Korea Trip - North Korea

So we took the train to North Korea, crossing the Friendship Bridge... And stopped

...We stopped so that North Korean immigration agents could go through our stuff.
It was a bit anticlimactic, but the chief customs guy was pretty funny, he even gave a bottle of rice wine to one of the guys in the group. After about half an hour, it was done, and the train lurched to a start again.

...Then, after an hour or so, the locomotive caught on fire.

Being not allowed to leave the train, and the windows not opening more than a crack, we were unable to know what was happening when the train suddenly stopped in its tracks, in the middle of nowhere, near a small rural village without electricity.

We then noticed village people coming to and from the village under the orders of the government officials on the train, carrying buckets of water to the front of the train. I was in another train, talking to a group of Chinese laborers on their way to Pyongyand to work on a new building, and eventually understood that the locomotive had caught fire and that we would be there a while.


...And you know what? That there five hours was one of the most fulfilling of the whole trip, because we got to see a small rural North Korean village from up close, and some of the village kids even went up to the train and I got to communicate and play rock paper scissors with these kids that probably have never seen a Caucasian before...

Anyways, a few hours later, a new locomotive came in from Pyongyang, and we finally made it, five hours late.


Pyongyang itself is a lot more industrial than what we saw from the train on our way there, but most buildings are old and look.... Washed out... Then you have those huge government projects and monuments that are, let's face it, impressive, like the Ryugyong Hotel (Still being finished).

After arriving at the hotel, we had time for a shower and supper in a huge and very empty dining hall. The elevators of the hotel were pretty cool, a pair of them had half the shaft sticking out of the buinding, and you could see yourself being propelled up or down. The elevators were very efficient, only staying open for 3 seconds. I sort of liked that, as I hate having to just stand there, waiting for a door to close, but one of the girls was not quick enough to get out and got to make an extra trip up and down the elevator back to her floor :P

The next day we were going to head to Kim Il Sung's "Birthplace House", and the Museum of Gifts.