Manas Air Base

[baileynme]

Wow. Sounds like a world of difference since the last time I was there. Are the transient "dorms" still a bunch of leaky tents, or have they put up something better?

Hard to tell as I'm permanent party, but I think transient aircrew that are on flight orders stay in the same kind of dorms as the permanent party folks whereas if you are not flying the aircraft you're using to get in/out of country I think you get put up in one of two tent cities. The tent cities do have their own chow halls and morale tents (barber, internet, pool table, etc). Just went and explored the newest one that used to be Lobo's Den in Ops Town but was taken away when certain aircrew ruined it.

[Who?]

Hard to tell as I'm permanent party, but I think transient aircrew that are on flight orders stay in the same kind of dorms as the permanent party folks whereas if you are not flying the aircraft you're using to get in/out of country I think you get put up in one of two tent cities.

Don't give up too easily. I'll preface this by saying my information is dated, but when I rotated out of Bagram in Jan 2008, we were sure there would be at least a 3-day layover in Manas, with accompanying subzero temperatures etc. Rode the C-17 up from Bagram and went to the inprocessing brief, where there were specific instructions for "transient aircrew" to go through a separate process to get immigrated into the country. My compatriot and I went over there dressed in our DFDUs and weren't questioned at all, we just let them take our passports over to the civilian side for about 20 minutes and then proceeded on to billeting to get our private rooms. Much better than rooming with 100 of our closest Army friends, in my opinion. We were transients, and we were aircrew, right? No falsehoods required.

Since my fellow aircrew member was female, the billeting airman asked if we'd be needing any help at our alert time since the dorms were separated by sex, at which point I looked at my watch and thought for a second, then told him we'd take care of it. I'm glad he hadn't gotten to the portion of his CDCs that taught insignia and the various types of wings, or he might have realized that there's no aircraft, either stationed at Manas or otherwise, that is crewed solely by two navigators...

Edited August 5, 2011 by Who?

[Duck]

Thanks for the info guys. One more question. Is the internet fast enough to do the Netflix streaming stuff?

[GovernmentMan]

Hmm. Some guys were playing WoW with voice, and some people were able to Skype. Dunno if it was good enough for Netflix. Then again, even if you can, don't be that asshole who hogs every last bit of bandwidth, so I can't even get into my email to see how my mom's surgery went, ya know?

Oh wait, I'm describing Altus.

But seriously, even back in 2008 the bandwidth was pretty good, but you might still be better off borrowing from the communal Hajji DVD library.

[baileynme]

Thanks for the info guys. One more question. Is the internet fast enough to do the Netflix streaming stuff?

Netflix isn't too bad however that and a few other sites won't work unless you get a VPN (I knew nothing about this stuff till I got here). Take a look at strongvpn.com if you're interested before you leave otherwise you can't get to the site itself to buy it out here. I'm splitting it with my AC and it works out decently well, but as someone else mentioned the library is stocked with a lot of DVDs that permanent party can check out and black market DVDs are everywhere.

[BamaC-21]

Netflix isn't too bad however that and a few other sites won't work unless you get a VPN (I knew nothing about this stuff till I got here). Take a look at strongvpn.com if you're interested before you leave otherwise you can't get to the site itself to buy it out here. I'm splitting it with my AC and it works out decently well, but as someone else mentioned the library is stocked with a lot of DVDs that permanent party can check out and black market DVDs are everywhere.

I'm leaving for Manas soon and this is the first I've heard of needing a VPN. Is it still good to get? Thanks!

[baileynme]

Been back several times since that post, still a good idea if you can't live without Netflix, Hulu, or any other streaming services (the one exception is stuff off of iTunes on AppleTV). But the library still carries more DVDs and games than you should have time for. Just depends on what you like to watch... which reminds me a hard drive filled with movies also works... I've heard.

[SPiF]

You can get something like StrongVPN for ~$20/3mos, if I remember right. What it does is make Hulu/Netflix/AmazonOnDemand think you're in the US. Since the Manas internet shows up as being outside the US, most of those sites will block you otherwise.

[discus]

You can get something like StrongVPN for ~$20/3mos, if I remember right. What it does is make Hulu/Netflix/AmazonOnDemand /YOUPORN think you're in the US. Since the Manas internet shows up as being outside the US, most of those sites will block you otherwise.

FIFY

[WeatherManC130]

Since there are a 1000+ people at Pete's Place a night, good luck with downloading anything over 1 mb between dinner and midnight. I'm pretty sure transient and permanent party share the same internet.

[Duff_Man]

Netflix isn't too bad however that and a few other sites won't work unless you get a VPN (I knew nothing about this stuff till I got here). Take a look at strongvpn.com if you're interested before you leave otherwise you can't get to the site itself to buy it out here. I'm splitting it with my AC and it works out decently well, but as someone else mentioned the library is stocked with a lot of DVDs that permanent party can check out and black market DVDs are everywhere.

If your FOB, base, camp, whatever doesn't have at least a 3 TB morale drive, then you're doing it wrong... So a good external hard drive from Amazon should pay for itself pretty quickly. That is, if you don't mind running the risk of some smart ass renaming a porno file after some Disney movie for you and your unsuspecting family to discover when you get home, so I'd definitely recommend 'test-driving' the movies before public viewing.

[stick]

I used the free version of Hot Spot Shield to fool NBC so I could watch the Olympics. I didn't try Netflix or Hulu, but I imagine they would work as well.

http://www.hotspotshield.com/