Ryanggang Hotel Pyongyang

... 8217;t?&#8220;<br><br>&#8222;So me people forget,&#8220; she said.<br><br>&#8222;I know,&#8220; I nodded. &#8222;But if I had forgotten, I would send it to you. It&#8217;s yours, isn&#8217;t it?&#8220;<br><br>Then it was time for a paper bag to make a round in the group, passing from hand to hand and each of us dropped in some money as a foreign-currency tip to our guides. I went along with Simon&#8217;s suggestion of twenty five euro per person as my contribution. By the ...

... at one point or another, amounted to a nonsense. I would have so dearly fancied an afternoon, or a day more to the point, all by myself, so I could roam around on my own and have a peek in corners where just my nose would lead me. But I grew tired of being straitjacketed, as it were, by all the restrictions they were imposing on us. I knew the poor guides had little to do with it. They did as told, and there was little they could change there. In fact, on the whole, all ...

... an amazing 360 degree panorama view of the Korean War. <br><br>In the Fountain Park we got to interact a little with some Koreans, which was great. From the Fountain Park we walked to the Grand Monument on Mansu Hill. This is the huge statue of Kim Il Sung. It's a very important place for the Koreans where they lay flowers for their President and bow for him. Your not allowed to take pictures that only show a ...

... Sonyn soittimista. Ennen varsinaista mausoleumisalia jokainen meni pelottavan näköisen puhalluskoneen läpi, jonka tarkoitus jäi hieman epäselväksi. Jokaiselta Pohjois-Koreaan matkaavalta edellytettiin, että he käyvät kumartamassa balsamoidun ruumiin luona kolme kertaa: jalkojen sekä oikean ja vasemman sivustan luona (mutta ei pään luona). Viimeisenä kävimme salissa, johon on kerätty "suurelle johtajalle" myönnettyjä kunniamerkkeja (ml ...

... I got there, there were congratulations going around. Somebody had discovered that Pim had had a birthday the day before. If he had tried to keep it secret, it hadn&#8217;t worked. He was rumbled.<br><br>I shook his hand and wished him all the best.<br><br>&#8222;So you celebrated your birthday in North Korea," I said.<br><br>&#8222;So it seems,&#8220; he laughed.<br><br>&#8222;How did they find out?&#8220;<br><br>&#8222;Guess you can&#8217;t hide such things forever.&#8220;<br><br ...

... how others coped, but soon I reached for my mp3 player.<br><br>The real change in respect with the day before came at the outskirts of town. Just outside of Pyongyang, over the Tongil Expressway, as they seem to officially call the Pyongyang &#8211; Keasong motorway, there&#8217;s this huge arched Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification in the shape of two women dressed in traditional Korean fashion, holding a map of unified Korea. Just below the map there was an ...

As agreed beforehand, everyone appeared dressed up in front of the bus. Our Korean guides turned up wearing what may have been their best, like local toffs, in smart dark blue suits, spotless white shirts and ties. Mrs Lee lagged behind none, dressed to the nines, all in elegant black. All of the guys in our group, even if many of them still in jeans, sported collared shirts and ties. Except me. I had a T-shirt and a jacket. Like Merle Haggard in his &#8222;Ever-changing Woman".<br ...

Saturday in Pyongyang dawned clear as the spring water, with the sky as blue as Willie Nelson's blue eyes crying in the rain. Or Fred Rose's, if I really want to be precise. But the fact that there was not a whiff of fog this morning could probably be chalked up to the strong wind. Which made the day crystal clear, but the morning unusually cold. All the more so through the open window of a room at the thirty fifth floor.<br><br>Other than that, the beginning of the day in everything ...

... were people with friends and families, joys and sorrows, jokes and pranks even under such regimes. They were certainly no puppets, much as the regime would like that. And yet, we somehow all felt, each one to their own extent, that public laughter here in North Korea would be an orchestrated thing, well rehearsed and then rendered according to a printed officially sanctioned script.<br><br>What we saw in Moran Bong park didn't entirely fit that description. People clearly enjoyed ...

... a guy from our group who got the window seat. While he was putting whatever he had on him up in the locker space above our heads, one of those flight attendants, evidently in an attempt to get everything ready for take-off as soon as possible, came up to us and told him: <br>"Excuse me, hurry up!" <br>He looked first at her and then at me with a puzzled expression on his face. I kind of smiled and shrugged when the girl repeated: <br>"Excuse me, hurry up!" and tried to help along. Which to ...