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Friday 2006-09-08 - P’yŏngyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
This is hard work!
Already on the first day in P’yŏngyang we learned that the itinerary as published by Koning Aap (Monkey King) is actually two days out of date. Most of the elements are still there albeit rearranged but for instance the two hikes I’d been looking forward to (and counted on to keep in shape for my planned Beijing hikes) have been canceled. There are other program elements in their place, but I’m rather disappointed about the canceled hikes.
All these changes imply though that we’re never more than one night in the same place. Officially we check out each time after one night in the P’yŏngyang Yanggakdo hotel, but in practice we return to the same rooms; still, we can’t leave our things in those rooms, so the room of Yvon (our tour companion) is kept for the period to have a place to store most of our luggage and take only a smaller overnight bag when we go into the country.
Apart from all this to-ing and fro-ing, each day has a full program, leaving us barely any “free” time. On the one hand, that’s a good thing since we’re not allowed to freely roam around on our own anyway but on the other hand we’re all soon suffering from a bit of information overload, with no time to process it all — let alone (for me) to write my travel blog stories. In fact, I only just manage to keep my own diary notes during the day: I must write those during and after each program point or I’ll have forgotten most of it by evening. (Of course, every now and then in the evening we gather in a hotel bar but I’m not skipping on this little social time just to write.) On the positive side, we actually get a lot to see on this rather short 10-day trip.
While it’s actually possible to send an email from the Yanggakdo hotel — and when on the road I update this blog via an email interface — I find I simply have no time to write out my stories. I’ll have to try to catch up once back in Beijing. (There is only email access for us though: no web access, although I know at least some people in the DPRK do have web access.)
I do get into a routine of offloading all (digital) photographs made each day on my image tank and recharging both the image tank’s and the camera’s batteries; with one exception, power is no problem and most hotels actually provide a power strip where I can just plug in my equipment - I don’t even need my international adapter plug.
