a mystery...

Let’s start with a little quiz:

My last journey has taken us (me and 4 friends, no names will be mentioned, for obvious reasons) to a place where we stayed at a hotel set on a small (artificial?) island, among its amenities: a bowling alley, a casino, a revolving restaurant, pool, sauna, karaoke, shops etc. the air was quite clean (ok, compared to Beijing, the air is probably better anywhere in the world) and the country itself is a very safe place to travel. so where in the world did we go???

No, it was neither las vegas, nor dubai nor hong kong. Instead, we travelled to one of the most closed-off countries in the world, the democratic people’s republic of north koreaI’ve always wanted to go there, but most of the trip I’ve found so far were really expensive. Fortunately, my work colleague found a chinese company which does tours there. And they were about 1000 euros cheaper!!! But in the beginning, it wasn’t sure whether they could take non-chinese on their tours…
The travel agent spoke/wrote english quite well, which helped a lot during the organizational part of the trip. After loads of passport copies, four passport pictures (in which we did, for a change, not wear our uniform and were set in front of a blue background) and our passports sent to Dandong (at the border), we finally held our train tickets in our hands and were on our way to Pyongyang, where we arrived a mere 27 hours later….
This involved a night on the train on the chinese side, hours of playing the piggy-dice-game, long waits at the chinese border, inspections at the north korean border (no cell phone, laptops, telescopes etc allowed), a three hour wait in the tourist waiting hall at the border and another long train ride to Pyongyang, which was acutally quite interesting, as we got to see what the korean countryside looks like, what people do there etc. of course, we were not allowed to take pictures while we were on the train – fortunately, none followed us to the toilet, which, luckily, was equipped with an open window…
Speaking of following: a trip to dprk means being constantly monitored by two guides. We were really lucky with ours, as they were quite young and open – but still, the great leader is everything for them. Our leaders also enjoyed listing to our ipods on the train ride – unfortunately, I could not accommodate their requests for Celine Dion…

Initially we thought that we’d be part of a chinese tour group, with us having english translation (not that I would need it, lol!), but instead, we were our own group, which was great, as we got to talk a lot more to the guides and find out more about the greatness of the great leader.

Our first day ended with dinner at the hotel, no way we could leave the hotel again after this.
Next morning, after korean breakfast, we first visited the mansundae grand monument, which is where a humongous statue of kim is standing. Flowers had to be purchased and, together with a bow, put down in front of the leader. From there, we drove, in our own private minibus, to the myonghang mountains, in order to admire all the gifts that the two kims have received from leaders, states and ordinary people from all over the world. The weirdest part was a room in which a life-sized wax statue of kim il sung, set in a beautiful forest/flower ambience, was standing, and, together with music playing, we had to bow again. I had to try really hard not to start laughing…very surreal!
our guides kept warning us about the traffic, especially when we took pictures in the middle of the road. Traffic doesn’t really exist there, but there has to be a woman standing in the middle of the road, who is seriously managing the traffic. Most people don’t even own a bicylce, and even fewer people own a car…but there are underpasses! Public transportation seems to be quite efficient in the capital and compared to china (at least nowadays), people are lining up when waiting for the bus. We also got to take the subway, just for one stop, but still, it was quite interesting. Not only were our guides following us all the way 100 meters under ground, the two kims did as well – their pictures are hanging everywhere! The subway itself is really nice, quite fancy actually. And it’s the deepest in the world and doubles as a nuclear bunker.

The juche tower offered us some great views of the city, although it always seemed quite deserted, considering around 2,2 million people live there – where are all the people?
we spent this evening with karaoke followed by bowling in our hotel, which our guides enjoyed very much.
The next day we traveled to the border, but sometimes I wondered, which border, as our guide kept talking about korea as one country(?).
After this, we visited the koryo museum and saw a performance at the children’s palace (impressive, but very kitshy) and got to go to a shop, which of course, was for foreigners. We were not allowed to visit a normal store, which would have been quite interesting.It is quite hard to decribe the north korea experience, but it might be quite similar to visits to china/soviet union in the 70ies. We all had a great time there and don’t regret it, but still, the country remains a mystery.