operator that does not consider those conditions to be grounds for compensating their customers with more than just a verbal apology.

Sorry it took some time to give a response. We are quite busy and I just came back last night from a 7 day trip.

In regard to the cabin, it’s not a crack in the floor but a hatch we have under the madras so we can inspect the tanks behind the engine. It’s true you can see light true the hatch if you take away the madras.
I just spend 7 days in the same cabin and had absolutely no problem with smell of fuel. Ok it’s noisier when the engine is running and we will try to correct that with a double wall and floor for the next season. That should also help against the smell of fuel, if any.

I trust my Dive master and Instructor 100% and we have made a comment on that before.
I have dived in Burma the last 11 years (6 years with AIDC) and never had a dive accident with our customers, so I think we can conclude that we do it in a safe way.

About the Starfish it’s was actually from an old video and it’s not something our divers do, but me. With over 2000 dives I did it 2 times, like it or not…
To pull out a Moray there is stocked in a hole with his head, is that a bad thing?

We paid compensation to everybody if they had extra cost because of the delay.
One group had made a hotel reservation on Phuket and we paid for 2 nights, same story as if you book a live aboard. We also paid the cost for a taxi driver because he had to take one night in Ranong.
Remember pipefish only paid 7.420,-THB including entry fee for the trip and the normal price is 37.000,-THB. I will call that a very fair deal… And it’s really not our problem that he didn’t make travel insurance for his first booking.

Preben
 
OK, thanks for the reply, Preben. There are always two sides to the story and I'm glad we got to hear the other side as well. I appreciate when people are honest and frank about unpleasant experiences they've had because you will never read about those on the operator's web site but on the other hand, if someone registers on ScubaBoard with the sole purpose of slating an operator, never to be heard from again, I can't help but to question his motives.

Your answer certainly puts things in a different light and, while I don't agree with some of your comments (cutting off a startfish limb, regardless of how infrequent and pulling a Moray from its hiding hole), I can see a new picture emerging, one which is a fair bit different than the one that GuitarFish painted.

I trust that people who read this thread will make up their own minds.
 
That guitarfish paid only this small amount for a 5d/n liveaboard in burma is really a very different light in this case. I trust Preben and his divemaster also 100 % and we too got compensation in a free drive to phuket and hotel accomodation when we have been too late on the promised return date.
Gerd
 
The amount of 7.420,-THB per diver was the "upgrade" to the 5d/n Burma trip from the 5d/n Similan trip, which we had originally booked. The total cost of our liveaboard "vacation" was more than 30.000,- THB per diver.
However, given our experience, and as I have already said, I would not take this trip again even if I was paid for it.
 
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Remember pipefish only paid 7.420,-THB including entry fee for the trip and the normal price is 37.000,-THB. I will call that a very fair deal…
Preben

See the correct price Guitarfish paid in his reply below. Obviously, he paid considerably more..

The amount of 7.420,-THB per diver was the "upgrade" to the 5d/n Burma trip from the 5d/n Similan trip, which we had originally booked. The total cost of our liveaboard "vacation" was more than 30.000,- THB per diver..

Thanks for clarifying, Guitarfish.

Any idea why you had such a bad experience and a few others have had such a positive experience?

Why such a different in experiences for divers on the same trip, do you think?
 
As I have pointed out beforehand, some divers will have had a significantly better on-board experience due to the cabin situation. The danish divers on the upper deck would have had a good time in this regard.
We were the only customers forced to stay in a cabin that stank of diesel fuel. Both cabins 5 and 6 have this problem, we had cabin 5, and the divemaster / instructor couple had to share cabin 6. The AIDC owner claims this is due to a latch. In fact, the floorboards are so wide apart that one can look at the engine through slits.
The AIDC owner told us while we were on board that the smell is not that bad. We suggested to him that if this is the case, he as the captain might ask some of the other customers to switch their cabin with ours, so that the little smell there is would at least be shared evenly and so that we would get the chance to sleep for a change. He refused. Obviously he did not want to have other unhappy customers.
Note also that most other customers were Danish, like the owner, and that both upper deck cabins were assigned to Danish couples who had dived on the MV Thai Sea before. And this although I was told in my intitial booking of the Similan trip that we could have one of the upper deck cabins.
It is good to hear that the owner intends to improve the cabin situation in the next season. Given my overall experience, will all issues clearly listed above in my initial post, and the lack of compensation for all the trouble we had to go through on this trip, I would nevertheless not recommend this operation to anybody in their right mind (unless, of course, they are friends with the owner).
 
Ok, again… It’s very clear in your Booking Confirmation that if you make cancellation 2 weeks or less before the trip the full amount will be charged.
I made you a very fair deal that you only had to pay 7.540,- and then you could join a Burma trip instead. In the booking Confirmation it also say that you should make a travel insurance that cover Scuba diving and it would also cover in cases like this where you have to cancel a trip.
I only gave you this deal because I wanted to help you. If you want I can put in your booking confirmation and our email conversation?
Until now I didn’t mention that you actually also canceled the Burma trip after you made the booking, because of reasons that I don’t want to put public.
Just for your information… Under the floor in the cabin, yes we have another hatch where we have a storage room for beer…

It’s ok that you don’t want recommend us for anybody, but as I know it’s was your first live aboard so who will you recommend?
I guess nobody; because you will always be an unhappy customer there only can see it from one side.

Preben
AIDC
 
When I first read this thread, I was tending to believe that Guitarfish/pipefish was maybe a bit of a whiner who felt "left out" because the majority of the other divers on the boat were Danish and no doubt speaking in Danish and felt that the previous customers were getting preferential treatment.

Then i followed a link to this thread and came across those two obviously phony reviews by what i believe to be AIDC staff. There's nothing that pisses off us non industry types more than phony reviews by industry. Yes, i understand it as a marketing "tactic" but it's still dirty and I've called out phony reviews here on SB before.

Note to industry: If you're going to write up phony reviews, be critical of something, even something minor, like the food was cold or the beds were hard, or the captain wouldn't stop farting. Something, anything otherwise readers like me are going to view those glowing reports with a jaundiced eye.

Then there's this

AIDC:
Remember pipefish only paid 7.420,-THB including entry fee for the trip and the normal price is 37.000,-THB. I will call that a very fair deal… And it’s really not our problem that he didn’t make travel insurance for his first booking.

See, now I'm thinking that guitar/pipefish only paid 7420 THB for the whole trip, that's quite the discount and for that ind of price I'll sleep ON the fuel tank and eat nothing but rice. But, as outlined in the OP, that was the price for the upgrade.

I can't say Burma/Myanmar is on my list of destinations. Not only is it ruled by a scumbag military dictatorship which I refuse to support, they're also charging $170 entrance fee to a "marine park" that I've heard more than one report of dynamite fishing in. Oh yay.

So why do I care, above and beyond the phony review issue ?

I've been to Thailand a bunch of times and never done a Similan liveaboard. I was planning on it last year, but I got attacked by a dog, so that pretty much transformed my dive trip into a beach trip. I'm not a beachy kind of guy, so all I ended up doing was eating.

I travel alone and most, if not all operators want to charge me a "single supplement"
Fine, I say, but if the boat isn't full, I'm going to resent paying that so I didn't book anything, planning instead to hit the docks at Koh Lak with my dive bag and a fist full of Baht. "Make me an offer."

Then, somehow, I ran across AIDC's website and noticed their awesome pricing structure. Thinking, this is the place for me, I popped AIDC and Ranong as my liveaboard destination of choice.

But I went to the Bay Islands instead...
 
Well spoken Stout. What cheeses me off a bit is that someone creates a profile on SB for the sole purpose of writing a scathing review. Then a bunch of first time poster come out in defense of the operator. For the most part, this thread has been fought between a bunch of people who have contributed in no other way to ScubaBoard.

For one, I can't help but wonder how many of these first time posters are simply sock puppets but secondly ScubaBoard is not the place for smear campaigns or fake endorsements. I'm sorry but that won't do. If you want to be a part of the SB community you'll be welcomed with open arms. But if you come here only to fight your personal battles then you're not welcome. Let's hope all these new subscribers now become long standing members who offer lots of info and ideas to the forum. C'mon guys, prove to us that you are not sock puppets.
 
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