Northern touch...

Here's an email I sent a friend... decided to paste it here... Will write more later...

My trip to the North was really cool, interesting and fucked up. The mountains are absolutely beautiful and the hike wasn't difficult. It's crazy crossing over, going through customs, and standing face to face with the cold stare of a North Korean soldier. Everything is so organzizd that its creepy. We had to line up in a certain order to go through immigration, the bus had to pass through he DMZ and a specific time, you can't take pictures at certain points...

The most interesting part was driving along in the bus and seeing the North Korean villagers working on their fields, riding by on their bikes, or just "hanging out" in the middle of a field by themselves.

Weird.

It was funny when the tour guide would translate some of the random signs and they say things like "We must defeat our greatest enemy, America!!"

All of the North Koreans have to wear a pin with Kim Il Sung (the former leader) and thats how you know if a person is from the North. We all had name tags and ID's and some NK's came up and said "Oh, Canada" but they never say anything to the Americans for the most part because they are the enemy.

The resort was awesome though... very classy... It was built by Hyundai so it's first class... Probably the nicest hotel I ever stayed in actually. The hot spa was also awesome and it was easy to forget that we were in one of the most repressive, screwed up places on Earth...

The North Korean villagers we got to see are not your typical NK's though. They have a much better quality of life than most people in the country because they live near the resort and Hyundai help them out, giving them a few trackers and stuff for farming... They still don't have electricity (I don't think anyway) and they still live in the past, but they aren't starving to death and they have adequate shelter, some schools, and well, food I guess.

The strangest thing I was an army truck going down the road with a shit load of smoke coming from it. Our guide explained that because of the fuel shortage in the country, they actually have the truck modified so that they are powered by the burning of wood as opposed to gasoline. Old school.

Anyways, time to go teach some kids who are poor by Seoul's standards, but extremely well off when compared to their brothers and sisters a mere 100 km's away.

The world ain't fair is it...