Worn out life jackets and a hole in the boat ...
'Terrified' Phuket Tourist Slams Safety on Holed Dive Boat
By Alan Morison
Saturday, May 5, 2012
PHUKET: Tourists on a dive boat that almost sank off Phuket yesterday were ''lucky to be alive,'' British actress Wendy Bain said today.
She's recovering from the "terror."
She and her writer husband Sam, a Chinese couple and four Scandinavians on the holed vessel were ''absolutely terrified'' by their experience as the dive boat took water and struggled to reach a nearby island.
''If the boat had stayed at sea we would have all been dead,'' the 45-year-old Londoner told Phuketwan. She was extremely critical of lack of safety precautions.
''There were 12 of us, eight passengers and four crew. The boat was carrying about one quarter of its capacity, yet there were only 12 lifejackets, just enough. My scuba instructor had to wear a wornout lifejacket with no clips that could be done up.''
She was surprised that the trip went ahead yesterday despite rough conditions before the dive boat left Phuket's Chalong Pier, on the island's east coast.
And she said she was told there was no liferaft being towed behind the vessel ''because of the drag.''
''Having said all that, the crew did all the right things once we got into trouble. We heard this loud bang on the way back from Phi Phi to Phuket. It seems there was a hole on the left side of the boat.
''They tried to pump the water out but the hole must have been too big. At that stage, they brought us all up on deck and handed out the lifejackets.
''We were so lucky the small island was nearby.''
The boat was driven towards a beach and the passengers were ordered to brace themselves when the boat ran onto the sand on Ko Kiew, between Phi Phi and Phuket.
''It was so incredibly dangerous,'' Mrs Bain said. ''There were a couple of other boats who came to our rescue. Dive instructors from one of the other boats came to fetch us, using buoys.
''Once we were on the rescue boat, we heard there was another boat in trouble, so we had to head back towards Phi Phi to help. By the time we got there, all the other passengers had been taken off.
''We were able to lend them our pump to help,'' she said. She said there were also reports of a third dive boat in trouble.
What mystified her, recovering today after the experience, was why the boats had gone to sea on a day when the dangers were so obvious. Other dive boats had decided not to venture out.
''When we left Chalong Bay in the morning it was already quite choppy,'' she said.
''There was no visibility at either of the dive sites. I did look up at the bottom of the boat from underneath, and it looked incredibly rusty to me.''
She said skippers on other boats based at Chalong had decided not to venture out.
''Other companies did not send out customers because it was so dangerous,'' she said. ''They knew it was going to be bad.''
The Bains had been enjoying their Phuket holiday for about a week. ''Phuket's a beautiful place,'' she said.
''The Indigo Pearl resort in Nai Yang is an incredibly artistic resort. Nai Yang is a charming non-mass touristy place.''
They head home tomorrow.
Wendy Bain is a popular television and stage actress and Sam Bain is a Bafta award-winning comedy writer.
Customers from three different dive companies were on board the boat, which Mrs Bain believes was rented from a fourth company.
'Terrified' Phuket Tourist Slams Safety on Holed Dive Boat - Phuket Wan
I'm not getting the joke.Originally Posted by cluezo
She's recovering from the "terror."
Thailand's scam artists have to learn: There are other holiday destinations.
There are few problems in life that cannot be solved with toast.
One of them, however, is opening a can of corned beef with that stupid key. This cannot easily be done at the best of times, and toast is of surprisingly little use in resolving the issue.
Isn't one. I'm throwing anything out there to get a nibble ...
nibble
fred
But not the easy sex...
Frederick Douglass: Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these
will continue till they are resisted with either
words or blows, or with both.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn;
“Don’t believe them, don’t fear them, don’t ask
anything of them.”
I'm lost...they're all obviously divers with a boat load of dive gear...and if I'm not mistaken, that dive gear allows one to breath under water...so where exactly was the danger of dying?...
Typical softies over reaction...
"You really want to save the planet?...the next time you see a hybrid car with a childseat... smash the window, remove the childseat and replace it with a box of condoms..." Doug Stanhope
---------------------------------------------------------
Plus, their BCD's are easily inflated either manually or with compressed air. I think the danger was being adrift in rough seas.
"While Jim is milking the Russian Boar, I'm in the shade of a Baobab tree being served a cool drink by a beautiful young indigenous girl. "
Marlin Perkins
Aloha - Aloha HARD
Sweetheart, if there were more passengers there likely would have been more life jackets put on the boat before it left the dock. Of course TIT, but I think this is a reasonable assumption.
TIT and no assumption is reasonable; especially regarding safety here in LOS.
not a single mention of any of the companies involved. thank you thai defamation laws.
damn right.
One of, if not the most, alluring factor for my choice of residing in Thailand is the freedom to fuck it all up that I have here...I no longer feel treated like a 6 year old child where all my decisions are made for me by a system that continuously attempts to make me believe that I'm too stupid to make decisions on my own and that they have my best interests at heart and all their restrictions are there for my protection.
So it's not difficult to understand when someone like this woman comes to Thailand and is horrified by the lack of safety regulations...being confronted by a situation where one has to actually think about what they are about to do can be overwhelming to a mind conditioned by years of being told that they are incapable of doing so...
So you're going diving and you notice that the water is a bit choppy...and you notice that some of the other dive trips have been cancelled for the same reason and yet you still get on the boat...
Why...because for most of your life you haven't needed to assess situations like this...it's all been taken care of for you...
so you go out on the boat and you encounter what you perceive as a life threatening situation and you then proceed to blame the lack of safety regs in Thailand...when in fact the true culprit is the over protectionist system that you came from that has almost completely annihilated your ability to intelligently perceive your surroundings...
Couple that with your inability to fathom that not everywhere you travel has the same system that you've come from and it's no wonder you were terrified...
Last edited by Thaitanium; 6th May 2012 at 15:04.
^ I agree, where has my little thank you button gone?
louis changes his mind about rep points, thanks and likes more often than he replies to direct questions. a real leader of men that man.
Actually crew...when the thanks system was implemented it was clearly(well to me anyway) explained that the thanks button would only appear in the helping type sub forums...such as newbie,classroom,staffroom,practicalities...etc
forums where folks ask questions and give advice...not places like the pub where it's just chin wagging, flames and backstabbing...I mean backslapping...
or in here where the bulk of posting is opinion...and outrage...
...and the careful observer will notice that in these non helping forums there is a thanks button..but only under the original post...
Last edited by Thaitanium; 6th May 2012 at 15:03.
......
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