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Trip Diary – North Korea (Plus Some South Korea and China Too) 2012

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Trip Diary – North Korea (Plus Some South Korea and China Too) 2012 Trip Diary – North Korea (plus some South Korea and China too) 2012 Thursday September 6, 2012 – Arriving in Beijing The next pre‐tour option was a couple of nights in Beijing, with most of the group arriving on Thursday, although some chose to arrive earlier and spend more time in Beijing. Those of us who had already taken the pre‐tour option in South Korea flew to Beijing today, with most of us choosing one of two flights that both conveniently left Seoul around 1pm and arrived into Beijing at 2pm (actually a two hour flight due to the one hour time zone change). Our flights from Seoul arrived into the enormous new Terminal 3 of Beijing Capital International Airport, opened in 2008 as part of Beijing’s growth spurt in time for hosting the Olympic Games in August of that year. For a few months, it was the largest airport terminal in the world, but was eclipsed by Dubai’s Terminal 3 in October of 2008. It is the fifth largest building in the world (in terms of area – 13 million square feet) and the airport as a whole is currently the world’s second busiest in terms of passenger movements (Atlanta being the reigning champion, although probably not for much longer). Normally airport terminals mean nothing to me. I’m focused on traveling through them as quickly as possible – either on the way to the flight or on the way to baggage claim and out of the airport. They are, pretty much everywhere in the world, semi‐generic in nature. But Terminal 3 was an extraordinarily impressive structure, and an impressive introduction to the ever‐larger, and ever‐more prosperous huge city that Beijing has become and continues to be. Beijing isn’t bashful at showing its success and prosperity. Everywhere we turned we saw dazzling new buildings showing off extravagant architectural features, as opposed to the drab, small and strictly functional buildings that represented Beijing’s past. Just like Seoul (and so many other cities that are rapidly growing), traffic in Beijing was also dreadful, and our guide advised us that the city now has a ‘carless day’ system whereby all cars have to spend one day a week not being driven – the day they must be unused being dependent on the last number of their registration plate. Our hotel in Beijing was an impressive new hotel – the Best Western Premier Royal Phoenix. Although a new hotel, it was in an old (but very central) part of the city, down a narrow hutong (or lane). Local shops and dwellings and communal toilets lined the lane, providing a mix of very different but all strong smells, and we got to see ‘real’ life in abundance all around us, in contrast to some of the other hotel locations that were surrounded merely by other bland big buildings and no sign of actual residential life or activity at all. There was a vibrant feeling to the semi‐chaotic life that was all around us, with ample evidence of new building and other growth everywhere, and this was palpably a contrast to the much more passive and sedentary feeling we were to experience upon arriving in Pyongyang. It also seemed more purposeful than our time in Seoul for that matter too, and based on my limited experiences of Seoul and Beijing, I’d say that overall Beijing seems the better laid out and more progressive city. I commented a bit about transfers from the airport when writing about my arrival into Seoul. I’ll amplify those comments a bit more here. Several readers reported nightmarish type experiences in taking taxis in from the airport to the hotel, and exhorbitant fares going as high as $100 due to the taxi getting lost and going to the wrong hotel and all sorts of other issues. A taxi fare ideally should be no more than $30 and often‐times less, but that assumes good traffic and a good driver. I was offering transfers from the airport in a taxi together with an English speaking guide present for the entire journey for $55 – appreciably more than a ‘best case’ taxi ride, but appreciably less than a ‘worst case’ journey. The small upcharge over the ‘best case’ scenario is, for most people, probably money well spent, and in return for the possibly extra cost, they have insurance against a ‘worst case’ scenario and a reliable quality experience augmented with the presence of an English speaking guide for the journey in. On the other hand, there’s seldom much need for a formal transfer out to the airport. Just about any taxi driver in any city knows how to get to the airport, and assuming the taxi driver is reasonably fair about his route and fee, that is usually a much more straightforward transaction. I wryly noted our dishonest Chinese guide tricking several in our group to secretly buy transfers from the hotel back to the airport direct from her. She told these sadly gullible people that the hotel would charge them 400 RMB for a transfer, whereas she could arrange one for the ‘bargain price’ of ‘only’ 300 RMB. In actual fact, the hotel would simply call a cab and the people who chose to do this reported paying in the order of 100 RMB for the ride out to the airport. The guide’s 300 RMB fee probably involved her pocketing at least 200 of the 300 RMB and only passing on a small amount to the actual driver – I noted that the people who agreed to her offer had to pay the sum to her rather than to the driver. In much of Asia, it is sadly a certainty that any products promoted by the guides are massively overpriced and involve huge kickbacks to the guides promoting them. Indeed, the guide was also trying to tempt me into endorsing the over‐priced massages and other services she was trying to sell to people on the tour the next day, telling me that there would be very generous payments to me too if anyone signed up for them. Even though I directly told everyone on the tour not to buy anything from the guide, several people chose to ignore me and do exactly that. I’d refused to accept any kickbacks, so the guide got to pocket a double kickback from those people who chose to trust her rather than me. The hotel was nice, although check‐in was a bit muddly and drawn out. The rooms were pleasant, but service in the bar was slow (and the drinks expensive). All that could be forgiven however, but one thing could/can not be excused – appallingly slow internet in the rooms, making it somewhere between difficult and impossible to conduct normal internet activities. It is unacceptable for a new hotel to offer crippled internet that was more akin to old fashioned dialup speeds. While we liked the hotel and enjoyed its location and the immersion in local life that it offered us, the more connected of us (which in this case was most of the group) felt we could never return there due to the dysfunctional internet (non)service. Some of our group had dinner at a noodle restaurant along the hutong, where they reported having a great meal and plenty of beer for something less than $5/person. I went to a more touristy location and paid about $15 for a lovely meal featuring Yunnan regional cuisine – still a great value for a meal and drink. Friday September 7, 2012 – Beijing Touring and Briefing Some of the group who had chosen the South Korean option went off and did their own thing while we were in Beijing, but they were sort of replaced by others of our group who did not do the South Korean option but were doing the Beijing city tour. We met after breakfast and the group introduced itself to the new members, then first went to the large Yonghe Lama Monastery/Temple, not far from the hotel, where we toured around, often through clouds of incense, and saw a number of Buddha’s of varying sizes including one huge one that was 86’ tall. The monastery dates back to 1694 and was originally an official residence for court eunuchs before becoming a residence for large numbers of Tibetan Buddhist monks and evolving into the national center of China’s Lama Administration. After narrowly surviving the cultural revolution in China, it reopened to the public in 1981. After that, we went to the nearby Bell Tower, which dates back to 1272. About half the group climbed up to the top. We were told it was ‘only’ 75 steps (if memory serves correctly) but what we didn’t appreciate was that the first 60 steps were all in a solid single flight with no break and were each much steeper than normal western flights of stairs. So the 75 steps were a reasonable climb. We enjoyed good views over the city and over to the nearby similar Drum tower, then after that, went back down and then climbed into ‘rickshaws’, two of us per each rickshaw. The reason for the quotes around the word ‘rickshaw’ is that these were propelled by a man pedaling a connected bicycle rather than by a man simply walking and pulling the rickshaw shafts directly. The rickshaws were perhaps large enough for two Chinese people, but were more cramped for us larger western folk, however we managed, and enjoyed a fascinating tour through an area of hutongs. While some of the hutong exteriors appeared to be semi‐squalid, we regularly saw signs suggesting that external appearances could be deceptive.
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