Thursday, 20 April 2017
Masikyrong, North Korea
Guide checks all our rooms before we depart to ensure we haven’t left anything incriminating. Only seems to be doing it here. Suspect it’s because of our location close to the border with South Korea. Ten miles away.
It’s to be a 3hr morning walk up the valley to the Kuryong Waterfalls. Beautiful scenery and how I imagine Yosemite Park, in California, would be like. Smooth stone cliff faces and pine trees. Cross a number of bridges over the crystal clear river below. Raging torrent it is not. Bit of a dribble in places. Having huffed and puffed all the way there, the path culminates in an observation pagoda overlooking the waterfalls. Falls quite impressive. A further walk to the very top of falls to see the Fairy Pools is possible but soon give up on that idea when I meet people coming down who have also given up as it’s so steep. The brave and young make it though and record that it was worth the hike.
Very peaceful as I walk back down the valley on my own. Until. A gaggle of girls appear. All dressed in green uniforms. It’s the Youth Section of the Party. On a day out. Wave to say hello and all wave back saying hello. Very friendly.
And again with the second and third group of girls. Wave and say hello. All wave back. All very friendly.
This continues the theme that everyone we have met in the DPRK is very friendly. Not at all how it’s portrayed in the western media.
Interesting lunch in the Mokran Restaurant back at the start of the trail being overlooked by a frog band last seen in Paul McCartney’s Frog Chorus video (see photo below). It’s cook it yourself meat on a red hot stone. With assorted salads and kimchi. Am at risk of overdosing on kimchi. A large boulder is presented at your place setting atop a burner. Place the meat on top of the stone and cook it to your liking. Great fun. But. All actions have consequences. The cooking meat gives off smoke. Not so bad if it were just one stone. But no. There’s fifteen or us. All cooking on individual hot stones at the same time. The dining room is soon thick with the fog of cooking meat. Windows have to be opened.
Passes and documentation handed back and checked at the various check points as we exit the Mount Kumgang area. Back the way we came. Along the coast road. Lots of boats out in the bay and assume it’s a military exercise. Seems like they’re preparing for war given the rhetoric by both the USA and the DPRK at this point in time.
Stop at the Sijung Beach Resthouse again. Discover they sell Sprite. The Sijung Beach Resthouse has a run on Sprite.
Return to Wonsan and late afternoon stroll along the causeway to Jangdok Islet. Housing a lighthouse. Walk along the way with young female guide.
And chat about life in the DPRK. Here’s an insight into life in the DPRK.
The lapel badges they wear, featuring the faces of the Kims, are only available to people over 18 and only to DPRK citizens. It can be awarded to foreigners who promote the DPRK (hoping I’ll get one with this blog!) though not tourists.
People wearing green uniforms are workers but people wearing green uniform with epaulettes are military. Blue uniforms are for police.
She’s 26, lives with Mum, Dad and younger sister in an apartment in Pyongyang. She works six days a week and has Sunday off. Saturday night her and her friends like to go to karaoke. Her and her Mum have a glass of European wine each night (imported from China no doubt) and Mum makes homemade schnapps with various berries/fruit (much like our own homemade sloe/damson gin). Her doctor told her to not drink beer as it’s bad for her liver. But the wine is OK?! Studied English at university in Pyongyang (her English is very good) along with a bit of Chinese. After the university course, she took a month’s course to learn how to be a tour guide and has been doing this job for three years but doesn’t get paid well as it’s ‘so-so’. It’s normal to have two guides per group. We have a young female guide and an older male guide, about 50. Tourists are not allowed to leave the hotels as the guides need to keep us all contained. On the question of bowing everywhere it’s out of respect and the same as us westerners shaking hands. We are able to email the DPRK tour company that she works for but the guides don’t have their own email address, as they have no access to the outside world. We would have to send something by postal mail to her home address if we wanted to send anything but with the obvious and unsaid that this would be checked by the state.
Apparently our group is a very good group as we all get on and have fun but another English group (consisting of four men) we saw in Pyongyang a few days ago on another short tour were a complete nightmare according to their guide. They would open a bottle of whisky in the morning and drink all day. And that, dear reader, is the type of tourist you’ll find slapped in solitary confinement for ten years! The guides have told us about foreigners being thrown in jail for the simple reason that they were being idiots and disrespecting the Kims. It’d be like a foreigner coming to England doing something stupid, disrespecting the Queen and breaking the law. He’d be slapped in jail. You would have no sympathy for them. You’d be the first to shout “throw away the key!”
All along the causeway we see mussel beds denoted by buoys floating out in the bay. I say buoys. Buoys suggests a properly made marker buoy. What I actually mean is anything that floats. Like polystyrene crates or plastic drums. Locals cooking fresh oysters on charcoal barbeques. Fisherman mending nets and ropes. People partying on the small strip of beach with a loudspeaker. Nice relaxed atmosphere. Very seasidey. Very Bournemouth.
At the top of the islet is the lighthouse but unfortunately what would be good views are tempered by trees getting in the way. It’s a very pleasant end to the day strolling along the causeway chatting with locals and our guide.
An 8km long tunnel along the smoothest tarmac we’ve experienced in the country leads us from Wonsan to the ski resort of Masikyrong. Yes, dear reader, you read that right. A ski resort.
The Hotel Masikyrong (https://www.pyongyang-travel.com/portfolio/masik-ryong-hotel/) is brand new and one of the best in the DPRK. Very Alpine rooms. You’d be forgiven for thinking you were in an Tyrolean hotel. All pine walls, floors and ceilings. Snow on the pistes too.
And the highlight at dinner?
To everyone’s delight.
Ice cream.
Little things in the land of little, dear reader. Little things.
