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 its really not our problem that he didnt 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...