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Wednesday 2006-09-06 - Namp’o, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Three sets of slippers
Unfortunately, we don’t stop in Namp'o city on the way to our Ryonggang Hot Spring Hotel. First, we're on an enormous 10-lane highway (with very little traffic, and we note it's easily wide and straight enough to serve as a landing strip fro a large plane -- only half joking) but soon we turn off and drive through the countryside. Most of the landscape is very flat but with rather "pointy" hills sticking up from the flat base. The main crops I note are rice and maize. I ask Mr. Pak but unfortunately we can't stop for a picture of this typical landscape.
With all the rice paddies, there are obviously a lot of wetlands here, and when we arrive at the hotel grounds, large flights of Great white herons fly over.
The hotel is actually a kind of resort, with a central “recreation center” that also houses the reception and a dinner hall, and a number of houses scattered over the nicely landscaped grounds. When we (my room mate Thekla and I) arrive at “our” house, a lady welcomes us and shows us the ropes: downstairs, just inside the door, you take off your shoes and don a pair of slippers to walk over the marble floors and stairways. Our room is upstairs, and inside the door we find a set of regular discardable “hotel slippers” for walking about in the room (leaving the first set of slippers at the door); just inside the bathroom door is a third pair of slippers for each of us (one blue, one pink), and we’re to wear these plastic slippers inside the bathroom. It all sort of makes sense, but it’s a little elaborate…
The lady immediately opens the lower tap above the enormous blue-tiled bathtub, out of which comes hot, salty spring water, supposed to have healing qualities. Thekla and I opt for the most practical solution: we share the bath (easy since there are two seats sculpted in the bath tub).
Dinner is in the big, brightly-lit dinner room in the recreation center, where we are served by ladies in traditional costume; apart from the big slices of white bread (which I don’t touch), the foods is Korean — and delicious.
