Trip Report: Land-based diving from Peleliu and Koror (Palau)

[conecommander]

I just arrived home from Palau a week ago. My wife and I did 24 dives total during our two weeks there. I dove with Neco Marine the entire time and it was excellent. Not a single major complaint. However, my few experiences with Sam's was awefull.

Firstly, Neco is cheaper, has better boats, better guides, better facility, better food, the list could go on....

We booked with the Neco after doing some research and comparing prices. Admittedly, when talking to Neco the day after arriving they mentioned we would go where the guide and the boat wanted. This didn't sit too well with me because I wanted to do the dives I wanted to do. Hours upon hours of research went into compiling a 25+ dive dream-sheet. I was not about to dive the same dumb site 3 times in a row because some other multi person tourist group wanted to go there.

We decided to check out Sam's just to see what they were all about. What a joke. The places is situated well off the beaten path, and most of the staff seemed incompetent. Trying to get a staff member to tell us about dive prices and the different kayak trips was close to impossible. After leaving that place I did not have a very good outlook on my next two weeks in Palau.

One I started diving however, I was pleasantly surprised. The guides really did their best to take you where you wanted to go. Something that makes a huge impact on diving there is the tides. Dive sites will change dramatically depending on incoming or outgoing tide. If you have a must do dive, let your guide know the first day so he can work it in before the end of the trip. Fortunately having so many dives we were able to do almost everything we wanted. Our guide Brad was awesome. He gave us the skinny on our list and told us which ones he thought were really good and gave us suggestions on a few different ones. The other guide currently at Neco is Bert. A previous underwater photographer with loads of experience, he knows his way around quite well. Brad had an awesome knack for finding the cool fish and small things like nudibranchs.

After the diving was concluded we tired to setup a kayaking trip with Neco at the last minute but they could not get enough people. We went ahead and booked with Sam's for the Ulong trip. At the time nobody else was supposed to be kayaking on Friday, and there is a minimum of 4 people for the trip to go. On Thursday we called and they confirmed that there were enough people and they would pick us up at 7:45am. At about 8:05am that morning with nobody at the hotel we decided to call. Surprise surprise, they had no idea what was going on. After waiting a bit they said someone had left to get us. About 10 minutes later (our hotel was about a 3-5 minute drive) they the hotel lobby phone saying that a driver had left. Wow.... At this point we were extremely glad we chose the Neco to dive through. Little did we know the fun would continue. After arriving we tried to find out what to do or where to go but the staff in the office had no idea. Finally after finding the guide we mentioned our trip and he said that they were booked for Long Lake and not Ulong. The guide quickly picked up on our frustrations and was very apologetic. He said there is often disconnect between the office staff and guides. When asking why we did not have the choice of destinations because we booked first we were told the other people would not be able to do Ulong. Come to find out there were two young kids with their parents. This really pissed me off we contemplated not even going. We ended up going on the trip and it turned out to be ok. Just not what we wanted to do. For some reason that day I was really hungry and looked forward to my bento box lunch for a couple hours. Once it came time for lunch though, I again was disappointed. The meal did not hold a candle to the Neco's. Sam's had a larger selection, but I will take better taste and more portions any day of the week.

Well I am being nagged to give my wife back her laptop, so maybe I will do a more detailed write up on the actual diving later.

My advice, steer clear of Sam's. I cannot comment on any other diving outfit, but Neco was awesome. They are the only possible reason I would not do a live-aboard on my next trip to Palau.

 

[catfish]

My wife and I were in Palau in April and did 2 weeks of diving with Sam's. All I can say is, never again. As others have stated, the office staff is not very good, there is absolute chaos every morning, and in our experience most of the dive guides were pretty darn useless. Everything in Palau lived up to the hype, except for Sam's tours, which turned out to be just another cattle dive operation.

 

[Travelnsj]

My wife and I were in Palau in April and did 2 weeks of diving with Sam's. All I can say is, never again. As others have stated, the office staff is not very good, there is absolute chaos every morning, and in our experience most of the dive guides were pretty darn useless. Everything in Palau lived up to the hype, except for Sam's tours, which turned out to be just another cattle dive operation.

I have dove with Neco, Dive Palau and mostly with Sams over the last 10 years. I agree it is chaotic in the AM but always gets worked out in the 200+ dives I have done with Sams...perhaps a couple of times I got frustrated over 10 years...LOL....but I find it hard to believe the "dive guides were pretty darn useless" unless the dive staff changed since March. JC, Shirley, Dexter, Daniel and Jim who I dove with in March (3 I have dove with in the past) were the best dive staff I have dove with just about anywhere. And I have dove from the Red Sea to Malaysia and many many places in between.

 

[catfish]

I have dove with Neco, Dive Palau and mostly with Sams over the last 10 years. I agree it is chaotic in the AM but always gets worked out in the 200+ dives I have done with Sams...perhaps a couple of times I got frustrated over 10 years...LOL....but I find it hard to believe the "dive guides were pretty darn useless" unless the dive staff changed since March. JC, Shirley, Dexter, Daniel and Jim who I dove with in March (3 I have dove with in the past) were the best dive staff I have dove with just about anywhere. And I have dove from the Red Sea to Malaysia and many many places in between.

Shirley, Dexter, and Jim: useless. Three no personality individuals that seemed to hate their jobs. Daniel was alot of fun. Would dive with him anytime. Just my opinion. We have also dove all over the world with many different dive operators. Sam's is nowhere near the top. We don't have to agree, buy my opinion (and that's all it is) is just as valid as yours.

 

[pazz]

I have stayed on Peleliu, dove with Peleliu Divers and had a great experience. It was nice being closer to some of Palau's best dive sites. My first dive on Blue Corner was with Godwin (the owner) and one other diver. As we were surfacing the boats from Koror were arriving. I also had one of my most thrilling dives when Godwin and I dove the Peleliu Express together (glad we had a good boatman). The Peleliu battlefield tour was also good.

I have also stayed on Koror, dove with Sam's and had a great experience.

Maybe the great diving of Palau has something to do with my experiences.........

 

[bubba105]

Forgive me but it sounds as though some of your rant here is a bit unfair & maybe just because you're a little out of sorts over the scheduling snafu.

When I got back to Koror, one of the divers at Sam's said she had heard rumors that MAML was "a kamikaze dive operation", which I think is entirely unfair. Peleliu Corner, which includes Peleliu Express, Peleliu Cut and Yellow Wall depending on currents, is an advanced dive with currents that were twice as strong as those I experienced at the popular Blue Corner. Similarly many of their Korean and Japanese clients only have three or four days in Palau and do 4 dives a day on air, pushing their no deco limits. The difficulty level of the dives and the decisions of some of their customers doesn't affect my impression of the MAML staff in Peleliu as being very experienced and highly skilled and the gear as being adequate. The operation simply juggled my decision to do three dives with another diver doing two dives and two Korean divers doing four all in the same day on the same boat out of South Dock without comment. It should note that one of the divers with Sam's who did Peleliu Express while I was there was sucked down to 110' after leaving the 60' corner, so it's by no means a MAML issue.

You can't possibly be suggesting here that it is Sam's fault when someone diving using their facilities makes a statement. Also, getting sucked down is no joke, been there, done that, not fun. Again, why mention Sam's

I had heard so many good things about Sam's that I truly expected my comment on their operation to be "As expected." However, I found their utter lack of organization to be rivaled only by the appalling ineptitude of some of their clients. The first day's lunch, they provided me with a main portion I had specifically said I could not eat when I made my reservation, and subsequently reminded them about. Since the only non-3 tank day I had with Sam's was to include Jellyfish Lake, I had assumed from the fact that the boat only had two tanks per person that this was what was going on. However, Sam's had apparently just lost my itinerary and put me on a plain two-tank dive, which I had not requested at all. (I could have caught this mistake myself if a member of staff had bothered to explain the scheduling board in the main area of Sam's, rather than simply telling me to get on a boat and wait.) In any case, I ended up losing a dive in Palau because of the scheduling snafu. The next day, the third "dive" was Chandelier Cave, which was worth doing once but strikes me a bit of a toy dive (35 minutes with a max depth of ~30' with much of time being a description of the cave in the surface pockets) that would be more appropriately used for a fourth dive following a more challenging real dive. However, because all the boats return to Sam's dock after the second dive, a third dive has to be close by, rather than putting all the divers wanting three dives in one boat and having them stay out at the 'real' dive sites before heading in. In any case, I found that my schedule was still utterly twisted when I returned to the dock the second day and I had to fix it again. I thought it couldn't prove to be any less organized, when Sam's outright forgot to pick up me and two other divers at our hotel on the third morning, so we had to call them after 15 minutes. This wouldn't have been so bad if the two other divers weren't new on island so had to fill out paperwork and rent gear, which delayed the dive boat departure at least 25-30 minutes.

Anyone with money can book a trip. If you think changing operations is going to make this a bulletproof issue, have at it. Inept divers are everywhere these days. As far as 25-30 minutes, you've got to learn to lighten up, you're on island time. 8:00 is a suggestion.

I hope you learned a lesson by not getting your 3rd dive on the 1st day. Although it is their dive operation & they should have you set up as discussed, IT IS YOUR MONEY, ASK QUESTIONS IF YOU ARE NOT POSITIVE. While you're in the office signing the papers, ask questions, make sure they are on the same page as you. They will change things for you. That never needed to happen. This goes for everywhere.

While some of the people I dove with at Sam's were lovely people and experienced divers, there were also some of the most appalling displays of idiot diving I've ever seen. Of the six 'real' dives I did with Sam's (not including Chandelier Cave), three ended with divers running out their air and needing to use the guide's spare. Let me repeat that: In FIFTY PERCENT of my dives at Sam's, divers got into in OOA situations and had to rely on the dive guide to nanny them back to the surface. The last day was truly epic in that in both dives, the backup guide had to accompany divers who had chugged through their air early AND the dives ended with the main guide, who did truly heroic work, literally dragging buoyant divers who were out of air for ten minutes underwater. I won't even discuss the amount of damage I saw this group do to the coral on the walls. It was literally impossible to enjoy the dives since I kept wondering if I would need to rescue someone else since there was literally nothing the remaining guide could do if another of the incompetents had an actual emergency, rather than being the first to run to the guide's spare reg like an overgrown and spoiled breastfeeding child.

This whole paragraph, with the exception of damage to the reef, is a joke, right? Somehow Sam's dive operation is at fault for having new divers use their operation? New divers spend money, sometimes more than experienced divers. 2 things: this happens all over the world & if your dive count is accurate it wasn't too long ago that you were one of these idiot divers, I know I could suck down a bottle with the best of them way back when & ohhhh that buoyancy thing. It is a fact that new divers run out of air. As a matter of fact if a diver ran out of air yesterday on the 1st dive he's probably going to run out today. Sam's has a dive guide in front & rear. Enjoy your dive, they won't need you until the end. At the end if someone needs some air & you've got extra, what's the big deal? I'm a fire Lt. & I'm used to helping people so maybe others don't feel the same as me, I don't know. As far as new people touching stuff, I agree 100%. The guides should explain things, but if they don't then I have a cordial conversation on the boat explaining keeping our distance from stuff & if they persist I'll give them a tug. They get the message. They listen cause I'm the dude with the extra air.

I think basically you got twisted when things didn't go right that 1st day. How would you have felt about MAML had they messed up on the 1st day. I've been on trips with people who get out of sorts for days over minor issues. I've learned to roll with the punches, some things can't be helped. It helps to start anew every day. However, I always make sure I know what todays plan is.

 

[ellencarroll]

Wow, that's too bad about your experience with Sam's. I was in Palau in April and dived with Neco and had a fantastic experience. My friends and I dived 5 days and were picked up from Palau Pacific Resort. Every detail of the trip was taken care of perfectly and our dive guide, Nicole was outstanding. We had one fellow on our boat that week who tested her patience (and ours!), but otherwise I was in dive heaven. In fact, I loved Palau so much that I am going back at the end of June on the Palau Aggressor.

 

[Sam's Tours Palau]

Dear Banyan,

Greetings from Sam’s Tours in Palau! I am Dermot Keane, Managing Director. Your recent posts on Scubaboard have been brought to my attention by quite a number of people including other recent and past guests.

First and foremost, I sincerely apologize to you on behalf of the entire team at Sam’s Tours for providing you with such appalling service. While I have not yet completely reviewed the entire chain of events you describe, suffice to say I am deeply concerned about all that you describe as I know that we are capable of far better performance and acknowledge that you as our customer are likewise deserving of far better treatment.

I have continuously managed Sam’s Tours since 1998, and in that time we have developed a reputation for excellent customer service and safety because we take those matters very seriously. The reality is that we are first and foremost a customer service company, with diving as a medium for our delivery. How we make our customers feel is our benchmark and we accept that we must earn our good reputation each and every day. We could not have earned that good reputation were we to habitually conduct ourselves in the manner you describe. No customer could rightfully be expected to tolerate such poor service and I appreciate your speaking out.

True, we have not nor do not always get it right, but we make it a point to use every effort to put it right when and if things do go wrong. And sometimes they do. In my twelve plus years managing this company I have honestly never experienced such a comprehensively stinging level of complaint. I am simply stunned and can only apologize sincerely and profusely to you at this point in time.

The service reputation we have worked hard to build over the past 19+ years reflects our very sincere and long standing commitment to listening closely to our customers and that includes when criticism comes due. Likewise, it has been our longstanding policy to accept in a positive and constructive manner whatever level of criticism comes our way and to use that criticism as a positive tool for improvements to future levels of service. In the case of your multitude criticisms, rather than attempt to address your complaints point by point, I instead offer you my personal assurance that I shall tend to each and every one of them in detail with our entire team and take every appropriate corrective action necessary as promptly as humanly possible.

While I would have preferred a far less public rebuke of our shortcomings than on Scubaboard, I nevertheless appreciate in all honesty and sincerity your taking the time to bring your complaints forward (regardless of the medium), rather than simply letting them slide by unnoted. That in my mind would have been far worse. I also appreciate the positive counter-comments posted by other Sam’s Tours guests attesting to the normal standard of excellent care and service we have continuously provided our guests for almost 20 years.

I am more than happy to discuss the entire matter in more detail with you should you wish to do so, however not in a public forum such as Scubaboard. Please feel free to contact me if you so desire at: info@samstours.com

I look forward to hearing from you.

With sincerest apologies, deepest thanks and warmest regards.

Dermot Keane
Managing Director
Sam’s Tours Palau

 

[Banyan]

Wow, this thread turned quite busy while I was away from the board. Let me respond to some of the posts directed at me.

Forgive me but it sounds as though some of your rant here is a bit unfair & maybe just because you're a little out of sorts over the scheduling snafu.

You can't possibly be suggesting here that it is Sam's fault when someone diving using their facilities makes a statement. Also, getting sucked down is no joke, been there, done that, not fun. Again, why mention Sam's

Anyone with money can book a trip. If you think changing operations is going to make this a bulletproof issue, have at it. Inept divers are everywhere these days. As far as 25-30 minutes, you've got to learn to lighten up, you're on island time. 8:00 is a suggestion.

I hope you learned a lesson by not getting your 3rd dive on the 1st day. Although it is their dive operation & they should have you set up as discussed, IT IS YOUR MONEY, ASK QUESTIONS IF YOU ARE NOT POSITIVE. While you're in the office signing the papers, ask questions, make sure they are on the same page as you. They will change things for you. That never needed to happen. This goes for everywhere.

This whole paragraph, with the exception of damage to the reef, is a joke, right? Somehow Sam's dive operation is at fault for having new divers use their operation? New divers spend money, sometimes more than experienced divers. 2 things: this happens all over the world & if your dive count is accurate it wasn't too long ago that you were one of these idiot divers, I know I could suck down a bottle with the best of them way back when & ohhhh that buoyancy thing. It is a fact that new divers run out of air. As a matter of fact if a diver ran out of air yesterday on the 1st dive he's probably going to run out today. Sam's has a dive guide in front & rear. Enjoy your dive, they won't need you until the end. At the end if someone needs some air & you've got extra, what's the big deal? I'm a fire Lt. & I'm used to helping people so maybe others don't feel the same as me, I don't know. As far as new people touching stuff, I agree 100%. The guides should explain things, but if they don't then I have a cordial conversation on the boat explaining keeping our distance from stuff & if they persist I'll give them a tug. They get the message. They listen cause I'm the dude with the extra air.

I think basically you got twisted when things didn't go right that 1st day. How would you have felt about MAML had they messed up on the 1st day. I've been on trips with people who get out of sorts for days over minor issues. I've learned to roll with the punches, some things can't be helped. It helps to start anew every day. However, I always make sure I know what todays plan is.

It did turn into a bit of a rant, but I don't think it is unfair, especially given that I'd never heard a single negative comment about Sam's the entire time I researched my trip.

Forgetting my meal request? Not even worth mentioning on its own. Having no idea about my dive schedule? Serious, since now you're getting into the whole point of a dive operation, but I'm willing to blame myself for not double-checking everything myself before getting onto the boat. Having the wrong itinerary on the scheduling board for me on the second day, after I corrected it the previous day? Now, I start wondering if the staff members I spoke with thought I was talking to myself. Being forgotten at the hotel on the third day? Again, not something worth mentioning if it's the only thing that happened, but, in sequence, part of a clear pattern that was well past the point of ridiculous.

As for mentioning Sam's in the two instances you point out, I honestly don't feel like I was targeting the operation. They were the people with which I interacted and I see no reason to hide that fact. I do wish to clarify that I was defending MAML against the accusation that it was particularly reckless, rather than targeting Sam's with the exact same accusation. I imagine every dive operation has had divers pulled down by the downcurrent off Peleliu Corner, which, as I noted in my initial post, is an advanced dive.

I did not really describe the OOA situations so appear to have created the impression that it was one diver who was the problem. It was not. Three different divers ended up on the main guide's spare reg over two days. On the last day, the backup guide had to take other divers who had run out of air early to the surface, so we were down to one guide relatively soon in the two dives. I had entirely different groups each of the three dive days. The second day, even though we had a diver go on a spare, there was an excuse (if not a good one) as we ran across a dozen sharks on a school of feed fish and everyone was trying to extend the dive as long as possible to see the action and the least physically fit diver ran out of air at the end. I wouldn't consider anyone on that dive boat inexperienced and it's probably not worth mentioning in isolation, even if I'm already ranting about scheduling problems. The last day was like every diver who I have sworn never to dive with ever again showed up on one boat. Not only were at least half the clients among the worst divers with which I've ever been trapped on a dive boat, but they were the sort of divers who refuse to accept that they are the one causing the problem.

I'm fine with new and inexperienced divers, since they tend to not be aggressively incompetent and, as you note, I was in the same state not so long ago. However, I am a recreational diver, think the number one priority underwater is to avoid running out of air, and will go out of my way to avoid divers that think differently about their priorities. I get nervous when I see a diver at the end of an octo, and I feel this is unlikely to change regardless of how much diving experience I get. This ties into my decision to try other operations if I do Koror-based diving again, which I would do anyway because of the organizational issues, because I figure it's worth testing the hypothesis that Sam's reputation for flawless service attracts the disproportionately incompetent divers, who figure they're buying safety with the premium price. This supposition may not be true, but even the chance is enough to figure into my decision-making process. I speculate that there's probably a clear difference between those who base themselves on Koror and those who dive out of Peleliu or off of a liveaboard, since they require different levels of commitment from the diver, but would be interested to hear if anyone has any similar horror stories that can support/weaken this whole hypothesis.

Dear Banyan,

Greetings from Sam’s Tours in Palau! I am Dermot Keane, Managing Director. Your recent posts on Scubaboard have been brought to my attention by quite a number of people including other recent and past guests.

I am more than happy to discuss the entire matter in more detail with you should you wish to do so, however not in a public forum such as Scubaboard. Please feel free to contact me if you so desire at: info@samstours.com

I look forward to hearing from you.

With sincerest apologies, deepest thanks and warmest regards.

Dermot Keane
Managing Director
Sam’s Tours Palau

Dear Mr. Keane,

Thank you for taking the time to post.

I also think it is unfortunate that I did not have a more positive experience to report, especially given the compliments I had heard about Sam's before booking. Since I could find no real feedback on Maml on the internet, I had gone to Palau thinking I would post a trip report to help other divers. However, for the Koror-based portion of my trip I thought I would be able refer to the laudatory reviews of Sam's that can be easily found. I regret that this proved to not be possible in my case but sincerely hope that you will not see another trip report like mine again.

I do not see any reason for private communication, but thank you for the offer.

Sincerely,

 

[bubba105]

I think you missed the point. The point I was trying to get across is that other than your meal being wrong, every other scheduling problem is fixable, at the dock, before you commit to a boat. If you're on a 3 dive schedule & you don't see enough tanks on the boat, just ask, that's all you need to do. I know everyone at Sam's, they're all very nice & extremely helpful. Don't quite understand the board, ask. Sam's didn't get their great customer ratings by messing up, but, people do make mistakes. What I was trying to convey is that no matter where you go, make sure that what you want, what you're paying for, is what you're about to get. That I meant for anyone reading this. It's your money...

As far as divers go, a dive boat is like a box of chocolates... You've got to make the best of the situation. Less confident divers tend to stay near the lead dive guide, I stay to the rear to be out of the "kick zone". I also have this "mother duck" thing, from my job, where I like to keep an eye on everyone. Being in the back affords me both.

I think the word incompetent is directly related to new. Over the years I can count on one finger the number of divers who didn't lose the "in" part by diving more.

Now, how about posting about the dives. A dozen sharks feeding???