Day 5, Saturday May 4, 2002

While we were there, Pyongyang was uncharacteristically busy. Both the Arirang Mass Games and the International Trade Fair that was to take place at the weekend, had brought plenty of foreigners in, mostly from China and Russia.

One night of our week would be spent in the mountains, but our guide Mr K was trying to get us to agree to stay there for two nights, saying that the hotel needed the rooms. We objected, because it would effectively lose us a day, spending it in the middle of nowhere.
Thankfully he managed to get it sorted out that we not only spent just the one night away, we did not even have to empty out the rooms. All we needed to take was an overnight bag. We were very pleased.

It was a two hour drive up to Mount Myohyang, which is northeast of Pyongyang.
I've mentioned before the landscape and farming that you see from the bus, so I shall spare you the descriptions of desolation and tedium here.

Our very first stop was the International Friendship Exhibition. It was however teeming with tourists and Mr K decided we'd come back in the afternoon, when it would be quieter.

So instead, we saw the beautiful Pohyon Temple. It's a complex of more than ten gates, halls, pavilions and temples, set in landscaped gardens and surrounded by the mountains. Did I mention it was beautiful?
My 'Sightseeing Guide To Korea', Pyongyang 1991, tells me that the temple "was built in 1042 and subsequently rebuilt many times". It certainly was well preserved or restored. Carved and painted beams, roofs and Buddhas.

In the grounds of Pohyon Temple


Statue in one of the temples

The Royal Chronicles of the Li Dynasty, kept between 1392 and 1910 and spanning 900 volumes are kept here behind glass. It's unfortunately just a small grey room in which you get to look through a glass wall at the shelves holding the books. A couple of them are opened out and placed just behind the glass, so you can see at least see a bit, but it's uninspiring, especially as we cannot read what looked Chinese rathern than Korean. Four copies were made of the diaries, to be kept in archives in the capital and provinces.

Back in the sunshine the guide showed us a low bush, trimmed into the shape of Korea. Note the raised area where Pyongyang is, and the islands below and to the right!

Bush in the shape of Korea


In the grounds of Pohyon Temple

Lunchtime had arrived, so we made our way to the Hyangsan Hotel.

On arriving we were most impressed by the fleet of black Mercedeses, indicating that the delegates of the Light Water Nuclear Reactor negotiations were still in the hotel. The porter shooed me away as I wanted to take a pictures of the stretch limousine that had a NK flag on the bonnet, shame.
The hotel was very poor and trying hard to hide the fact, but you really do notice that it's cut off from the capital and supplies must be hard to come by.
As we entered the incredibly camp waterfall in the foyer sprang to live and water began to flow. Note the deer in the picture below.

Hyangsan Hotel, foyer

Ten minutes later it stopped again and I do not recall seeing it switched on again after that.
The room was very basic, maybe we were earlier than expected. When I got back much later a bar of soap and a pack of toothpaste with brush had been put in to the bathroom. The TV and radio did not work, the elevator was the slowest I've ever been on, the staircase was unlit and any emergency exits were locked. Not to mention old threadbare carpets. Amusingly, every day they would change the rug in the lift for the one with the correct weekday in its pattern. Think 'Welcome' mat, but reading 'Monday', 'Tuesday' and so on. That I hadn't seen before.

Lunch itself was plentyful and very good. From the window we could see a single (male) traffic warden standing in the deserted road. It was very hot and we felt for him. Once the cavalcade on black VIP vehicles had passed he disappeared, never to be seen again.

With so many out with upset stomachs, there were only about 6 or 8 of us at lunch, sitting around a big table. We had four half-litre bottles of water between us, of which we slipped two into our bags to have later in the mountains. You'd think you could just ask to get a couple of bottles more, wouldn't you? However, when we did any number of waitresses started buzzing around the table as to where those bottles might have gone and it took a while before more water arrived. We suggested to just take the bottles from the laid table next to us, which was ours anyway (only that we didn't have enough people in a fit state to use it). In the end a rather cross waitress handed us two bottles from that table, but she didn't look too happy!
We just kept saying it must be the Chinese that had stolen them.

(As an aside, D, who lives in Shanghai, told us about hotels in China and how the Chinese steal everything not nailed to the ground. One guy asked reception for brown packing paper because he wanted to take the room service trolley, and in another instance, the carpet had a huge hole under the bed because someone had cut it away to use as a rug at home. Unbelievable! - [To save the sensitivities of some Chinese readers, I am of course quite aware that this is a generalisation and does not apply to every Chinese man, woman or child!])

Anyway, the water bottle incident isn't much of a story, but I mention it as an example of the shortage in everything as soon as you look past the surface.

Hyangsan Hotel

A couple more words about the food in general. Breakfast normally is toast (very thick, white and square, almost brick-like) with one piece of butter and one piece of either jam or honey. There are 2 or 3 small bottles of water on the table and cans of Russian orange or pineapple juice. Some days we got something resembling Fanta instead. The waitresses will bring small dishes of other food, usually scrambled or fried or boiled eggs or omelettes. A glass of yoghurt (which I recommend you approach with care. The NK don't eat dairy themselves and this may be kept unrefrigerated) and a choice of tea or coffee. There is no cereal or hot food (except on our last day) or fruit. A couple more dishes may contain kimchi (cabbage) or other vegetables.
Lunch is a plethora of small dishes from kimchi to spinach, noodles, raw vegetables such as cucumbers or tomatoes (small, oblong and very sweet. Nice!), usually soup and various shredded meats. Rice of course anyway. You're unlikely to be fed dog meat, more likely you'll be eating German beef from a recent humanitarian aid delivery. (We by the way once overtook a lorry carrying a number of sacks stamped "USA" as we crossed the bridge towards the hotel. We may also have eaten American rice!) To drink you get Ryongsong beer, which is OK, but I'm not much of a beer drinker anyway, and NK mineral water, which is very good. (Another footnote: Nobody ever stopped us from collecting the labels of any of the bottles. Only the Ryongsong beer labels would not come off, even after a night's soaking. I congratulate NK on the strength of their glue!) Once we had pieces of cake for dessert. We never saw fresh fruit.
As a rule, breakfast is a bit meagre, but lunch and dinner are so plentyful that you usually always have plenty to choose from. Even though vegetarians are not catered for they should be OK.

Back to the sightseeing.

In the afternoon we tried again at the International Friendship Exhibition (details). This time we had the place to ourselves, which was quite eery, because the place is absolutely enormous.

International Friendship Exhibition

A very pretty lady guide showed us around. Mr K seemed to know her quite well and there was chemistry, I'm quite sure. She was beautiful and he must be a catch by NK standards, seeing that he works with foreigners, travels up and down the country and receives gifts and tips from all his tourists (see travel tips for more on that topic). He even wore a Rolex wrist watch (if genuine or fake I cannot tell) and lives just around the corner from the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang! They were chatting and laughing and there was touching of shoulders, bless them. He was actually quite embarrassed when we wound him up about it later...

The IFE houses all the presents KIS received over the years from foreign heads of state (displayed on red cloth), other dignitaries (displayed on blue cloth) or private companies and individuals (displayed on light brown cloth).
Nick had said that the exhibition would be boring (well, he's seen it a few times now), but I was fascinated by what we were to see.

You enter the building through huge doors with golden handles, that you're not allowed to touch, but I kind of did anyway, because the door was slowly falling shut as I went in, so I pushed it open for the benefit of those behind me.

Inside, the two first gifts and setting the tone for what to expect, were two enormous carved clocks. They were truly hideous.

Before we could proceed however we had to put on felt galoshes to wear over our shoes. We were just about to enter the first room when all the lights went out! After no more than 2-3 minutes of trying not to run into stuff or slip on the marble floors, it came back on, maybe we had been too slow and the timer had run out. All rooms we saw had to be illuminated as we entered, the building has no windows and is being kept unlit at all times otherwise.

The first main room had a statue of KIS in it, to which we were required to bow before being shown the exhibits.

A quite outstanding ivory carving of KIS's birthplace in Mangyongdae, sent by China, was an early highlight. Much of the rest became repetitive quite quickly - as it would do - with much porcelain, glass and silverware (US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had given a signed basketball and a silver bowl, an odd combination), furniture and clocks (Robert Mugabe gave not one but two awful clocks, the clock faces hanging from ivory tusks and decorated with antilopes), several big TV sets and computers, banners of all sorts with and without KIS's face painted on them (some really rather crudely made), a huge East German teddy bear in sports gear and other nicknacks.
Much was completely worthless, but what price the world's biggest inlaid table or the railway carriages given by Stalin and Mao, or the piece-de-resistance, the world famous crocodile holding a tablet of wooden glasses, given by the Nicaraguan Sandinistas?? Full marks for finding an answer to the perennial problem of "What do you give someone who's already got everything?"!

The taking of photos was prohibited and despite all our begging, the Nicaraguan section was closed for refurbishment, so we never got to see it in the flesh (so to speak), but there's an illustration in the guide book, which I reproduce here.

Stuffed Crocodile, wooden plate, ash tray and cups (sent by a member of the National Leadership of the Nicaraguan Sandinist National Liberation Front, March 17 1982)

The corridors were endless! We looked down one and it went on for hundreds of meters! From a civil engineering point of view the IFE is quite an achievement as it displays no damp whatsoever. It's been drilled so deep into the mountain that you wonder why make such an effort for such a motley selection of crap (pardon)? Is there something more sinister afoot, is anything else stored here? And why is it so far away from the capital?

One of the rooms is kept in a dimmed light with funereal music playing softly in the background. Here the gifts given to KIS after his death are displayed, a matter of pride to our guide who said that this was the only instance ever of a head of state being honoured in such a way.

The final room was stunning, or better, I was stunned by what I saw! A life-size wax figure of a grinning KIS stood in a 3D landscape against the backdrop of a lake, with bird song, soft music and a breeze for added effect! We again were made to bow before being allowed to look around. The gifts left me cold, but him standing there...! It was all I could look at! The guide said it was a gift from China, but I also read that it came from Japan, so I'm not sure who to thank for the indelible memory. Seeing him like that actually makes you realize that KIS was a real person, rather than the god-like, infallible entity he had become through the endless propaganda. I was probably the last to leave the room...

We then spent a very pleasant half hour on the balcony overlooking the beautiful mountains.

There is a second building, a little smaller, but still expanding, for the gifts given to KJI, which we went to see afterwards. As it was much of the same, there's nothing to report.

No trip to the mountains without mountaineering! We were taken to a spot from which a single steep track led all the way to the top. Mr K said that because there were plenty of pavilions and resting areas going up and we could not get lost here, we might as well just go and enjoy the climb unaccompanied. Three made it to the top, another three (incl myself) apparently weren't far off, and Mr K was just a little behind. The others sensibly took it easier and enjoyed the views, which were outstanding. It really was unspoilt nature and so clean, you could drink the water from the stream. You probably already know that the rocks here are engraved with slogans by KIS. We saw some of those of course, but they in no way spoilt the beauty of the place.

Waterfalls in Myohyang Mountains

The steps leading up were either cut into the rock or steep metal ladders. It was quite a demanding climb and best attempted earlier in the day, but as we had been sightseeing for hours already, we didn't really have the energy for the 1.5-2 hour ascent.

It was gone 5pm when we started the climbing and well after 8pm and pitch-black when we finally left. Mr K was rather worried about those who had made it to the top and weren't back as darkness set in, but they were well prepared. The Austrian even had brought clip-on headlights!

Back to the hotel for dinner.

The evening's entertainment was a trip to the revolving restaurant at the top for drinks. Finding the one lift that goes to the top and someone to operate it where an adventure in itself.
What is it with NK and revolving restaurants? And why rotate this one at night where there is absolutely nothing to see? The windows were even obscured with net curtains! It was quite bizarre. Green and red ceiling lights and waitresses dressed in blue with thick white full length woollen stockings.

Poignantly, when trying to find the way to the top floor we met some Japanese who asked us where we were from and why we were here. Why indeed were we? We asked them their reasons and they struggled for an answer as much as we did. Anything from 'We were fed up with five-star luxury and wanted to slum it for a change' to 'I've visited all the other countries in the region' to 'Curiosity' and 'Because I can' were suggested. Mine would have been 'Curiosity' as well, most definitely!

A can of Faxe beer from Denmark later I was ready for bed.

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