Tuesday, September 16, 2008

My trip to North Korea: Pictures worth a thousand words?

I just love to write. While in North Korea this month, I filled a whole notebook with descriptions of my trip -- and I loved every minute of it. However, it's gonna take me forever to type up my notes and then fact-check them and get them reviewed. Hence I am publishing these photographs instead.

Whether or not these photos are worth a thousand (or many more) words, I'm not sure. But publishing them is a hecka lot easier than typing up my notes.

First I flew from San Francisco to Vancouver, then across the Pacific to Shenyang in northern China, and then from there I flew off to the capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Then I hit all the tourist hotspots in Pyongyang, flew back to Shenyang for a few days, and came home. And this is the proof.

Here are photos of, among other things, the Pyongyang subway, several monuments, a Buddhist temple, lots of food, a middle school, a dam, the Pueblo, our fabulous luxury tourist hotel, a trip to the mountains, a Korean War museum, an internet cafe in Shenyang, the Beijing airport Starbucks, the Vancouver airport's totem pole display and the ugly camel I brought my daughter Ashley when I got home.

To enlarge any particular photograph, just click on it.

Regarding the photos of North Korea's annual Mass Games, I hope that they will give you a feeling for what these games are like. Over 100,000 people participate in them each year and they are HUGE. Remember that choreographed sequence with the drummers at the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympic games? Imagine that sequence plus 15 more of them and you can get an idea of of what North Korea's Mass Games are like -- awesome.


PS: These photographs are in reverse order -- from the last part of my trip to first. Sorry about that. I'm a techno-dunce. This is the best I can do. If you don't like it, then just go to North Korea yourself!