Best Liberty Ports: What's to know

[lowflier03]

Hong Kong - Great experience. Whichever side you decide to stay on has it's advantages (other than the fact that taxi fare to cross to the other side gets expensive) Kowloon has a great ex-pat crowd and some fun bars. Wan Chai is great for shopping and restaurants, the roast duck on Thanksgiving is an experience. Great shopping for questionable electronics/software. Definitely get a suit made your first day in port William H . Cheng and Sons is where I went.

Thailand - Pattaya is an adventure. Walking street is beyond description. Cheap as hell to live like a king for a week. There were a few married guys who hired a working girl for the 5 days just to carry their shopping bags and keep the other girls away. (Having your crotch grabbed seriously gets old fast and you wouldn't believe how cheap a "bodyguard" is.) Lots of cheap shopping. Ride elephants, pet a tiger, stay away from the Muay Thai fights!!!

Australia - Sydney is great. Steaks on the waterfront, Hunter valley wine country, etc. Perth, is a nice, low key area. Brisbane/Gold Coast is the place to party and have a good time. However no matter where you are in the country, if you are single and can't hook up, you need to just give up at life.

Singapore - Already mentioned. Its freakin expensive, its all expats but go to the long bar and have a Singapore Sling anyway. The night zoo was actually pretty cool.

Malaysia - Slightly upscale version of Thailand. Better shopping. More questionable electronics/software. (Not as good of quality as HK or Shanghai)

Shanghai - If you ever get the chance, it is awesome. Probably some of the friendliest people I have met on a port call. (Short of the Aussies). Great expat experience at the bars as well, questionable electronics/software shopping.

Osan - Great shopping just outside the front gate. Oxford leather is the place to get a quality G-2 jacket. Anything you want can be hand-embroidered in minutes. Also Mr. Bo's is a great place to have a custom suit made. He also makes uniforms at reasonable prices. If you have the time do the DMZ tour!!! You start at 5am and it takes most of the day, but it well worth it.

 

[DocT]

Abu Dhabi

Clean. Priced like a major city in the states. Cabs are great and there's no crime. Marina Mall is huge and has about any high-end item you'd want. Abu Dhabi Mall is much closer to the pier and is more like a "normal" American mall. Must see: Emirates Palace is incredible and has some great places to eat as well as a great cigar bar. The Grand Mosque is a bit of a drive but is one of the most impressive things I've seen. Not much of a big party scene outside of the hotels. That's where most of the boozing happens.

 

[scoolbubba]

Thanks for this thread, guys. Makes me almost excited to deploy.

...almost.


Good: Taormina. Agrigento on Sicily. I found catania to be a miserable shithole. Never made it over to mainland, but heard awesome stuff about Citaveccia.

Manama isn't bad. It's amazing what you can see in a culture that embraces flaunting the shit out of your wealth. $10,000 cell phones? I guess having a phone to match your Bugatti Veyron SS isn't a bad idea. Good call, Mr. Sheikh! Tailored suits for 120 bucks apiece ain't a bad deal, either. We pushed to go to the Dubai airshow...and got told to dream the fuck on. Maybe later.

Haven't hit 7th fleet in my travels, yet. Seems like P-3s tend to go to shittier and shittier places to prove "we are in this fight!" and have more and more restrictions placed on liberty. Lame.

 

[HokiePilot]

Palma, Mallorca! If you get up in the hills, there is actually some neat history and small towns. Magaluf is a big party though. Think Cancun for Great Britain.

 

[HokiePilot]

Those kinds of shenanigans are probably not going to be going down on a big ship - not these days.

Brett

Still possible. It happened on the Enterprise on the last cruise.

 

[helolumpy]

7 days in Dublin followed by 5 days in Portsmouth, England was probably the best 1-2 in my 4 deployments

 

[Brett327]

Still possible. It happened on the Enterprise on the last cruise.

Impressive. Was the offer extended to people in the Airwing?

Brett

 

[PropStop]

Crete - small little mom and pop joint right outside the crappy NATO barracks. Great food, very friendly, family's uzo, amazing food (did I mention that?), would totally go again.

 

[PropStop]

I can't believe nobody said The Died!

 

[Tomodachi]

Yokosuka, Japan:

The Good: Go down blue street and under Chuo Station is a small sushi go-round at the corner which will be the best sushi you will eat in Yokosuka. Take a train to Yokohama/Sakuragicho/Tokyo and have fun. Shibuya (in Tokyo) is a fun and safe place to visit. Be careful with Roppongi (nightlife area) travel in a group there.

The Bad: Lots of rules in place due to the high number of incidents (murder, rape, assaults, etc...). Drinking curfew in public places weekdays = 0000... fri/sat night curfew = 0200. Also, public consumption of alcohol is prohibited.... as well as the "massagy" parlors that provide happy endings which if caught in a massage parlor = Art 92. The trains stop around midnight so if you want to make it back to base you need to catch a train around 2300. The cab fares from Tokyo to base will be around $200-300 in YEN.

Bottom line: stay out of the "HONCH" area which is right outside the gate.

 

[HokiePilot]

Impressive. Was the offer extended to people in the Airwing?

Brett

Yeah. About 10 people in our squadron did it.

 

[xj220]

I can't believe nobody said The Died!

I'm not going to lie, it really isn't that bad. Minus the Air Forceness and persco. You can walk around and they have all you need there. I've only been out in Misawa once, but it seems nice. Okinawa is nice, too. If you can, hit up the seawall as there's a couple cool bars there and it's a nice area. Tokyo is a blast though and I definitely want to go back there. Central America, eh. Other than the fact that you'll get shot anywhere you go, it's nice.

 

[Brett327]

I can't believe nobody said The Died!

It's not really a liberty port. I believe Doha was mentioned though.

Only thing I haven't seen mentioned that I've been to is Santiago Chile and Cape Town, SA. I did Santiago for about 3 weeks on a UNITAS det in the mid-90s. I didn't know what I was expecting, being my first time to South America, but Chile was most impressive. Very modern, much cleaner and nicer than most of Europe and the demographics definitely favored the single males. There were beautiful and friendly chicks everywhere. Fun bars and great food. The Chileans have a thing for Avocados and they had some very interesting and tasty avocado-based dishes. City had a river running through the middle of it with mountain peaks on either side that you could drive up to or hike around on. Definitely recommend it.

Cape Town was a bit of a hassle because of the liberty boats and a relatively rough harbor. Made for some long-ass lines to get off the ship. The area around fleet landing had lots of fun bars/restaurants and the geography surrounding the city was breath-taking. We got our admin a bit off the beaten path and found more great restaurants, bazar, etc. We were the first CVN to pull in there in decades, so the force protection measures were a little overboard. We got all the standard briefs about rampant crime, etc, but saw none of that in town. Everyone spoke english (unofficial language there) and people were generally good to deal with. There were a bunch of tours for wine country, safaris, etc, but I was only ashore for about 30 hours, so pretty much just chilled in town. Overall good experience, although I think if I were going to SA on my own dime, I'd probably go somewhere else.

Brett

 

[borednstoked]

Pretty good: Pataya Thailand (I suspect Phuket is much better?), Pearl Harbor (once, maybe twice and NEVER for two weeks.....), Dubai (no need to go more than once), Marmaris Turkey.

Ok to never go again: Sasebo, Hong Kong (due to numerous visits), Bahrain, Busan.

Ft Lauderdale once during a C2X - but that doesn't really count.

I did all this about 10 years ago so take that into consideration.

Pattaya was much better than Phuket unless you just want to go out on the water. You could rent a taxi pickup truck for like the whole day and it cost like $20. Check out the shows. There was a famous one, think it began with M like mammas or Mary's. Midget kick boxing was sweet, and go-karts there are like race cars. Phuket was boring to me.

In HK there were some cool bars along the escalators area like mad dogs. Wanchai is where you'll find a more thailand like experience.

Singapore was pretty sweet. I usually stayed at Sentosa. In summer theres a lot of beach soccer and volleyball....and moonlighting with ladies. There's also th e gaylang area (sounds funny but that is a red light area) or the tower previously mentioned.

Sydney, yea pretty cool anywhere. The sleezy partis kings cross I think. Strip clubs and such, with extras.

Guam, pretty boring but theres an Outback. Also an AF base for a trip to the exchange.

Busan is the open market for shopping or the green light "red light". I thought of it more similar to an aquarium of geisha....albeit Korean. The little dive bars near the pier will probably have women inside the doors trying to pull you in off the street. Try not to eat dog.

Yokosuka is close enough to get to Tokyo by train. Roppongi is always crawling. Same with Ginza, Shinjuku, and Shibuya but you have to look harder.

 

[TheBubba]

The Deid? I put a plug in for Doha.