Our group consisted of 6 teachers from the school, and one of the teacher's friends. We only had two foreign teachers in the group, but when you think about the proportion of foreign to Korean teachers at our school that's actually a pretty good turnout.
As usual I'll be letting the photos do most of the talking. As usual, click on pictures for larger versions, and click links for more detailed location information.
We flew from Incheon to a place called Changchun. It's nice to have so many places within such short flying distance. Here's Sagong and Mr. Kim on the plane.
Brad and Mr. Park waiting in the Changchun airport for our bags. Brad wore his awesome trucker hat for a good portion of the trip.
The crew waiting in a bus station. We traveled around the area quite a lot, and so spent quite a bit of time on buses, trains, and in cars and vans.
This is me standing on what remains of an ancient city wall. The area we were in used to be part of Korean territory, and the wall was from when this city was a capital of one of the Korean states at the time.
Here are some tombs and some hills behind them. This was in an area close to the secondary palace of the capital mentioned above.
These were walls of the palace. The secondary palace was used as a defensive place to wait out enemies when necessary, so I imagine these walls were important in the defense of the palace.
This is a view of some fields and the misty mountains behind. The area was really beautiful, and really reminded me of northern Saskatchewan. There were a number of times during the trip that flat places covered in fields or rocky places covered in trees reminded me of my home province.
Another scenic view, including mountains, a stream, and fields.
This is the foundation of the secondary palace. It was very interesting to see, and very ancient. Luckily we had some experts who could explain things about the history of all these sites to us.
This is a giant tomb marker for a great Korean king from way back in the day. It was pretty large, and covered in writing.
This is the tomb of the great king. It was tall and made of huge slabs of rock. Reminded me of a lot of other structures for kings that have been put together. I've heard this type of building is found so often because it's the easiest way to get up pretty high when working with stone. A king would want a tomb that lasts, and that is pretty impressive, so it makes sense to tend towards this kind of structure.
This is a view closer to the tomb, showing the side of the tomb, along with some giant rocks that were placed there to help keep the stone slabs from shifting around too much. The construction was really impressive. We saw another site close by that had been damaged, and it showed how the stones were carved with lips on top that the stone above would fit into, also to help prevent brick slippage.
Another part of the adventure started with these boats. On the other side of the river you can see North Korea, and some buildings and fields. We took the boats along the river, and we ended up pretty close to North Korea. We were able to wave at people, and they waved back. It was an amazing experience. There were some soldiers watching us, and others doing some work along the road, but none bothered us. I think the people there were pretty used to having boats drive up and along.
I took a video from the boat as we drove up and along. It's hard to see much. I apologize for the crappy camera work too; I was concentrating on looking at stuff and wasn't paying much attention to my camera.
This is another view of the North Korean shore, but from our boat. It's definitely the closest I've been to North Korean land. You might be able to see a couple of people on the road here. The waves we got from the North Korean people might be my favorite part of the entire trip.
We did some travel by train, and of the four nights we were there, we slept two of them on trains. We had comfy sleeper bunks, which is definitely more comfortable than sleeping sitting up (which I did from Beijing to Shanghai overnight on my last China trip). The first train we took had 6 people per section, which left those of us on top bunks with very little room. They were cozy, though, and it wasn't difficult to sleep. This is the view from my bunk.
And here's looking up at my bunk, the next morning.
We rode a nice green train, that looked like it'd been up and down the tracks quite a few times.
As we neared Baekdusan, the mountain that was the main purpose for our trip, we stayed with some nice Koreans who fed us and helped organize our transport. This is a bunch of us, after breakfast I think, chilling and resting. The underfloor heating was great, and lead to a couple of naps on this floor.
We bused up to the entrance to Baekdusan Park, and were pretty surprised to find so much snow. There were a couple of giant snow piles near the entrance to the park, and as we continued up the mountain there was a ton of snow on the ground. As it was May, I had thought there might be a little snow left higher up, but I had no idea there would be so much. It snowed on us a couple of times, and there was often a foot of more of snow on the ground.
See, told you there was lots of snow. It was pretty ridiculous, especially since later this same day we were all in t-shirts and I was still feeling warm. It felt like we'd somehow wandered into winter. It did feel good to have it snow on us, and we even tossed some snowballs around further up.
It was mainly cloudy, but occasionally the sun would come out and give us chances for some pretty sweet mountain photos. The mountains reminded me a bit of the Rockies; they were a lot rockier and taller than the types that you find around Seoul.
Along the path up to the waterfall were some hot-springs. They water can be more than 70 degrees, apparently. It was interesting to see the steam rising out, and the landscape around the springs was definitely a lot different from the rest of the snow covered area.
We weren't able to go all the way up to the summit, which was a little disappointing. There's a lake up there, and it would have been really cool to go up and see it. Due to weather, the road up there was closed, and so we only made it up to the waterfall where the lake drains out over a cliff and down to this stream. So I was sort of able to drink the lake water, just not while it was in the lake. This photo shows the view away from the waterfall, including the stream.
I took a video of the stream and waterfall.
We visited a lot of interesting and important sites for Korean history. This was one of them. It is a monument to soldiers that fought against the Japanese occupation of Korea.
These are some apartments that sat across from one of the places we stayed.
And these are just across the street from the same place. A lot of the apartments and buildings were pretty old.
Another important site for Korean history. This is one-pine-tree house, where some occupation resistance planning and militia training took place. It provided great views, and was one of the more important historical sites we visited.
A 360 view from near the one pine tree of one-pine-tree house. I managed to get the whole crew in the photo, which made me happy.
The lookout above also provided really good views of the plain and city below.
I explored around and found some graffiti on the rocks below the pavilion. There was also some garbage down there, including some broken bottles, so I had to tread carefully.
Later, we ended up in a little town that's right across this bridge from North Korea. We were able to go (escorted) to the border line. There were guards on both sides of the border, but it was fairly chill. Considering where we were I didn't feel overly in danger or anything.
In the town where we spent the time until our train back to Changchun, we found some interesting restaurants. I was surprised to see BOTH a Lotteria and a Han's Deli in the same building. It was just like being at home in Hyehwa.
That same last night, Brad and I wandered into this little bar. It was a nice little place. We were a bit worried about having issues with ordering in Mandarin, but it turned out they spoke Korean there. A lot of the area was covered in Korean letters and a lot of people seemed able to speak Korean. It made our lives a little bit easier.
And this was our second sleeper train. We only had 4 bunks in our room this time, plus a door to separate us from the rest of the train. It was a bit more comfortable, as we wouldn't hit our heads when we sat up. This train brought us back to Changchun, where after a stressful van ride, we were able to just barely catch our flight home.
I've saved the food photos for last. We ate some pretty delicious stuff during our tour. Enjoy!
Tofu and Rice. Delicious!
Bibimbap! Delicious!
Steamed Chicken! Delicious!
North Korean style Nangmyeon! Delicious! (but watch out for boney meatballs)
Deep Fried Pork! Delicious!
Delicious Marinated Meats! (pre-cooking) Delicious!
The trip was amazing. It was great to be able to travel around so much, and to explore some history in this area of Korean China. I enjoyed my time in Beijing and Shanghai earlier this year, but I had an even better time during this second trip. It left me with a lot to think about. I seem to get reflective when in China, and also when I'm in the mountains, so this trip left me doubly so. It felt like a bit of a turning point for my life, though it's hard to describe how exactly. Not everything I was reflecting on was related to the trip, but it was still really valuable to me. Oh, and I also managed to re-start my journal writing. I'd been really neglecting that writing, and I hope to be able to keep it up now that I made a few entries.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy these pictures and videos. I miss you all and I hope to see you soon. Unfortunately I've decided not to come visit this summer, since I won't have much time during summer vacation, and the tickets are pretty ridiculously expensive. I should be able to come back for a bit more time in January of February, so I hope to see all of you in Canada then! Love you all!
