Monday 30 June 2014

Travel Log: A Chaotic Cruise Holiday (Day 3)

Previous Day (Phuket Sightseeing & Shopping)

Destination: Phuket & Krabi, Thailand
Duration: 4 Days 3 Nights (Jun 22~Jun 25, 2014)

Day 3: Krabi Attractions Gone Wrong

This morning we went to Mariner’s Buffet for breakfast and they served porridge, egg, sausages and pastries with Indian vegetarian corner since almost half of the passengers were from India. The food was mediocre and our favourite was surprising the Paratha with spicy curry from Indian vegetarian corner. =P
Omelet, Sausage, Ham & Pastries
Paratha with Spicy Curry
Zoom from Superstar Libra - i think that's Chicken Island?
Morning Exercise at Deck 9
Captain at Starboard
Tender Boat coming?
Foot Massage Lounge
We bought the “Krabi Attractions” shore excursion since our “4 Islands Tour” was cancelled. This time Superstar Libra stopped in the middle of the sea and we had to take tender boat to Krabi Port. I think we were actually the 1st boat leaving since we joined the excursion. The tender boat took around 40-50minutes to reach the port and it was HOT inside.
Leaving through Tender Boat
Inside the Boat
Superstar Libra at a Distance
Flying Thai Flag
We finally disembarked and went to our bus according to our sticker – Small Orange No. 25”. We had this auntie tour guide who never introduce herself, kicked passengers to sit at the back and basically kept quiet the whole time. At 1st we thought perhaps her English was not good so she kept quiet and time would review that she was worse than that.
Let's go Offshore
At Krabi Port
Finally some Air Condition in the Bus
That Horrible Tour Guide
Our 1st stop was Khao Khanap Nam – a 10 minutes stop for photoshooting of Krabi’s signature landmarks.
At Khao Khanap Nam
Crab = Krabi?
The Landmark in Krabi
Long Tail Boat
Eagle too?
Our bus then continued to Tiger Cave Temple and that was when we realized how bad our tour guide was. The only thing she said was: “You have 30minutes, you are on your own”. WHAT?!! Seriously? She didn’t even step off the bus to at least point us the directions to the cave! Why would we need a tour guide then? A bus driver would suffice if the tour guide just sat there and did nothing. The “Tiger Cave Temple” had quite a few buildings and all of us were clueless on where to go. We finally found our way to the “cave” and we noticed tour guide on other shore excursion buses with same package like us actually brought her passengers to the cave and explained the origin to them!
At Tiger Cave Temple - totally LOST
Rawr!
Dragon?
Finally found the cave
Tiger in the Cave
Tiger Gate?
Cute Doggie with Cute Pose!
It's a big place! You can climb the 1000++ stairs!
Yet Another Pagoda
A National Park too
Some Souvenir Stalls
What are they doing?!
We then had another 30 minutes stop at a tourist trap "Jee Or" OTOP Products and the shopkeeper tried to put some sticker on us to identify which tour bus we were on – I guess to easily gave commission to the tour guide? We threw the sticker since we wouldn’t want a tour guide like that earned any commission from us. Also, no free sample for tasting in this shops so you might want to skip this and sleep on the bus. =P
The Tourist Trap!
Lovely People? I guess the Tour Guide is not from Krabi
When we thought thing wouldn’t get worse since we would soon departed to our final destination (Ao Nang Beach) in the itinerary – thing got 1000000x worse!!! According to the itinerary we were supposed to have free time at Ao Nang Beach to do as we wished. Our “TOUR GUIDE” instructed the bus to stop in front of a restaurant at the middle of nowhere and proceed to tell us she booked the restaurant for us – which is not in our itinerary as meal is not included. She told us to order food from the restaurant (so she can get commission! – unsaid but we all knew that) and she will stop there for 1 hour. We refused to eat in the restaurant and wondered off to a convenient store instead.
Went into a Convenient Shop instead
Hey, they have Calpis too!
Bored at the Family Mart
Some local food stall
In the Middle of Nowhere
The point was only Bus 25 stopped there! We could see other shore excursion buses went straight to Ao Nang Beach without a ‘restaurant stop’. Since the restaurant was in the middle of nowhere, we wasted 1 hour+ there and some of us confronted her saying this was not supposed to be in itinerary at all. She still wouldn’t instruct the bus to go Ao Nang Beach but seeing we were not happy, she asked someone from the restaurant to fetch us with tuk tuk to Ao Nang Beach 1st.
Finally leaving this tourist trap!!!
We finally got the chance to walk along the Shore and ‘tasted’ the sea. Thankfully it was cloudy so we didn’t get roasted alive. However, do remember your sunblock as I got sunburn under the cloudy sky! *facepalm* From the beach, we noticed that bus 25 did not reach Ao Nang Beach until 3.30pm and all of the passengers were short of time to explore Ao Nang Beach.
Hey! There is Superstar Libra!
Very far away though
Let's walk the shore
It's a long walk!!!
Some eye candy along the way
More Eye Candy!
Have you stop your nosebleed yet?
It's time to go back!
Our Bus left Ao Nang Beach at around 4.45pm and we managed to buy some street food. That was before the ‘TOUR GUIDE’ almost left without 2 of the passengers – we had to stop her saying 2 pax were missing. What a nightmare!!!! I understand the tour excursion from star Cruise was booked through local tour but I would expect something better than this since I booked this tour from the ship itself. The tour guide was useless and the most important thing was: she deviated from original itinerary for her own gain! This is unacceptable. I really hope star cruise would evaluate their local tour agency more strictly to avoid thing like this.
Local Stall
Look at these!
Looks Yummy huh?
Deep Fried Prawn - too dry though
Our bus finally reached Krabi Port at around 5.15pm and the story did not end yet – the last tender boat was supposed to be at 5.30pm but the queue was so long until we only got on the tender boat at 6.30pm (all the while standing). Some people questioned the star cruise staffs there but they told us it was unexpected there were so many people at last minute thus they were short of boats. HELLO??? You have been to this route hundreds of thousands of times and yet you did not expect? Did you do a headcount to see how many people were still on the land? That is simple mathematics! Take the headcount of how many goes to shore and minus out how many has returned!
Lots of People!
Still Waiting
Long long queue!
Finally!!!
The tender boat back to cruise was crazy – I think they know it was late so the boat was moving really really fast. Now I’m not a professional sailor but my common sense told me a fast boat on rough sea is NOT GOOD! The tide was splashing higher than our boat sometimes and a lot of people were screaming in fear. I heard people mentioned they wanted to complain this to starcruise and asked other to complain this too.
Let's go!
Finally!
We did not reach Superstar Libra until 7pm – we missed out eh Gala Night Cocktail Party and had to rush to our room to change our clothes to attend the Gala dinner which started at 6.45pm since they refused to re-book our gala dinner session to 2nd session. =(

We finally sat down at our table in Four Seasons Restaurant at around 7.30pm and were given a menu to choose our appetizer, soup and main dishes. We chose Caesar salad & Salmon as appetizer – the salmon was great! Finally something nice from Superstar Libra restaurant!
Breads on each table
Salmon
Caesar Salad
The soup – chicken soup and pumpkin soup wasn’t so nice though. The chicken soup just tasted strange whereby the pumpkin soup was borderline salty – we had to add in bread to ‘neutralize’ the saltiness.
Chicken Soup
Pumpkin Soup
We did like the Seafood platter and Stuffed Turkey as main dishes. There were some sautéed mushrooms hidden underneath the stuffed Turkey and I loved them. =)
Seafood Platter
Stuffed Turkey
Dessert was a piece of cheesecake which I would say the best cake that we tried on Superstar Libra. Well, I tasted like ordinary cheesecake from Secret Recipe I guess. Overall a nice dinner but lack the feel of a ‘Gala Dinner’ like the one we experienced on Costa Atlantica. However, we loved the Gala Show after dinner – Spanish Dance show which was really hot and entertaining. =)
Cheesecake
Game of Love!
Spanish Dancing
We skipped the supper again as our tummy clearly didn’t need another round of food. We were very disappointed with the tour today thanks to the irresponsible tour guide. We did write a formal complaint to Starcruise on Jun 26 about this issue and we only got a courtesy ‘thank you for your comment and we will investigate’ email from them and nothing more - no apology and no explanation until today. Personally I’m really disappointed on how they treat customers - this is not the way of customer service!

Next Day (Another Bad Day on board)

Edit to add: StarCruise Customer Service finally replied my feedback on Jul 03 (after 1 week). In the email they mention they have suspended the questionable tour guide but did not mention anything about the long chaotic queue for tender boat and the dangerous high speed boat.

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