A Golden Week Trip to Korea - Arrival in Pyongyang

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So picking up from where the last post left off, we left the airport and piled onto the bus and the Korean guides introduced themselves. We had Miss Kim, who was probably somewhere in her early 30s, unmarried, and had great English, not perfect, but very fluent; Mr. Lee, probably somewhere in his early 40s, married, whose English wasn't great, but he could get his points across; and Miss Han, a trainee, maybe in her late 20s, whose English was also pretty good, but she was more shy than Miss Kim. Usually as we went around the sights it was Miss Kim who did most of the talking and translating, but at times they had Miss Han translate. Occasionally she wouldn't be able to remember a word or would mix it up with another and we would help her out. She was always embarassed when this happened, but we always tried to reassure her that her English was great, which it was. Mr. Lee only translated or talked once or twice, more usually he was just on the edge of the group making sure everyone was together, or staying back with someone who wanted to take more photos.

Taking photos was no problem at all. Reading older blogs written by other tourists you can see that it used to be that you always had to get permission for pictures, and they would often tell you no, but we were given almost no restrictions at all on what we could take pictures of. The rules were pretty much just:
1. No pictures of anything military-related (road checkpoints, etc.), which is something that applies to most countries really.
2. No closeups of people without their permission (which is just basic courtesy anyway), and especially of members of the military, but it was fine if they were just in the background of shots or whatever. The main reason they mentioned this was because people occassionally complained to the authorities about having their pictures taken, and then the government gives the (Korean) tour company a hard time about it.
3. When taking pictures of statues or photos or paintings of the Kims, the whole work had to be in frame, without cutting off any part of it.
4. There were a couple special places where we couldn't take any photos at all.

We had one guy in the group who had this big handheld mount for his camera and was constantly taking videos of everything, sticking the camera right up to things and panning over them, etc. Sometimes the guides gave him a hard time about it because it always looked like he was filming, even when he wasn't, but even then it was usually the other people at the locations that were wary of it rather than the guides themselves.

And about the guides often being called "government minders" in the media, about the only two grains of truth to that are: 1. KITC is a government owned company, so yes, they're technically from the government, and 2. They did often tell us what to mind, because Korea has laws that we don't know or aren't used to that they didn't want us breaking and getting into trouble. Fact is though that they went to school for this job and they only did the things that any other group tour guide anywhere would do, and the foremost thing in their minds was that we all have a good time.

Anyway, so we had the two groups, the short tour and the long tour, which were mostly separate, but since our itineraries were the same we often ran into each other at the hotel or at various sites, and each group had the guide from Koryo Tours as well, which was Jessica for the long group. So we did the introductions on the way from the airport, and then they collected our passports and visas. Ostensibly this is to keep them safe so we don't lose them or something, but who knows why the government actually requires it. I wouldn't be surprised if they got analyzed in order to produce counterfeit passports for spies or something.

On the way into town I noticed that there was a lot of tree planting happening here too like in Beijing, and not just here, but in a lot of places throughout the trip. One of the books I got of Kim Jong Un's aphorisms has quotes about environmentalism too, so at least he's doing good stuff like that. Also here and in Beijing I noticed that they put white paint on the bases of all the trees for some reason. I don't know if it was supposed to be for just decoration or to keep insects from damaging them or what, but I googled it after getting back and it's apparently a thing that's done in a lot of places for a variety reasons, so you can google that if you're interested.

My first picture in North Korea.

The first buildings we saw.

Patriotic imagery.

Tree planting in front of the Fatherland Liberation War Martyrs' Cemetery.

Apartment building

The April 25 House of Culture

A snack shop in front of some building and some kids in the side door.

More patriotic imagery.

Mansudae Grand Monument from the side. You can just see the Kims heads. (Whoops, I didn't get the whole statues in the frame!)

Apartment high-rises in the distance.

This was the closest we ever got to the statues. :(

So our first stop before even going to the hotel was Kim Il Sung Square. This is in front of the Grand People's Study House, which is basically the national library, and is probably my favorite building that we saw. On the ground all over the square, and even extending onto the roads bordering it, are painted dots and numbers, which are used for lining people up for the various events that are performed in the square, like mass dances, and probably military displays and things.

Juche Tower from across the Taedong River.

The Grand People's Study House

A clear view of the markings in the road, and one of the ubiquitous electric busses.

Juche Tower from across the square.

"Baekdu's Revolutionary Spirit"

After checking out the square we went just around the corner to the Foreign Languages Bookshop. It was relatively small, but had books in all the major tourist languages, like Chinese, English, Russian, Spanish, French, Japanese and a few others. So this is where I got my Kim biographies, Juche books, the Japanese Juche booklet, and the Kim Jong Un aphorisms. I also picked up a flag pin that I wore throughout the week.

Entrance to the bookshop.

Japanese books.

A normal playground. Yes, they have playgrounds in North Korea!

A quick shot of my visa before handing it in.

The Study House from the side.

The sun was setting so now we went to the hotel. The Yanggakdo is the largest operating hotel in the country (the Ryugyong is much larger, but still unfinished) and is on Yanggak Isle in the middle of the Taedong River in the middle of the city. 'Yang' means sheep, 'gak' horn, and 'do' island, because the island is in the shape of a ram's horn. (The same would be pronounced 'youkakudou' in Japanese, because Korean and Japanese both take the words from Chinese.) I thought it was square up until now, but it's actually in the shape of a right triangle/half square. This makes the floorplan of the hotel kind of odd, and also for some reason the doors right in front of the lobby weren't open, so we always had to use the doors on the other side of the hotel and walk across it to get to the lobby and elevators. The lobby was nice and fancy, but also had some Christmas lights hanging around for decoration, which seemed kind of tacky and out of place.

So Jessica handed out our keycards and we went up to our rooms and dropped off our bags and went down to the dining room for dinner. It was a buffet and the food wasn't all that great. There was a couple types of bread, various vegetables, and some fish and pork. We got free beer though, and it was pretty good! It was Taedonggang #2, which is what we were served everywhere and is pretty much the go-to beer of Korea. It's light-colored, not hoppy at all, and more like an ale rather than a lager. I liked it and would totally buy it if I could get it elsewhere. Apparently Koryo has asked about the possibility of their participating in Chinese beerfests, but for whatever reason they're not interested. (There is a Pyongyang beerfest though.)

The Yanggakdo Hotel dining room.

The go-to beer during our trip.

So dinner was the first time we had a good chance for everyone to sit down and talk and get to know each other. I had actually ended up sitting with people from the short group, since they were the ones I recognized, because there were a bunch of other tourists there besides just our groups. So we talked about where we lived and where we were from and what we did and all that, and after dinner decided to head up to the revolving restaurant on the top floor for some drinks. It was actually the only time I've ever been to a revolving restaurant, so that alone made it interesting. There wasn't too much to see though, not much was lit up outside, and the drinks were a bit expensive up here too, so after just a couple rounds we went down to the bar in the lobby instead. There was a small video screen in the elevator that mostly showed off the features of the hotel, and was playing some food video as we were going down, which led to some wisecracks about North Korean food porn.

Also we discussed the mysterious 5th floor for which there's no button in the elevator. You can read all about this floor online and see lots of videos on YouTube of people who snuck onto it. This is where the American tourist who's still being detained stole the propaganda poster from. On the listing of floors in the elevator it's marked as being for "Communication and TV Rebroadcasting" (that's a funny euphemism for "surveillance"). By the way, this elevator was pretty slow, which is why we had time to talk about all this while we were in there. (The hotel is 47 floors.)

"Floor for Communication and TV Rebroadcasting"

Down in the bar we were eventually joined by Nancy, the Koryo guide for the short group, who shared various info and stories with us. The draft beer we got here wasn't the Taedonggang #2, I don't know what it was called, but it was a lot heavier in flavor than it, although otherwise similar in style. We also got some soju to try, although it had quite a chemical flavor to it.

Also, decorating the outside of the bar were these fish tanks with what seemed to be sharks in them, but Miss Kim later told us they were sturgeon, as confirmed when I googled the Latin name after getting home.

Fishtanks in front of the bar.

Sharks? Nope, "Acipenser mikadoi" (sturgeon).

Our mornings all started between 8 and 9, with breakfast usually being served between 7 and 7:30, so after our party wore down I just explored my room a bit before going to bed. There was no high mount for the showerhead so I had to kneel whenever I was washing my hair, and no washcloths (not just here, but in any of the hotels we stayed at) so I had to just use my hands, but otherwise it was a normal, if somewhat worn out hotel room. Like the hotels I've stayed at in Japan, you put your keycard in a slot by the door to activate the lights, which makes sure that you can't leave any on when you leave the room. A clever energy-saving measure, of which we saw many as we went around the country, as you can imagine that they can't afford to waste any.

Home away from home. The flatscreen TV's hidden by the lamp.

The toilet's behind the door and the door was always banging into it.

So I got up at 6:45 the next morning and was at breakfast at 7. I didn't even notice the egg and toast table until after I had eaten and saw some of the others availing themselves of it, so I didn't try that until tomorrow, but the breakfast food was similar to the dinner food, and there was much half-serious joking that it probably was the same food. As with dinner, the best of it was the breads, as they always had a sort of rollcake, and this morning they had an anko bun too, and I love my anko. They also had coffee and tea, yogurt, the vegetables which strongly resembled the previous night's, and some form of salami/sausage type thing which many of the other's didn't trust, but it was okay, except for being excessively greasy.

A couple of the others mentioned that having kept their windows open at night (as the rooms were a bit warm and although there was ventilation, it wasn't air conditioning) they heard some sort of opera singing coming from somewhere over the river between about 3 or 4am. The nighttime and early morning noises would prove to be one of the more interesting things during the trip, because although I never heard any of this opera singing, there were always some sort of construction noises coming from somewhere in the city when I was in the room at night.

In any case, after breakfast we cleaned up and browsed the hotel shops for a bit. There was one shop of mostly snacks and drinks in the area behind the elevators, where we bought our bottled waters for the day, and between the lobby and dining room were the regular souvenir shop and the bookstore. We would be staying at the same hotel tonight, so we left our bags in the room except what we were going to bring with us on the bus, and met everyone in the lobby at eight to head out on our first full day in Pyongyang.

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