Author: ajgaines

Da Nang to Hue via Hai Van Pass

We spent day one driving our champion of a motorbike from Danang to a beach near Hue. I bought the motorcycle in Danang from another foreigner for 3 million Dong which is around $120 or so dollars. It’s semiautomatic and a goddamn champion. We bought it with 22,000km on it and she purrs like she was born yesterday.

Quick pit stop to eat!

Stuff – On our trip we are bringing a medium sized bag that holds 2 sleeping bags and tent, a medium sized bag that will hold all the clothes and food, and a backpack that will hold the computer, drone, and other electronics. We bought a rack that goes across the back and I strapped the back with the 2 medium bags with one of us sitting on the one holding the sleeping bags while wearing the back pack and the other driving with minimal space up front. The entire drive I was crouched over with my knees touching the front panel while my right ankle continually burned themselves on the extremely hot engine.

Baby cow

The trip from Da Nang to Hue passes “Hai Van Pass” which is considered a dangerous drive. To be honest there really isn’t any point that seems dangerous to me. Unless you lost your brakes on the way down the road is in great shape and none of the turns are that sharp. There’s also rails to keep you on the road for the parts with a steep drop off. And the views are absolutely spectacular.

We made it all the way to Hue where we found a beach that we thought would be a good spot to spend the night. We set up the tent right next to this restaurant that had a sweet old lady that let us park our motorcycle at the restaurant for the night. The waves lulled us to sleep very early(around 8pm) as we were already exhausted from riding. We were woken up almost instantly by children sprinting by our tent. They spent the night sprinting back and forth by our tent at what seemed to be very high speeds until around 2 am. Then there were crews of people that would drive up, pack sand in some bags and leave. When we finally woke from our slumber we ate some coco crunch, dragon fruit and started on our way to Phong Nha.

How to get a motorcycle in Vietnam – We bought our motorcycle(Honda Wave 110) using the facebook buy and sell page for Da Nang, the city we were in. Another way to get a bike is to walk down streets near hostels and look for bikes with for sale signs on them. A lot of travelers will be selling their bikes for very cheap. You can expect to pay 3-5 million dong minimum(about $120 to $200) for a pretty shitty motorcycle.

Bethel – Alaska’s Lovable *ssh*le

Since I was picking up an extra shift in Bethel, I was effectively the company tampon. With the pilot shortage the company has been paying extremely well to work extra as our company is bleeding all over the place. Being the company tampon, I spend my 2 weeks in Bethel going wherever the bleeding was the worst. While most pilots hate being sent from place to place, I couldn’t have been happier packing my sleeping bag each night, exploring more of Alaska and meeting new people.

I started in Bethel, saw copilot “Sexy Deroberts” walking around like a lost puppy on the ramp so I cat called him over to my plane to begin our budding romance. Ryan was a Marine as well so we became half-tards and walked around saying things like, “Errah,” and being general dirtbags.

This is sexy Deroberts trying to break me out of my plane when my door jammed

We both worked on growing our beards and with our Marine Corps work ethic we crushed a lot of flying, in and out of the growing clouds.

Each shift always seems to give me some new unexpected firsts and this shift threw a passenger sh*tt*ng their pants during flight at me. He at least had the courtesy to do it about 5 minutes before landing. Deroberts looked at me and said something like, “I think our passenger shit their pants.” I then replied with, “I think I smell popcorn.” A moment later I got the most vile wave of thick warm excrement passing through the cockpit. One thing to note is that in the caravan there is no separation between the pilots and the passengers. We could smell EVERYTHING. I soldiered on and coming in to land I was gagging while putting in full rudder on a rough steep crosswind into Mekoryuk airport. We did a highspeed taxi into the ramp, opened the door and sent our passenger poopwalking to his truck. We then unloaded the planes cargo which was right next to the wet stained seat. We gagged and unloaded and gagged more until the plane was empty. We took the seat out, put it under the plane and prepared ourselves to burn it later.

The writeup for the mechanics

Bethel was my first base in Alaska so it will forever have a place in my heart. Our presence there as an airline can only be described as cutting 100 chicken’s heads off and then throwing some turbine-driven, jet fuel burning aircraft in the mix and hoping passengers and cargo somehow find their way to where they are trying to go. Very few pilots want to work in Bethel, but I think some of my favorite people on earth work there, so I was happy to work an extra shift there.

After a bit in Bethel, they sent me to Unalakleet and I got my first experiences flying around there. The area is gorgeous like Kotzebue, on the ocean, and the people I worked with there were nothing short of extremely pleasant. 

UNK – by the ocean
A present for Karen

The company then had me pack my bags and head to St Mary’s for a few days on my way back to Bethel. Saint Mary’s can be distinguished by the fact that it is just an enormous pilot of dust that turns into mud when it rains. We walk around like pigsty from Charley brown when it’s dry and hardly drag our muddy boots through the sludge when it rains. As a whole St. Mary’s is dreary with some of the worse weather in Alaska, where for weeks at a time you can’t see your hands in front of your face and 30-40 knot crosswinds are standard procedure.

“St Mary’s” is Yupik for “mudtown”

Alaska is rough, it’s probably the most blue collar flying job you’ll find in the world. It’s dangerous and I spend enormous amounts of time with my white knuckles stretching to pop out of my skin. But I’m still there for a few reasons. For one, the scenery it absolutely gorgeous. Each day brings us new weather, animal migrations, and hours of flying without seeing a single sign of human below. But the number one reason why I keep coming back is for the people. Here are just a few of the lovely characters of the Bethel pilot house.

Here is the beautiful Scott. You can often hear him saying, “I have this buddy….” and then he talks about something
Dan soaking in the vibes, relaxing after a long day of flying
Brett and Scott having a family dinner. Soon they will be throwing gummy bears at each other’s mouths.

I finally finished my shift in Bethel. At this point I had worked 33 days in a row, and would have to work just 15 more in Kotzebue before I could get on that sweet sweet freedom jet.