Fucking jealous bro. Have always wanted to go just for the kitsch factor of it; since the country seems to be stuck in a timewarp.
Did they show you the "poor" parts of the country or did you get the touristy "Best Korea" song and dance?
It's always been a dream of mine to visit the country. I studied the history and political situation of North-South relations in university, and that kind of snowballed into doing a lot of research and reading books, it just really fascinated me. I've also read a lot of pro-DPRK stuff so I consider myself to have a pretty open mind about the country compared to most people. It wasn't until recently that American citizens could visit the country, so I figured that I might as well take a summer vacation and see it for myself.
I saw plenty of poverty. Most bathrooms in the country don't have running water, there are electricity problems. Even still, we could kind of request certain things, like there were specific sights and restaurants we were interested in visiting and they allowed us to go. Obviously I can't say whether or not the whole country was a showcase but we did pass by some pretty bad areas so who knows. Like I said though I didn't come in with any agenda and I've seen plenty of shithole villages and slums in every country so it's not like it's a problem unique to the DPRK.
Fucking jealous bro. Have always wanted to go just for the kitsch factor of it; since the country seems to be stuck in a timewarp.
Did they show you the "poor" parts of the country or did you get the touristy "Best Korea" song and dance?
THERE IS NO SUCH THING IN BEST KOREA. PLEASE UNDERSTAND.
It's a complete propaganda tour. The "guides" are with you at all times and you are not allowed to go anywhere on your own. Check out the VICE Guide To North Korea for a good documentary on it:
http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3
Props to Z for going...I'd be too afraid of getting stuck there for any number of reasons.
I've seen the Vice guide before and I dunno, they've done other travel guides and they're all garbage so I'm not sure why this one is so well-regarded. Anyway apparently tours were significantly different back then, they only showed you Pyongyang and the DMZ and there were a lot of restrictions. They've slowly been opening up more of the country and being more relaxed about it, I've heard stories about how they used to check your pictures and delete anything they didn't like, never happened to me.
There's apparently another tour option where you travel the Eastern side of the country and you really see the unexplored parts, perhaps I'll adventure it someday.
Need more pics!
Also you say the people you met were nice. Im wondering, did you happen to go to a park where there were people dancing andnyou were asked to join in?
Not sure what you mean by the dancing. We were there during a national holiday and there was supposed to be a mass-dance in the main square, but it was raining and got cancelled I guess. Just as well. By friendliness, people were constantly waving to us, whether we were passing on the bus or walking on the streets, people that obviously weren't plants. Some people tried talking to me but my lack of Korean really showed through there. Even the military guys we ran across were really friendly and wanted to take pictures with us and such. Even when they heard I was American they didn't care. The only time we encountered any hostility is when we went to an amusement park and got the VIP treatment, being able to immediately go to the front of the line. Some of the people who had been standing in line for a long time got pretty pissed of and started yelling at us, heh.
I guess at one of the parks we were having a barbecue and one of the tourists tried to chat to the waitress in broken Korean, eventually they got to the point where she was encouraging him to sing national anthems and have him dance to traditional Korean songs, rather embarrassing to watch and I didn't get the impression that was planned out.
Anyway, piczzzzzz! I should say that I saw plenty of pictures and stuff from other tourists so I kind of knew what I was getting myself into. Even still, being there is completely different, you really can't prepare yourself. Also being on a long tour I saw a lot of things that a lot of tourists never visit.
Many pictures were taken from the inside of the bus so mind the glare and shoddy positioning.
So the airport is about 30 minutes away from the main city. Got a few good shots of the countryside as we drove by.
I'll assume this is a school, you can see a basketball hoop!
Slowly making way to the city.
Murals all over the place. They replace them often too, they were already changed by the time we left.
Pyongyang city is actually pretty big and takes quite a long time to drive through. That kind of surprised me, it was also pretty amazing to see just how there's very much a lifestyle here. Even at that point I was still kind of shocked to just see it being a "real" place instead of a setpiece. I can't even describe the emotions that I had going through the city at first.
Anyway that's enough for now, stay tuned for the next episode where I show off the hotel and the Arirang games!
