indiedive
Contributor
Review Euphoria LOB Raja Ampat
Departure date: 13 June
Return date: 24 June
Diving days: 10 (Central + Northern part of Raja Ampat)
Summary of the LOB: Poor value for money mainly due to disinterest from management guest experience. However the boat has friendly crew.
Advise: Excellent diving in Raja Ampat, I recommend anyone to dive in Raja Ampat. Wayag is certainly a stunning place. On a next visit to Raja Ampat, we will not choose Euphoria again.
UW Photos in Wayag, Raja Ampat is also available on my blog - Wayag Islands, the Icon of Raja Ampat | indahs: travel story & photography
Red line through our LOB experience with the Euphoria is the disinterest of management to ensure best guest experience. First sign of this experience started already when we were picked up from our hotel in Sorong. One of the staff arrived in our hotel, asked us to bring all our luggage outside, walk a few hundred meters to a street corner and wait in the burning sun for a taxi to bring us to the harbor. The taxi was actually a small van of public transport that had no passengers, in Indonesian language, it usually called as angkot.
Once arrived on board and shown to our room, we got a very short briefing on the boat. First thing we saw the crew did was spearfishing on a fish they saw swimming in the harbor! Later we found that the boat carried more than 10 spear guns on board (according to a German guest). What would a diving business need so many spear guns for?
Although the Euphoria is a nice boat with good facilities (our room has huge balcony) and we visited some great diving spots, our experience was not as good as it should have been:
Thinking back on this trip I cherish the great diving we managed to do, the beautiful Raja Ampat Islands we have passed and seen with almost untouched nature. The boat and crew itself I consider an ocean of missed opportunities to provide us with a great holiday experience...
I will update more article and photos on Raja Ampat diving in my blog - so far the posts are available here: http://indahs.com/category/diving/raja-ampat-diving/
Departure date: 13 June
Return date: 24 June
Diving days: 10 (Central + Northern part of Raja Ampat)
Summary of the LOB: Poor value for money mainly due to disinterest from management guest experience. However the boat has friendly crew.
Advise: Excellent diving in Raja Ampat, I recommend anyone to dive in Raja Ampat. Wayag is certainly a stunning place. On a next visit to Raja Ampat, we will not choose Euphoria again.
UW Photos in Wayag, Raja Ampat is also available on my blog - Wayag Islands, the Icon of Raja Ampat | indahs: travel story & photography
Red line through our LOB experience with the Euphoria is the disinterest of management to ensure best guest experience. First sign of this experience started already when we were picked up from our hotel in Sorong. One of the staff arrived in our hotel, asked us to bring all our luggage outside, walk a few hundred meters to a street corner and wait in the burning sun for a taxi to bring us to the harbor. The taxi was actually a small van of public transport that had no passengers, in Indonesian language, it usually called as angkot.
Once arrived on board and shown to our room, we got a very short briefing on the boat. First thing we saw the crew did was spearfishing on a fish they saw swimming in the harbor! Later we found that the boat carried more than 10 spear guns on board (according to a German guest). What would a diving business need so many spear guns for?
Although the Euphoria is a nice boat with good facilities (our room has huge balcony) and we visited some great diving spots, our experience was not as good as it should have been:
- Many meals had only fish as protein while there is guest had indicated that he did not want fish at booking the trip (and I mentioned also that I'd prefer less fish if possible). During BBQ in several occasions, the menus were only fish, fish, and rice.
- One night we were served a menu of fried blue-spotted stingray. We checked online the IUCN Red List that there is a species of blue spotted stingray that has status as “NEAR THREATENED” - Taeniura lymma (Bluespotted Ribbontail, Bluespotted Ribbontail Ray, Blue-spotted Stingray, Fantail Ray, Ribbontailed Stingray)
- With the boat having some technical issues on the power generator with the result the air-conditioning in the rooms were not working, we did not get any apologies, but were actually advised to sleep outside.
- Except the owner/manager of the boat, staff hardly speaks any English. This included the dive guides. And most of the time - as I am an Indonesian - I also became an interpreter between the staff (also the dive guides) and other scuba divers.
- Dive briefings were always done by the boat manager/director, but were very brief. A few times I had the impression that the dive guide (who never joined any of these briefings) did not follow the briefing content. Could be due to current, but also could be due to misunderstandings.
- Dive guides were not Dive Master. Maybe they were rescue diver, but we have not been able to confirm. One of the dive guided did his best to show us nice things underwater, but both were clearly not as professional guides as we should expect on a trip like this.
- There were several technical issues with the boat and half day storm. As a result we missed a few dive opportunities. On the last dive day we were really pressured to limit our number of dives - just because they wanted to return earlier to Sorong Port for other (Polish) guests who wanted to shop in Sorong before the shops were closed. We were told to do two dives instead of four dives but since I was angry then the boat director said we could do three dives - and it was with short surface interval. Again here is evidence management was not interested in our holiday experience, but seems to regard guests as funding for his boat.
- As offered we could do max 4 dives a day but due to several unclear issues (including the broken generator), we had to skip a number of these dives.
- The boat manager made an agenda every morning with times and dive sites. We mostly run late on this schedule and not due to the guests being late
Thinking back on this trip I cherish the great diving we managed to do, the beautiful Raja Ampat Islands we have passed and seen with almost untouched nature. The boat and crew itself I consider an ocean of missed opportunities to provide us with a great holiday experience...
I will update more article and photos on Raja Ampat diving in my blog - so far the posts are available here: http://indahs.com/category/diving/raja-ampat-diving/