DPRK

Tupolev or "Crasholev", as we cleverly joked, "dropped" us safely to Pyongyang.

As we arrived to the Pyongyang "international" airport, left our passports and mobile phones to the border control, we met our guides/guards, attractive Mrs. Key and charming Mr. Lee. The guy second from the left is Mr. Driver.

While looking at this picture of us and a young school girl, I will make an awkward transition to rules. If I'd have to say one advice for timetravelling in DPRK, it would be, that follow the rules. Trust me, you don't want to know what happens, when you do not obey the rules. The rules will be explained to you more than once for sure. 

In a few words, Pyongyang is a colossal city, with lots of all sort of monuments and effective architecture displayed. One thing, that makes the city abnormal is the absense of traffic, which of course is a good quality.

View from our hotel balcony. Don't look down.

At first we were a little bit suspicious and regretful, that we ever came to this country, ...

..but soon we realized, that they had alcohol in DPRK-beers too and everything was good.

We visited an amusement park in Pyongyang. It was seriously scary shit. We took a ride in a gigantic swing, that went 180-degrees up in the sky. People at the ground were screaming in horror to let us down. Unfortunately we don't have any better pictures, because our photographer thought we were going to die and stopped shooting pictures. Total madness!

DPRK waiters tried their best to smile at us, but it was understandably hard, because we were ignorant imperialists. We discussed about DPRK's food shortage and ate three times a day five-course meals. No conflict there.

We chilled with a DPRK army colonel at the DMZ.

At the DMZ, we also discussed some tactical military shit with a high-ranking officer and spotted few South Korean guard-posts with binoculars.

At Pyongyang we visited a US Navy ship, that was taken by the DPRK. We got to pose with the captain who captured the ship himself. He had an entertaining story, how he enslaved the crying americans.

We shared intimate moments at our hotels sauna.

One night I was trying to get some quality sleep, while the guys were getting drunk. For some unexplained reason the guys attacked me. Luckily, the DPRK officials have recordings from the hotel room, and the insanity will be revealed to the public.

At some museum in Pyongyang, this crazy military lady made us count how many dead american soldiers we see on the panoramic painting.

We visited a huge school in Pyongyang, which was said to have some exceptional young students. We visited lots of classes in the school, such as this computer class. One kid at the back-row was apparently playing the legendary Space Invaders.

We went to a concert in the school building as well. Singers had a competition, who can get the highest pitch. Painful for the listeners and for the singers as well.

What the fuck are you doing? Just give the flowers to any child and get back over here. You're getting us sent to a concentration camp.

To the top floor! We explored our mysterious hotel by visiting other floors. It was a bad idea, because apparently there were no electricity in most of the floors and guards were lurking in the dark aisles of the floors. We also tried to escape the hotel in the middle of the night to go out and sing some karaoke. It was a clear no go and there was no arguing about the subject.

We were left with no choice, but to sing some improvised karaoke at the balcony of our hotel room. It was a good idea to fool around at the balcony at night time, because at day time you could see to the ground and realize, that the ledge was only 40 cm high and it's about 20 stories to the ground.

So, while I'm sipping this delicious tea, I gotta wonder, did we get the insiders tour to DPRK? No we didn't, we scratched the surface and under the polished surface, there probably are some disturbing secrets hidden. Although, if you disregard the obvious faults, you might discover, that there's a beautiful Korean culture concealed in the DPRK people, that deserves to be treasured. 

Welcome to the Jing

In a town called Erlian, which is the bordertown between Mongolia and China, a small army of efficient chinamen attached a new set of wheels, with a different gauge, to the whole train. During the operation passengers were allowed or forced to stay in the train.

There was anticipation and excitement in the air when the train hit the chinese tracks and headed towards Beijing. Everything had changed after crossing the border, the culture, the food and the scenery, and soon the buzzling metropol of Beijing would overwhelme us with it's offerings. 

At last we arrived to "the Jing". After 8,961 shots of vod... kilometers of tracks behind us, we were still smiling.

A classic thumbs-up pose at Tiananmen Square.

In Forbidden City we had a plan, that if someone from our group got lost, he could easily find the rest of the group by searching for the most stupid hats.

This magnificent structure is the Great Wall of China. We went there with style and took few fantastic photos.

Walking at the wall was a fucked up idea, while your suffering from a hangover, because it demanded some stamina.

We met a muslim girl, who introduced us the Hutong -area of Beijing. For dinner we ate an intestine soup, and while we were on the roll, we tried to buy dog-meat also. No success in that matter.

There was also a moment of synchronized ice-cream eating at the Hutong. Adorable pic!

We went to drink local beers at some side-alley bar. The muslim girl came with us to watch how Finnish people get funny after few beers. On the other hand, there was also an italian guy who got annoying after few beers.

We were making preparations for crazy partying at the party capital of China.

Nightlife in Beijing was outstanding. While others were socializing with some locals...

...others were starting to have a little bit too much fun.

One crazy night we had a minor dispute about the fare with rikshaw-drivers. Soon it was obvious, that the dispute would escalate into a physical confrontation. The buddy I was sharing the rikshaw with had planned "a simultaneous getaway" from the situation and forgotten to inform me about it, so I was left on the spot to do all the fighting. My opponent was an old lady. She tried to chop my head off with some serious kung-fu moves, but luckily the only casualty was my shirt.

Beijing gave us fantastic moments, some of them hostile, but most of them friendly. In conclusion, the Jing has some crazy shit prepared for travellers, so be ready and enjoy.

In Bolod we trust

After a days wait at the Russia-Mongolia -border we finally got to continue to Mongolia, the land of the Chinggis Khan and the humble nomads. It really says a lot about a country, that the best thing ever happened to it was Stalin's communism and that it still seeks mental guidance from a guy who lived in the 10th century.

Basically the capital Ulaanbaatar was an over-grown tent-village of about 1,2 million people (2008).    

The man sitting on the ground was Mr. Bolod. He was our beloved tour-guide who also offered one of his apartments for us to stay in. Unfortunately one of our group-member took the only set of keys for the apartment with him back to Finland, so Bolod's accommodation-business got messed up for the season.

Bolod showed us a set of bizarre sights, such as this old Mongolian army barrack. No idea, why this was relevant. Although, it's quite funny and sad at the same time, that there appears to be a person living in front of the abandoned barrack in a yurt.

A spectacular show on how to wool a lamb was displayed to us western city-people by the nomad's. Very exciting stuff! 

The gentleman on the right is Colonel Friday, a fundamental communist with a very short fuse. He enforced obsessively that we'd eat every dairy meal and snack that was offered us by the nomad people. While gagging down some yoghurt-dumplings one of our group-member was able to distract the Colonel by putting a peace of paper to the nomad-stove. That was a great insult for the nomad culture, because the stove was only allowed to be heated up with sacred cow-manure. During the distraction, we were able to get rid some of the force-feeded food by throwing it under the yurt's rug.

A typical nomad dish looked like this. Looks pretty delicious right? Well, when you eat this stuff 365 days a year three times a day, like the nomad's for sure eat, you might consider ordering a pizza.

At this corner of the world people tend to have some weird habits. Whereas chinese people burb and fart a lot to improve their digestion, mongolian people spit to improve their... well... they just spit. The habits make them fun people to hang-out with, especially in closed compartments such as trains or cars. 

In Ulaanbaatar we spent an evening at the Chinggis Beer Club. We encountered a serious liquidity problem when the electricity went off at the city and no card payment was possible. We had no cash and the bill was 123.800 tökröks.

Luckily we had a solution for the problem. We just kept on ordering more drinks until the electricity would come back on and a card payment would be possible again.

Also in Mongolia the back-seat boys were sleepy.

There was a horrendous silver statue of the Chinggis Khan standing in the middle of the desert. It was quite obvious that it was built there just that Mongolia would have something for the tourists in the middle of the desert. We didn't fall for that touristic crap and turned our backs on the stupid thing. 

At the nomad-camp Bolod told us, that there might be a shaman sitting at the top of the nearby hill, and that the shaman might wanna meet us. Bolod encouraged us to climb to the hill and see for ourselves. Well we climbed and there was no shaman, but at least we got to do some top-class power-fisting at the top.

At the edge of the Gobi-desert. We crossed the Gobi-desert at night time and decided it would be a good idea to leave the cabin's window open for the night, because it was so hot. During the night, there was a sand storm raging in our cabin, but everybody were too tired to close the window.

Can you spot two of our former friends from this decorative Mongolian restaurant cabin? Yes, you're right, there is Jens and Borreliosis-Peter. We saw them again in Ulaanbaatar, and especially Jens was surprised, not happy, that we're alive after our epic travelling in Russia. 

Don't be fooled by the sarcastic tone of this Mongolia-post, because it really is a wonder, that there are living, breathing and spitting people in this isolated part of the world. For that, Mongolia deserves some god damn respect.