Darren and Jo on the Road (sometimes)

Our first day around the city, the first sight – the Pyongyang Metro. Some people have said that it’s all fake, that there are only two stations, and the passengers are shipped in for tourists to see. It seems a bit of an elaborate hoax to set it all up. Yes, we only saw 2 stations – but met some Swedish guys who’d seen six different stations. There are two lines in operation – we were taken to the two most recently opened stations (in 1987) on the number 1 ”Chŏllima 천리마선 Line”. (Chollima is a high-speed mythical Korean horse…)

We’ve travelled on a few metros around the former Soviet Union, and they’re pretty much standard Soviet/Eastern European design. Entering the first station, Puhŭng 부흥 “Rehabilitation”, you are greeted by grandiose architecture done in sombre browns and greys – as standard. As you glide down the long long escalator, you do notice that The Pyongyang Metro is particularly deep. At the bottom, it opens out into the main station chamber with glorious 1950s style chandeliers and Soviet/Korean realism with pictures of the workers, farmers and intellectuals striding proudly a few paces behind the Great Leader as he goes on another standard micro-management field advice trip. The light, shines reluctantly across the station, dimly revealing the waiting passengers, the station guards and the antiquated, green East-German trains.

We wait for a while, then a train turns up with a surprisingly empty carriage – this is our designated carriage. No automatic doors here. You manually unlock and open the door. At one end, the ever-present pictures of the Great and Dear Leaders look down on the spotless brown and chrome carriage. The guards come and close and lock the doors behind us, there’s a whistle, and we smoothly start hurtling to the next station.

Yŏnggwang 영광 “Glory”, our destination, is another masterpiece in the Soviet 1950s classic red/brown period. Another few hundred photos in the semi-dark and it’s back up another long long escalator, to come out blinking onto the streets, knowing you’ve just seen the best-dressed nuclear bunkers in the world.

Where should you go on your first day in North Korea? We’d seen some of the sights, and it was time to go to the shooting range – to fire a few pistols and rifles.

We had two options – normal targets, or “moving” targets in the form of chickens in a big cage. Hit the chicken – you get to take it home for dinner. Being vegetarians, we decided for the first option. Jo went first, with the pistol. Then me with the rifle. Then me with the pistol again. I’m no sharp shooter. I’m not even a blunt shooter. And Jo has already proved that she’s a better shot than me.

Meanwhile, our Korean guides were eyeing the chickens hungrily. Sure enough, as he promised, one of them grazed a chicken leg with his first shot. And we had an extra guest on the bus back to the hotel on its way to the cooking pot…

The sign on the carriage read “Beijing-Pyongyang”. Finally we were on our way to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The first leg, overnight to the Chinese border town – Dandong, passed uneventfully as we had a few beers, chatted to the other people on the tour, the guides Gareth and Richie, and the former North Korean ambassador to Australia.

In the morning, we waited at Dandong for 2 hours for border formalities and as they coupled our 2 carriages to the North Korean train. After a long wait (which Jo managed to sleep through), the train trundled off across the bridge and onto North Korean soil. We pulled into a turquoise-painted station, which looked like it was from a bygone era, with the face of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung smiling benevolently down at us.

The border guards got on to check our paperwork, and to inspect our belongings. You can take mobile phones into the country, however the border guard has to wrap up the phone carefully so you can’t use it and document everything. Not that you can actually use the phone even if you wanted to. But what they really don’t like is GPS. One of our travelling companions had an iPad – which the guards amused themselves with for a while until they saw a map on it. It took 20 minutes to convince them that there was no GPS on it, and finally they agreed to seal it up like the mobile phones. We later heard about someone who had a $2000 camera confiscated because of GPS capabilities.

With all the paperwork done, we popped out into the station waiting room – which had a very convenient micro-brewery attached. 9am, less than 1 hour in North Korea, and we were drinking a brew which tasted distinctly of apples, while taking sneaky peeks out over the town square (although officially we weren’t allowed to look!).

Back on the train, we trundled slowly towards the capital city – Pyongyang. It would take nearly 10 hours to travel the 225 km/140 miles. Yes, at 14 miles per hour, North Korean trains are not exactly high-speed. We got our first glance of the lush green countryside, some small, concrete-built towns and wandered along the train. In the restaurant car, we had our first Kim Chi in country and second and third Korean beers.

It was dark when we pulled into the station in Pyongyang. The digital clock on the platform read “19:45″. Strangely, it did feel like we’d arrived back in time in 1945…