Papau New Guinea
I'm doing my best to try to get my story caught up to where I am currently in my travels, I
have been in Hong Kong for nearly a week now and I the only flying I have done has been a few trips around town to take screenshots
of the city.
So I am going to skip all but the most interesting entries in my journal so I can get back to exploring
the world.
My trip to Papua New Guinea revealed a very mountainous island with some large snow covered peaks,
I visited several locations on this island and one stands out in my notes.
The airport at Jayapura sits in depression or crater and makes for a very interesting approach and landing.
Other than that, I recall it being a nice place to visit but no further incidents to tell.
Indonesia
At this point I was pretty well hooked on the dreemfleet 737-400, which comes with the text-o-matic
program that allows me to switch airline liverys as I fly to different areas of the world, for this region I was
dressed up as Vietnam Airlines.
My next stop was Ujung Pandang, the names of stuff in this area of the world are kind of funny and
easy to make fun of, with all kinds of Dings and Dongs and Koks and Dungs, nothing against the people in this area but how
can I resist?
An example of this in my notes is when I flew over Butt Tung island and the gulf of Boner, also I
landed in a place in Papua New Guinea named Wewak, you can come up with your own jokes for that one.
I stopped in Ujung Pandang and then headed for Surabaya, it was here that I made my first successful
automated landing which I don't think I have been able to reproduced as perfectly since.
My plane pretty much brought itself down for a perfect landing, I only took over at the last second before
touchdown.
The islands out here still have some mountains but I am also starting to see a lot of flatland, possibly
rice paddies?
My next flight took me to Jakarta where I had a very interesting experience on final approach, there
were actually three airliners attempting to land on the same runway at the same time! I was one of them!
I had gotten the Singapore airlines 757 and was using that for my flight to Jakarta, I was given clearance
to land, but could see a 737 in front of me, what the hell was this guy doing in my airspace, on my approach clearance? He
seemed to be a bit high on the glideslope and I thought he was going around, I touched down on the runway just like ATC said
I could and this joker lands right in front of me, and at this same time ATC tells someone to go around and a Dash-8 flys
right over my head, he had to of been right on my ass!
I didn't get bitched out, so it wasn't me who landed out of turn, then the 737 gets told he was not
cleared to land and he needed to go around, so he takes back off. What a mess! I managed to avoid any type of collision here
But it could have been ugly, must have been a language barrier.
Singapore
I flew around Jakarta a few times then got back in the 757 for the cruise up to Singapore. Once I
got airborne and was looking at my atlas I realized I should have made a stop in the city of Tanjungkarang-Telakbetung
just because of the cool name.
The terrain below was looking very odd compared to what I was used to seeing, rice paddies I guess,
its mostly just flat around here with some mountains in the distance.
The flight to Singapore was routine and once I landed, I took the kingair and went exploring and discovered
another boring place with little detail.
My next stop would be Kuala Lumpur Maylasia.
Kuala Lumpur
I figured there had to be something in Kuala Lumpur, the tallest building in
the world is there, right?
So, I choose the Singapore airlines 747 for this flight, you know, the funky colored one from the simviation
download haven, and on my final approach into Kuala Lumpur I was messing around not paying attention to my airspeed and ended
up stalling about 100 yards from the runway, the jumbo jet dropped like a fucking rock, resulting in my first crash in quite
a long while, pilot error.
After I got out of the hospital I rented a Cessna 182RG to head into town and check out this really
tall building I have heard so much about.
I head in the direction of downtown and instead of seeing the city grow as I get closer, the
Petronas towers just pop out of the ground, BOOM! There they are, and thats about all there is in this town, I call my wife
in to see them, they are quite nicely represented.
She suggests I fly between them, which doesn't look to be a problem, so I take a big left turn and
head down the center of the towers, I was banking as I passed between the two buildings and would have been okay if my wing
didn't clip one of the crossmember support beams for the skybridge, I spun out of control straight into the ground below,
and found myself back in ICU at Kuala Lumpur general hospital.
Southeast Asia
After a few days of recovery I headed for Bangkok, nothing.
Then I went to Phnom Penh, nothing. But I read on the internet you can get an elephant ride for five bucks
here.
Next stop Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, nothing.
I decide the long flight to the Philipines would be a waste of time considering the lack of detail in this
part of the world.
I fly to Danang, nothing.
Hanoi, nothing.
Don't get me wrong, there is some nice scenery along the way, mountain ranges and some islands just off
the coast, but the cities are all the same, an dense area of little square buildings.
I did have a crash in the kingair at Hanoi after cruising around the city, I was bored so I decided
to try a dive-bomb landing, I head straight down towards the runway at a speedy clip, and pull up at the last second, I hit
the runway hard and bounced back into the air with sparks flyin', I would run out of concrete if I didn't get it down on the
next attempt, so I nose down and once again make hard contact with the runway, this time the view immediatly switched to show
my plane sitting on the runway on it's belly, the gear collapsed, but it was fun.
My next flight will take me to my current location in the simworld, Hong Kong.
