One of the moderately strange things about our epic journey is that, given the amount of far flung and exotic places we’re going to, we end up transit-ing areas that would usually form epic destinations in and of themselves. Perhaps the classic example here is Beijing – which I recall going to only a few years ago as the highlight of a visit to China, and which this time round we passed through, for a day or so at a time, either side of our trip to North Korea. A place to eat some tasty food, get some laundry done (surprisingly difficult – the phrase Chinese laundry evidently needs re-working) and to marvel at the modern, global big city stereotype that is Beijing nowadays.

Also to go visit the Forbidden City and Tiannamen Square and get our first go-round at the great debate on modern restoration programmes. The Forbidden City was touched up pretty zealously pre the Olympics – whilst some areas of faded grandeur remain, the majority of the larger sites have been thoroughly worked over with a good coat of paint and plenty of gold leaf. Many complain that the City has lost its romance, its air of history – but on this occasion, I’m actually on the side of the restorers. Grass growing from the rooves has its own charm, but I just can’t picture the Emperor-gods of China, or more particularly the famously bloodthirsty (and quite probably mad) Empress Cixi in this placidly tranquil environment.

Bring on the glitz and the dancing girls – but make sure to keep the oil cauldrons nice and hot whilst you do so.

One of the lighter points of relief, at least from my perspective, during our trip to North Korea, was our visit to the USS Pueblo. Most of you reading will have no idea what the USS Pueblo was or what it represents, but to the North Koreans, the capture of this US “spy ship” (“scientific research vessel” under US terminology – as ever, who really knows the truth) inside (or, again per US version, just outside – truth where art thou?) the country’s sovereign water represents the singular high point in the country’s continuing anti imperialist battle since the Korean war armistice was signed.

As an aside, the North Korean view of the Korean war is pretty simple – the American aggressors aggressed (in some manner never very clearly specified, presumably having to do with the fact that there were US troops on the ground in South Korea but who knows), the DPRK troops retaliated and ultimately conclusively won the campaign, in the only known defeat of US forces. The Korean war is a sufficiently grey and murky zone that you’ll hear quite loudly my total non-comment on this subject, other than to say that this particular telling might not be so widely recognized in the West.

You can understand, though, with that background, that the DPRK was pretty excited, after its unprecedented whipping of the US Army in the war, to then also be able to capture one of its spy ships, including all the crew bar one who tragically was killed during the boarding process; for said crew off their own bat and with no undue pressure to then author and sign a confession of their transgressions; and for America to issue a statement confirming that Pueblo had been spying, and an assurance that the U.S. would not spy on DPRK again in the future, in return for the release of the crew. (Again, just to avoid charge of bias, the US version here is that the crew members were imprisoned, starved and tortured; and that the Pueblo commander eventually signed a confession under threat of having his entire crew executed in front of him). And the whole thing does look pretty damning, really, what with the large tiers of radio equipment on board, plus the battleship grey colour of the ship – I mean what research vessel do you know that’s painted battleship grey? Although of course it wasn’t at the time of capture, that’s just a paint job put in place by the DPRK for added authenticity….

Anyway, lighter point of relief, I hear you ask somewhat quizzically? Well, yes. Despite the difficult and possibly quite tragic backdrop to the affair, the tour of the vessel was fabulous. “Here is the radio room from where the imperialist spies unlawfully gathered secret information on our country – but to no avail.” “Here is the bridge from where the cowardly imperialist captain surrendered his vessel. Acknowledging our [DPRK’s] superiority, he immediately confessed to us the number of crew people on board.” And, my personal favourite, during the video describing the whole affair, “The American imperialist was so confused [during the occasion of signing up to the agreed US confession] that he FORGOT to date the document!!”. It’s like something from a bad comedy, with a sturdy uniformed lady DPRK soldier as your charming hostess. It was all just so refreshingly, honestly, un-reconstructedly cold war. This is a country that’s still very much at active war with America, if only America would notice.

Plus you get to play with the machine gun. It’s the perfect day out for all the family.

I could have sworn I saw a capitalist just now…

I’d love to write all about my impressions of North Korea, but I’m not really sure that I saw it.

What I did see was the face that Pyongyang chooses to show to foreign visitors, and a carefully coiffed, immaculately made-up face it is too. Life for the 30% or so of North Korea’s population who are Pyongyang residents looks pretty good. The city is clean. There’s bright new shiny buildings constructed purely for the benefit of the workers and the newest even have paint all the way round (not just on the street facing half of the building). There’s funfairs, circuses, a wonderful park. And there’s lots and LOTS of stupendously large statues of the great leaders and their supporters in the great revolution. People are neatly and smartly dressed, down to the natty Dear Leaders’ pin that every single Pyongyang resident I saw wears (these are given to every individual who chooses to join the Vanguard – kind of a young communists movement – when they are about 13 and retained carefully thereafter for life.).

There are even things in the shops, although I didn’t actually see people in said shops. No time for frivolous shopping when there are so many great group activities for one to indulge in. All paid for by the State, naturally. Mass dancing events spontaneously organized by the university study groups to celebrate National Day (those students really looked like they were having FUN!). Group bowling games. Extra study courses (as sanctioned by your boss of course) where such study is expected to make you a more effective employee and therefore contribute more effectively to the State’s progress.

Life here is taken pretty seriously. We went to see numerous statues, mainly bronze and monolithic and of course very impressive, we bowed a lot. We went to see feats of civil engineering, we oooh-ed a lot. We went to see Kim Il Sung’s birthplace, we aah’ed a lot. We went to see the heavy industry museum whose highlights included a display of the different tensions of copper wire that North Korea produces, we ooh-ed some more. Cataclysmic boredom threatened more than once – this is a place where you have to work at your fun, and that includes the tourists.

As light relief, we went to see some students at the local school putting on a show. Aaah, we thought, some delightful little snotty nosed kiddies singing off-key and simpering. Oh no. North Korea doesn’t display its amateurs, these kids were in the final years of the Vanguard equivalent of stage school. Polished doesn’t even begin the describe the level of finish these kids had achieved in their acts. Perfect timing, perfect execution, perfect smiles. Nature tamed.

So was I impressed? Sure.

Did I like it?…..Hmmmmm, come back to me on that one.

Continuing the theme of a school trip, Group A (that’s us) was taken on an informative visit to see how the Korean manufacturing and economic miracle works. As ever for North Korea, this was partly extraordinarily mundane, and partly extraordinary. As ever, the information that crept around the main message was as interesting as, if not more interesting than, the message itself.

Now, I don’t want to be a Western cynic here – after all, with the wrong mindset it is possible to come away from any experience with negative preconceptions confirmed. In the West (and particularly in America) we are fed so much of our own propaganda about socialism that it is difficult to keep an open mind. I have a theoretical understanding (but no direct experience) of centrally planned economies, and would love the opportunity to have an open discussion with a knowledgeable Korean economist about how things work there. As it was, we were left to form our own opinions from the following vignettes:

The Collective Farm: we were shown round a model farm, including a visit to a model farm worker’s house. So far, so good: corn was drying in neat rows on the ground and the place was surrounded by neat fields. There was, of course, a large statue of Kim senior, who came here to dispense “Juche” wisdom back in the day. There were also worker’s schoolrooms for farming education and a whole range of other wonderful facilities. All impressive, but … we were shown round by a lady in high heels and national dress (which to Western eyes looks like, erm, a fancy ball gown). The corn was in extremely neat rows, and from the number of cigarette butts therein, it had been in neat rows for some time. Was it a farm or a museum? What was it all for?

The Mineral Water Factory: an impressive factory. At least it must be, when it is working – the place was utterly deserted. Lucy used to spend time at her father’s factory when she was little and I spent a happy two years at university touring manufacturing facilities for my degree, and we both have an idea of what factories look like. This place was impressive, but deeply strange. It was spotlessly clean (but not running – Monday is maintenance day, apparently, and it was lunch time so nobody was there). There were lots of long impressive-looking conveyor belts to move the bottles around between the machines (but long impressive-looking conveyor belts are actually a waste of space and energy – just put the machines right next to each other). They were selling fizzy and still mineral water in glass and plastic bottles (but the line looked set up for glass bottles only, and the visit wasn’t really set up for us to be able to ask questions about it). Again, it was utterly empty.

The Model Fruit Farm: acres of orchards producing apples, and a factory producing apple products. We were walked a couple of hundred yards up a tarmac path to a viewing platform on a hill, from where Kim Junior surveyed the orchard and declared it good. And it was good – apples grow well in the Korean climate, and if you have to produce one fruit the apple is probably best. Korean apples are actually very tasty. The weirdness here was a minor detail. The tarmac was surrounded by a gravel border, then grass, then a low hedge, then the countryside. Of course the grass was neatly cut (I expect by hand – you see large groups of people in Pyongyang parks squatting to cut the grass with hand sickles). The weird bit was the gravel: I don’t know who noticed it, but each piece of gravel on both edges of the border had been lined up in a neat row, by hand, for the entire length of the tarmac path.

The Terrapin Factory. The dear leader had declared that Korea should produce terrapins for food. Terrapins used to be an item reserved only for kings, and I expect the logic was that if the people have terrapins then they will feel that socialism is providing them with luxury items (which, of course, it will be). As such, we were taken to a large new breeding and growing facility, with dozens and dozens of large tanks. Four words: Where Are The Terrapins? We saw a very few tanks full of tiny terrapins, and a few tanks full of larger frogs. I looked through the window of an adjoining facility and saw some larger tanks, with a total of four larger terrapins. Now, in the West this would be seen as a disaster – a large, empty, expensive facility. However, in the socialist world it is possible to take a long term view, build a large and expensive facility and work out how to grow terrapins later. Perhaps this is what was happening? I don’t know. If so, I feel sorry for the manager of the facility, handed such an expensive piece of kit with limited prior knowledge and told to succeed at all costs.

Overall, I feel extraordinarily sorry for the central planners. Picture yourself strolling through a medium sized supermarket – your local Tesco, perhaps. Now imagine how you and your colleagues could possibly design and build a complete, centrally-controlled system designed to grow, process, package, distribute and sell every single item on the shelves. Imagine trying to control stock keeping, expiry dates, product updates, harvest failures, staff turnover, everything. Now imagine trying to do the same for heavy industry. And light manufacturing. And defense. And the arts. And keep people happy while you do it. Perhaps I am displaying enormous ignorance as to how centrally-planned economies work, but I just can’t see how they can possibly function effectively.

Every now and then when you travel you have an experience that is so unclassifiably strange, so subtly unusual, that it is extremely difficult to know how to start explaining it to people. We have just got back from five days in North Korea, and we haven’t yet digested the experience sufficiently to know quite how to start blogging about it. We have to start somewhere, however. If this was a jigsaw puzzle we would start with the edges; as this is an essentially frivolous travel blog I will start with a suitably idiotic vignette and hope that the clarity starts to flow from there over the next few posts. Here we go.

OK, so I had been drinking. Lucy had very sensibly headed off to bed once I decided that six dry-ish weeks in the South Pacific had blunted my alcohol tolerance and needed to be rectified. Add one Pyongyang hotel bar with a microbrewery (unusually for North Korea, there was a choice … of Yellow Beer or Black Beer, I kid you not). Also add some high quality drinking companions including an American ex-fast jet pilot from central casting, complete with impressive stories and impressive jawline (hi Chris!) and the evening was made. Cue two in the morning, meandering back to the room, drinking lots of water (from the tap, I suspect), four and a half hours kip before an early start the next day. The scene is set…

Ladies and Gentlemen, I don’t know what all top ten things not to do with a crippling hangover are, and I hope never to find out. However, the top one thing not to do with a crippling hangover is … be forced to march up and down in lines by the North Korean Army, followed by a lunch of spicy dog meat. For, that day we visited the world famous Korean Demilitarized Zone. From the North side.

Jesus. I can handle a two and a half hour coach ride on the world’s bumpiest three lane highway. I can handle smoky briefing rooms. I can handle looking bleary-eyed out of said coach while high voltage electrified fences, massive tank traps and heavily mined, heavily tunneled strips of land scroll past. But being made to stand in two lines … now five lines … now march … now stop … now march … by the elite border guards of the DPRK Army was just too much for me. It was utterly terrible. I could be the only man in history to slump groggily for relief into the (actual) chair in which the (actual) UN representative sat to sign the (actual) Korean War Armistice. I slumped again for relief in the historic meeting room which straddles the North / South Korean border, and I slept stretched out on the back seats of the coach on the way to lunch. The actual visit was fairly interesting although, as usual for North Korea, what they didn’t tell us and didn’t show us was often more interesting than what they did. More on this later, as this touches on a more serious point and this, fairly obviously, isn’t the time or the place.

So about that dog meat, eh? When my hangover struck I was worried. I had expected to feel a little rough, but not THIS bad. Perhaps I really am out of practice on the booze; perhaps North Korean hotel-brewed beer had some nasties in it; perhaps the tapwater had some nasties in it? It doesn’t really matter I guess, but I was knocked out for a full 24 hours and wasn’t really able to stomach food until breakfast on the following day. I really, really didn’t want to have dog for lunch.

But (and it’s a huge but) this would make me three for three on borderline “so weird I might not actually want to do it” cultural experiences. First there was the invitation to the crocodile skin cutting ceremony in PNG, where we umm-ed and ahh-ed and eventually agreed that watching teenagers being tortured to prove their manhood probably was something we wanted to witness … only to have the ceremony postponed until after we had to leave the region. Then there was the offer to wear a Namba penis sheath and take part in the men’s dances in Ambrym, where I umm-ed and ahh-ed and decided that (a) being naked with a bunch of Ambrym village elders was an honest-to-god once in a lifetime experience and (b) I will never run for political office (sorry Dad) and that I should do it … only to have Chief Sekor’s sister in law tragically die the night before and the village be too busy with the funeral to wrap banana leaves around scared Westerners westerly bits. I even had a blog post worked out about it, to be called “Me and Prince Harry”. Third up was dog meat – we had umm-ed and ahh-ed once more, and decided to give it a try. With this history, no hangover on earth was going to stop me, and if Fido bounces, he bounces.

…

(tastes like beef)