North Korea Chapter 3

As we crossed over the border into NK, our guide told us that all America, South Korean and Japanese flags or labels had to be removed from backpacks. They strongly dislike America, Japan has left a bad taste in all Koreans' mouths. And well South Korea is just the opposite of everything that North Korea stands for. Canada was ok. Yeah Canada.

We weren't allowed to take any pictures from the bus as we drove into the village we were going to visit. We drove through the farmland of the area. Well, everything seemed to be farmland. If there was land with dirt, they were growing food on it. I could see workers in the fields everywhere. No one drove cars, but there were lots of bicycles. There was green fencing along all the roads and then any side road into another village had soldiers on watch where the roads met. The houses that the people lived in looked really small. Some areas had large walls built around them so all I could see were the roofs. I didn't see any power lines going to any of the houses either.

The people looked small and lots were wearing the same style outfits of navy blue pans and jacket, Lil' Kim style. The bikes looked like they were from the 50s. The soldiers were everywhere; I saw more soldiers than civilians. I was glued to the window of the bus. The scenery was amazing. It had rained all night and the mist was flowing around the mountain tops above the valley. Everything was so green and the mountains just shot up from the ground.

We got to the village that all the tourists hang out in. Its run by Hyundai and it was just like anywhere is South Korea. There were some nice hotels and lots of restaurants. We had no time to eat though because that was the theme of the trip so far. We loaded a different bus and it drove us up to on part of the park for a hike. As we drove higher and higher, the fog got thicker. It wasn't raining but misting. Although it would have been nice to a view, it was beautiful to see the outline of a peak through the fog.

The hike was 2 hours up and 30 minutes down. We were soaked by the end of it. When we got to the top, there was a traffic jam of people getting up the ladders. It was too steep for a path, so the ladders went all the way to the top. I had some great pictures of everyone on the ladders and soaking wet, but I deleted the whole first day of pictures by accident the other night as I was loading them onto my computer. SUPER pissed about that one.