Last week Mel was notified that the US Embassy was taking a bus down to do a tour of the USS George Washington and you could sign up to go. It was a bit of a last minute deal so I was not able to go down and get a ticket, but because Mel is so awesome she went and got me a ticket.

I LIKE BIG SHIPS!

Today I hopped the BTS down to Ploen Chit and then walked to the NOB building, which I think is the old Embassy building. I of course arrived an hour early because I still cannot figure out how long it takes to get anywhere from our Apartment apparently.

We then took a bus all the way down near Pattaya where the Carrier was.

Our first view

First look into the hanger bays. The bay is actually one very long large room, but there are big doors that they can slide shut to section it off. Very similar to a huge ballroom.

Ohh yes!. The coolest machine gun system ever. The only problem with these is if they need to be used, nuclear war is probably near by as well.

After walking up about 5 floors on the tightest staircases, we arrived on the flight deck. They had almost all of the aircraft on the deck so it was pretty impressive seeing everything. EA-6’s, F/A-18’s….

Here you can see the track that one of the four catapults runs on.

The next stop was the bridge. I didn’t take any pictures of inside the bridge as I wasn’t sure if we were able to. Apparently they didn’t care if you did or not since other people were.

I’m assuming these are part of the escort group of the carrier

You can see the anchor chain room and a silhouette of one of the F/A-18’s in the hanger bay. They were just taking it up to the flight deck as we were leaving.

So that was today’s adventure. Very cool ship and the crew that took us on the tour was very very nice. I’m surprised since I’m sure they needed to be doing something else or maybe just going out to relax somewhere in Pattaya since they said they were only there for a few days. Actually I think I saw 4 guys hanging out at the beach volleyball courts with their shirts off though…wait there are no F-14’s and this isn’t Top Gun!