NK 2

We headed to our hotel from the train station.

"This is rush hour" announced our female guide, Ri. I could see about 10 other cars on the road.

Our hotel, Changwangsan, was a 3star hotel near the ice rink and a conference building. Not convinced the ice rink is open. The first thing we saw in the hotel was a picture of Kim Il-Sung, the President whose heart has sadly stopped beating, along with his son, Kim Jong-Il, who is the Dear Leader. They were standing by Mount Paekdu, which is in the north of the country and was the base for Kim Il-Sung's guerrilla action against the Japanese who had occupied the country. Pictures of those two are everywhere and every (loyal) North Korean wears a badge with Kim 1's face on to show their love- like Christians wear a cross.

We were ushered to a small room with a table laid out with cutlery they haven't been able to replace in decades. Our waitress happily bounced in and proceed to give us a succession of dishes one by one. I'll say now that the Koreans seemed determined to prove how much food was around and always gave us far too much. At first I resolutely ate everything, concious that people really were starving here, but eventually I gave up and just ate until I was full. The food itself was not great- something stale about it. I suspect a lot of what we ate, especially the meat, was imported from China. NK, according to Ri, has 2 beef and milk farms. 2.

Our waitress, Kim Sung-hui, was fantastic. We could only communicate in bad english/chinese but she was so sweet. I wrote my name in Korean, about the only thing I can write, and she wrote hers in English and we had a connection.

Then to bed- our rooms, predictably, were very old-fashioned and age was slowly killing everything off. We never had hot water in the shower. The tap hiccoughed every time we wanted water. The decrepit tv only showed one channel of N koreans crying over something. There was shampoo in bottles which I stuffed in my suitcase. Even shampoo gets exciting when it's from NK.

Our guides for the first day were Ri and Mr Kim. Ri is a very sophisticated older woman whose platform shoes didn't quite hide how short she was. She spoke English very well and often wrote down phrases we used she hadn't heard before. Mr Kim was 61 and a bit stern until he asked how many hours separated Sara and I. "Ten minutes", I replied, to which he burst out laughing. Unfortunately he had back pain and was replaced by another Mr Kim who was younger and and rather sweet.

Pyongyang is the capital of NK and is cut in half by the river Taedong. It was mercifully cool and clear after a hot and smoggy Beijing. No cars or industry do keep a city clean. The buildings are mostly skyscrapers that look pretty awful. I suspect that they don't have lifts. Contrary to reports, there were lights on at night. It has two metro lines. Which may or may not be working.

Shall write more later- not much in this post somehow!