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
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| Omelet, Sausage, Ham & Pastries |
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| Paratha with Spicy Curry |
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| Zoom from Superstar Libra - i think that's Chicken Island? |
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| Morning Exercise at Deck 9 |
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| Captain at Starboard |
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| Tender Boat coming? |
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| 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.
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| Leaving through Tender Boat |
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| Inside the Boat |
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| Superstar Libra at a Distance |
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| 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.
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| Let's go Offshore |
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| At Krabi Port |
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| Finally some Air Condition in the Bus |
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| That Horrible Tour Guide |
Our 1st stop was Khao Khanap Nam – a 10
minutes stop for photoshooting of Krabi’s signature landmarks.
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| At Khao Khanap Nam |
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| Crab = Krabi? |
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| The Landmark in Krabi |
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| Long Tail Boat |
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| 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!
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| At Tiger Cave Temple - totally LOST |
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| Rawr! |
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| Dragon? |
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| Finally found the cave |
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| Tiger in the Cave |
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| Tiger Gate? |
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| Cute Doggie with Cute Pose! |
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| It's a big place! You can climb the 1000++ stairs! |
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| Yet Another Pagoda |
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| A National Park too |
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| Some Souvenir Stalls |
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| 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
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| The Tourist Trap! |
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| 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.
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| Went into a Convenient Shop instead |
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| Hey, they have Calpis too! |
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| Bored at the Family Mart |
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| Some local food stall |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Hey! There is Superstar Libra! |
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| Very far away though |
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| Let's walk the shore |
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| It's a long walk!!! |
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| Some eye candy along the way |
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| More Eye Candy! |
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| Have you stop your nosebleed yet? |
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| 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.
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| Local Stall |
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| Look at these! |
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| Looks Yummy huh? |
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| 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!
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| Lots of People! |
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| Still Waiting |
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| Long long queue! |
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| 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.
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| Let's go! |
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| 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!
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| Breads on each table |
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| Salmon |
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| 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.
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| Chicken Soup |
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| 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. =)
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| Seafood Platter |
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| 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. =)
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| Cheesecake |
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| Game of Love! |
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| 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.
