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Siem Reap to Kuching to Bali,
VDSR - WBGG - WRRR
We slept soundly at the Grand
Hotel d'Angkor, wakened once by what appeared to be someone
tapping on the wall or door with a coin or a metal ring. Three
or four sharp raps or clicks or…barks? We had heard them here
before a couple of times but failed to realize that it was
the sound made by the friendly little gecko that was sharing
the room with us and helping to keep it bug free. If you have
never been to southeast Asia you may not know that these little
lizards are welcomed in homes as a sign of good luck as well
as an automatic bug eliminator. Before we had retired for
the night, we had espied our little comrade high on the wall
near the ceiling and then knew what the sound was we had heard
the previous night. I am glad this one didn't "talk" too often
since he had a surprisingly loud voice. In Kota Kinabalu,
Malaysia, where I spent four months in 1978, they were always
present in the homes I visited, roaming the walls and ceilings
and often disappearing into their "quarters" behind hanging
pictures. Are the Geico Insurance ads still airing in the
States? If you remember them, then you've seen a relative
of our little Cambodian buddy.
Andrew picks us up in his car
at 7:15 for the short drive to the airport. The fax we have
received from Universal has airways and waypoints that make
no sense as we view the enroute IFR charts. Andrew is at a
loss to explain the discrepancy, but then he is always flying
the helicopter visually so wouldn't have much need for IFR
knowledge and expected routes southeast-bound. We are heading
to Kuching, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the northwestern
coast of the island of Borneo, for a fuel stop before continuing
on to Bali in Indonesia.
At the airport, Andrew ushers
us into the flight planning room so that perhaps we can resolve
the mystery of the routing. The Jeppesen charts were sent
to us right before we left nearly six weeks ago, so they possibly
could be out of date and in error. The date on our chart is
September 2001; the date on the same chart on the wall of
the official flight planning room is 1998! The "Flight Service"
fellow looks at the routing Universal provides, shakes his
head, and says he is not familiar with it. Pam gets on the
GSM phone - Thank goodness it works fine here, as it has nearly
everywhere! - contacts Universal, and they supply the rather
surprising news that, yes, there has been a major re-structuring
of some IFR routes in this area, just as of last week!
About this time the flight service
gent comes back carrying a single, somewhat amateurish, sheet
of paper showing the new routes. Well, it's a good thing that
the faxed flight plan printed out very clearly and has all
of the waypoint Lat/Long locations clearly listed. With those,
and the copy of that new sheet we receive, we feel we will
be okay. Just hope they don't give us some weird re-route
once we are on our way!
Also, the databases in the GNS
530s are out-of-date because of the slow mail service due
to all of the postal/anthrax problems. We had hoped to receive
new database cards in Dubai, but it looks now like we won't
have them until Australia.
Bags through security scanning,
airplane preflighted, waypoints added to the GNS 530s manually…we
are ready to rock and roll. Pat and Ashley arrive and we taxi
out at 0156Z or 8:56 a.m. local time. The routing ATC provides
is exactly as Universal filed it. I am in the left seat for
the first leg today and Pam will fly the second leg.
We are given an unrestricted
climb to our requested cruise altitude, good ol' FL270. The
handoff from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh happens quickly and we
begin making position reports since they do not have radar
contact. Then we cross into Vietnam's airspace and are talking
to Ho Chi Minh ATC, and they do have radar coverage. Gosh
almighty! Having served in the Navy during the Vietnam War
days, it seems very odd to be talking so normally to Ho Chi
Minh control! And the fellow's English is very easy to understand,
too!
When we arrive over the intersection
that separates Vietnamese from Singaporean airspace, our report
to Ho Chi Minh goes unanswered. We can hear other planes talking
on the frequency but cannot hear the controller…too far out
at our altitude for line-of-sight communication. We ask for
a relay from any other plane on the frequency, and Brunei
94 answers in a British accent, takes our information, and
passes it along when he can get a word in edgewise. (The frequency
had suddenly gotten surprisingly busy.) He tells us that we
should contact Singapore Radio on an HF frequency of 8942.
Well, here goes. How will the
HF work today? Like a charm! Singapore reads us loud and clear,
as we do them. He tells us to make our next position report
to Singapore Radar on a VHF frequency, and a little later
I overhear him, on the HF frequency, relay our information
to that facility.
We are definitely in the tropics.
As the day warms up the sky gets filled with many cumulous
clouds. We top most of them at 27,000 feet but deviate occasionally
and the Stormscope shows quite a bit of lightening activity
along our route. The radar only shows isolated light rain.
At one point we ask for a deviation right of course up to
twenty miles due to weather and are immediately given the
permission to do so.
We are over the South China Sea
with a few small islands visible below. We've been listening
to Jimmy Buffet on the CD and then play a little of Vivaldi
for variety. Pat is working on his laptop in back, catching
up on journal entries and picture editing. Ashley is reading
or helping Pat. Enjoy a little tea and hot soup. Life is good.
This journal writing is hard
work! Both Pat and I feel the pressure of wanting to keep
our entries to the website up to date and yet sometimes sitting
and pounding away at the laptop is not our idea of the most
fun available. We enjoy it, you understand, and want to do
it, but nonetheless it is quite a daunting task at times.
One reason we like it is because it is the only way that we
ourselves will remember all that has transpired during this
blessed adventure. Already we have gone back and reread early
entries and it is almost as if they were written by someone
else. Did we really have those experiences? We certainly appreciate
the feedback we get via the website's Guestbook entries and
individual emails we have received. We freely admit that we
like those positive strokes of reinforcement. Want to give
more? My address is twcaz@cs.com
and Pat's is gallagherpat@earthlink.net.
Keep those cards and letters coming in, y'hear?!
Singapore hands us over to Kuching
and they have good VFR radio coverage right away and finally
pick us up on radar about a hundred and twenty miles out.
There are more clouds over land than water - typical during
daytime - and the ATIS at Kuching reports thunderstorms and
rain showers south and northwest of the field. As we get closer
we notice how lush and green the jungle is below, yet with
parts of it in organized rows. Maybe coconut plantations?
We are being vectored for the ILS to Runway 25 and we see
the airport at about our 2 o'clock position from ten miles
out or so, but are denied a visual downwind since we are following
other traffic on final. There is a moderate to heavy rain
shower on final that it looks like we will be asked to pass
through, but both the radar and Stormscope show it to be benign.
Sure enough, the turn onto the localizer shows the rain between
us and the runway and we tell P & A to tighten the seatbelts
a notch, but the ride through is quite smooth. We see the
runway clearly from about six miles out as we are cleared
to land. The wet runway makes me look good at touchdown.
We have consumed 2,400 pounds
of fuel on this leg that took 4 hours and 19 minutes. We are
directed to a parking stand abeam Gate 8 at the terminal and
as we open the door our handling agent, working for Malaysian
Airlines, gives us a cheery hello before telling us that we
need to pay $233 dollars in cash for his services. Furthermore,
as I oversee the refueling, Pam has to trek to the terminal
administration office to pay a landing and ATC fee, also in
cash, but first she has to use the airport's money changer
to trade American for Malaysian dollars, the only thing they'll
take. And the fueling? Although we had been told, in writing,
that our Air BP credit card would be good here, it isn't,
nor would the fueler, a Shell Oil dealer, take any plastic
except a Shell card, and that one we don't have. Now it is
my turn to be driven to the money changing business at the
terminal to exchange $520 US into 1,900 or so Malaysian.
It rained lightly off and on
as the refueling process dragged along, but the clouds and
gentle breeze made the hot, humid, weather quite comfortable.
We watched Twin Otters, Fokker 50s, and Boeing 737s come and
go. I remembered my days in 1978 when I spent four months
just about three hundred away, flying another Super King Air
200 (BB-294) for the state of Sabah while training the Malaysian
crews. I became friends with a British fellow, Richard Fox,
who was then a training Captain on the Fokker F-27s (an earlier
model of the Fokker 50) and was entertained by his many funny
stories of the vagaries of making the Malaysian newcomers
into safe airline pilots. Once, a newly-minted local Captain
landed his F-27 at an outlying station on Borneo, off-loaded
passengers and cargo, on-loaded the new group of passengers
and cargo, closed the doors, started up, got the clearance,
taxied out…then taxied back in and shutdown. Had forgotten
to get the fuel the flight needed. Live and learn. (Where
are you now, Richard? And your lovely wife, Michelle, and
daughters Veronique and Chantal? I remember them as such beautiful
little girls. Now, perhaps, they have girls or boys of their
own. eh?)
An hour and twenty-one minutes
after shutdown, Pam taxies out for the continuation to Bali.
Really not too bad a delay, all things considered, and we
are thankful that Pat had been told to bring, and did bring,
a significant amount of cash for unexpected situations like
this one.
Due to that restructuring of
the IFR airways I referred to, it was not clear to us until
on our way to Kuching that the routing Universal had filed
out of Kuching made no logical sense at all. Instead of starting
out by going to a VOR about 100 miles to the southwest of
Kuching, our route added over 150 miles because it went well
west before turning around and going southeast to that same
VOR. When it finally dawns on us that this is really silly,
we rationalize the weirdness by thinking that probably there
is a good reason. For example, maybe Malaysia and Indonesia
have some argument or conflict over utilizing the direct route
since it crosses their mutual border.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
With that adage in mind, I query the Kuching departure controlled
about why we were being routed so far out of our way. His
reply put me in my place very quickly: "Because you filed
it, Sir!" Yeah, we had, sadly.
"Uh, could we please go direct
to PNH?" "Standby. I will need to coordinate with Singapore
and Jakarta." After a long delay, I ask, using my best pleading
voice, "Any chance of that left turn?" "We are coordinating!"
was his curt reply. Moments later he asks what my ETA at PNH
will be if I can proceed direct. Out comes the whiz wheel
- Yes, we still carry an old E6B-type doohicky just for times
like this! - and I say we can be there 26 minutes from now,
at 0834Z. Very quickly now comes the permission to proceed
as we had requested. Thank you, Sir!
In a few minutes we are told
to contact Jakarta Radar on 133.7, they come in loud and clear,
and at 0819 we level at 270. Jakarta wants our ETA for Rozax
intersection and we provide it. This point is where we will
leave the island of Borneo behind and have open sea all the
way to Bali. The afternoon clouds are building ever higher
and Pam and I discuss whether a deviation to the left or the
right should be requested. I say right, she says left, she
wins, and it turns out to be the best decision. Plus, it cuts
a little corner off of our routing.
The wind today hasn't helped
us, but is hasn't hurt much either. Probably it's averaging
about a ten-knot headwind component. We are in clouds fairly
continually at cruise altitude and are paying the resultant
penalty in airspeed due to the ice vanes being extended. About
an hour after departure, however, nearing the edge of Borneo,
we burst into the sunlight, with isolated towering cumulous
ahead, easily avoidable.
I use the time to play around
with some numbers and find that when we land in Bali the airplane
will have logged 61 hours of flight time since departing Scottsdale
on October 3. We take a look at the flight planning summation
spreadsheet that we had prepared before we left, add up the
legs to Bali, and it totals 63.8. In other words, having flown
more than halfway through World Flight 2001, we are within
about 4% of our estimates and are on the good side, taking
a little less time than our conservative estimates indicated.
Also, all legs have been flown on the scheduled days at the
scheduled times! We think it is amazing that neither a mechanical
problem or sickness of any type has held us up. All of us
truly thought that this far into the trip we would have had
at least one major snag, but such is not the case. We are
feeling very, very, fortunate and very thankful for this good
fortune.
Again we find that we have flown
too far for VHF communication as we try unsuccessfully to
make a position report, and are preparing to fall back on
HF again, but before I do so I try the VHF frequency for "Ujung
West" that the chart shows may be applicable to our area.
Ujung responds to the first call, was obviously expecting
us, and this Indonesian controller handles us up until he
passes us along to Bali.
The sun is now about five finger-widths
above the western horizon off of our right wing and it casts
lovely shadows of the lower clouds on the sea's silver surface.
We enjoy a beautiful sunset as we pass from daylight into
darkness. A thunderstorm to our right is putting on quite
a light show for us, being nearly continuously illuminated
with lightening strikes occurring within it. Before long,
Pam starts the descent into Bali, having been cleared direct
to the intersection that is the straight-in Initial Approach
Fix for the VOR Runway 9 approach. The skies are mostly clear
now and we see the lights of the town from many miles out.
We also see the strobes of the airliner we are following.
I call out airspeeds and sink
rates on final as an aid for the night landing: "110, down
7; 105, down 6; 100, down 5." We taxi to the assigned stand
nearby where the marshaller awaits and shutdown 3 hours and
41 minutes after we had taxied out. We had read that the handling
service here was first-rate, and so it proves to be. Before
too long the copious amount of luggage is loaded in one van,
all four of us plus driver and agent in another, we zip through
customs in a flash since the handler had already gotten our
passports to them, and are on the road to the Four Seasons
Jimbaran Bay Resort.
On the way, I make a fool of
myself by asking the handler, Mr. Bagus Suyoga, the name of
the island we are on. "Bali," he kindly replies. Oh. Yeah.
You see, all the charts are labeled "Den Pasar," the name
of the town where the airport it so I….oh, never mind!
As we have learned, Four Seasons
means quality and service and beautiful surroundings. I think
we're going to like it here!
Shortcut |
FL270 Clouds |
Sunset over the Ocean |
Bali Happiness |
Private Pool |
Living Room, Bali |
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