Around town
Trip Start
Aug 19, 2008
1
10
22
Trip End
Ongoing
Pyongyang, Korea Dem Peoples Rep
Friday, August 29, 2008
The hotel is a triangular prism 47 stories high with a revolving restaurant on top. The lobby is huge with marble walls and a marble floor. To one side a large turtle lives in a tank far too small for it. There are also some plastic christmas trees, untrimmed. There are four restaurants on the ground floor, two of which are called restaurant 1 and restaurant 2. There is also a bar. The basement houses a shop, a bowling alley, a karaoke room, a door marked 'shoe repairs' which was always closed, a casino, and a massage parlour said to be popular with visiting Chinese businessmen. There is a hotel noticeboard pinned with propaganda pictures showing the benefits of the country and lots of pictures of Kim Jong-Il providing on the spot guidance to a variety of North Korean enterprises
Yanggakdo lobby
.My room is on floor 34 and gives a clear view up the river to the May Day Stadium. All of the tour group are on the same floor in adjacent rooms.
It is restaurant 1 in which we have breakfast this morning. Through the windows we can see nothing, not because of censorship, but because the early mist has yet to be burnt off by the sun.
Our first stop is to the Mansudae Grand Monument, a large bronze statue of Kim Il-Sung which stands on a hill overlooking the city. I had made a gaffe the previous evening by suggesting to the guide we needn't bother to see the statue, a remark that went down like a lead balloon. A trip to the statue is an essential pilgrimage for all foreign visitors to the country, so as to pay due respects to the revered Great Leader. We are given the opportunity to buy flowers to leave at the statue's base, an opportunity I accept in order to get in the guides' good books.
We're not alone. While we wait to pay our respects hundreds of locals are doing the same, making the long walk up the steps to the base of the statue, approaching in rows, pausing, leaving flowers at the base, bowing, then leaving
View from room
. We can take photographs, but they must include the full statue. A shot of only one part is considered highly disrespectful. I think how my uncle Roy would struggle here, with his tendency to cut the head off anybody whose picture he's taking.We then visit a war museum, the highlight of which is seeing the Great Leader's underground bunker which he used during the Korean War. It is an impressive construction. The tunnels and the rooms have curved ceilings, rather like you'd expect in a Hobbit hole. On a hot day like today the tunnels are pleasantly cool. We have a chance to drink from a spring which the Great Leader and his men used as a water source. I decline this opportunity, claiming a sensitive stomach as the reason. Other members of the tour give it a go. I expect them to fall ill with dysentery, but disappointingly they all remain in perfect health.
There is a party of schoolchildren who have also come to visit the museum. As we move on they are leaving flowers at an outdoor mural of the great leader.
The next stop is the Pyongyang film studios. We walk through the outdoor film sets. It is a strange experience to walk through an empty town, although the eeriness is ruined by stumbling occasionally upon another tour group
Mansudae
. Unlike Hollywood film sets, the buildings here are proper free-standing structures. By the look of the artwork on the walls these sets are used to depict Japanese or Chinese towns. There are soldiers here who I assume are playing extras in a film. You would expect them to be observing us, watching our every move, but they are more interested in their game of volleyball. We are also shown an unfinished film by the director himself. I was expecting some form of propaganda film denouncing the USA but the story is of a female architect whose design results in the sacking of a rival architect who then has to take a menial job. I'm sure there was a lot more to it than that, but it was in Korean with no subtitles. All in all, it was surprisingly normal.We then take a ride on the Pyongyang metro. I've read reports on the net that in fact the metro is a fake, and there are only two stations to it, and the passengers appear only when a tour group visits in order to give the illusion of a fully working system. This theory is not dispelled by the fact that most tour groups only visit the first two stations on the line. Well, we were the lucky ones because we visited the third station. I can see why the guides would prefer that groups only visited the first two stations, they are the most impressive ones with coloured chandeliers and large murals. The third station is much more like a standard subway station in the west, albeit with no advertising, no grafitti, and spotlessly clean
Bunker tunnel
.Our next stop on the hectic schedule is to take a walk in a wooded park. There are groups of people talking and singing and playing cards. We are curiousities to them and they all make sure to take a good look at us. We try to buy water from a refreshment seller but she doesn't have enough. Our guide is embarrassed by this.
Throughout this trip the guides made a point of speaking to us separately, asking us about our background, our profession, and aspects of life in the west. I'm not quite sure what the point of this was. Some of the questions seemed rather mundane, such as how many days a week do we work in the west, how much holiday, etc. They were questions that could be answered by a quick net search. I'm not sure how much internet use is allowed in North Korea. Certainly the ordinary man in the street doesn't have access. I would have expected maybe a tour guide to have some level of access but maybe not. It may be seen by those in power as the thin end of the wedge. A guide asked me what sort of computer was the best. I got the impression he was seeking information that he wouldn't normally have access to, and that he would report the results back to his superiors. "Have interrogated western computer expert and he revealed that Apple Macs are only used by homosexuals."
As a tourist in this country there's a constant temptation to photograph things that you're not supposed to. I'm interested in old vehicles and I was particularly eager to get a photograph of a 1950s style military truck, the kind of truck that you'd see in a Tintin story. These trucks drove past often. I knew the guides wouldn't like this because it may give the impression that the army is too poor to buy new trucks. I did finally get a long shot of one but i would have dearly loved to get a few shots of one of these things up close.
