Let’s just get right to the questions I’m sure are burning in everyone’s mind regarding the elusive North Korea. The place is creepy as fuck. That’s the only phrase that even begins to sum it up.  Every day is like being in some mixed version of the Truman Show and Stepford Wives, with the added bonus of never being quite sure if you might get nuked or thrown into a work prison. The people never smile, and even the children, what few we saw, march along in uniforms of the “Young Pioneers,” being trained to stay in line. Every woman wears heels and skirts no matter what; our 2 guides wore skirts, tights and heels daily despite the fact that we walked all around the city and its monuments in the freezing cold.

And wow does North Korea love their monuments. Every few blocks had a tower or statue in honor of a Dear Leader’s birthday or the “friendship” of some other former Communist power. While we visited most of them, we didn’t do the logical thing and walk from one to the next, no our tour took hours extra unnecessarily . We believe it was an effort to make the actually quite small capital city of Pyongyang feel vast, but our van drove us back and forth across the river at least 8 times a day, making the distance from the bronze statues of the leaders stop #1 and the Children’s Palace directly next door stop #12 of our day. [Ed. note: Our guides realized we figured this out when I emphasized I liked maps…and proceeded to verbally call out exactly where we were, where things were nearby and how far away they were as we drove all over the city…in a country where GPS devices are logged at customs. In retrospect, I should have played dumb.]

But again, without our beloved passports, we towed the line and went where they told us when they told us, we didn’t take pictures without permission, and we definitely never questioned why they build 20 new skyscrapers of apartments and an 8 lane road when the entire country only had 10,000 cars and the previous 40 skyscrapers of apartments sat dark and half vacant.

But I almost broke at the war museum. [Ed. note: fuck that place.]

We realized early on that our guides were giddy to have Americans in their care and kept up a continuous banter in the car and on walks about our country, their country, politics, our families, and our jobs. With fear of saying something against the propaganda, I played the silent type (shock to everyone, I know) and let my husband field the questions on our behalf…he is after all the reason we were in this mess! [Ed. note: My wrap up will have my thoughts on just how mentally exhausting the visit was…]

But walking around the war museum, listening to the “facts” and “proof” of the “US Imperialists” spies starting the war and was keeping their country separate to this day, I knew our flight home would not arrive soon enough.  Then the military guide singled me out and began to pry into how I felt to hear all about my country…was I sad? I could talk to her, her sweet demeanor contradicting the starched creases of the light brown uniform. Suddenly I was almost thankful for my lack of interest in history; I honestly didn’t know the “truth” of the Korean war and could just tell her I had learned a lot and try to get to the back of the group and find my husband again! Tomorrow we were going to the DMZ where I could only imagine the guard’s attention would be tenfold, so there was no way he was leaving my side again until we were safely back in China!

As our bubbly tour guides pointed out the sites we passed in the van on the way to dinner, we made appropriate comments of our own regarding the tall monuments and beautiful city. But inside, I was counting the loops of the locals outside the car. Man rides past on bicycle. Woman pauses under umbrella. Workers walk to the tram stop. The same general scene appeared to repeat every few blocks, separated by sections of road that were unlit, pitch black, and deserted in between…as if allowing space for the actors to reset.  We were seeing only what they wanted us to see…and when we commented on the pouring rain on our arrival day, our guide corrected us; it was confetti from God welcoming us to a wonderful visit. [Ed. note: We cannot make this stuff up. That is what the girl told us. And she was serious.]  I guess if you can’t control the weather like the citizens, you just change the message.  Communism is all just PR, right?

Dinner was another confusion. We went into the empty restaurant where 4 waitresses in full costume stood in a line behind the closed door to greet us. I assumed the guide texted ahead, but every time I glanced over during our meal they remained there, like statues, awaiting the rest of the patrons who would never come.  The restaurant was more of a small banquet room set for an 80’s wedding or bar mitzvah. The balloon arches lined the ceiling and each chair was covered with a golden skirt and bow. Suddenly my wrinkled khakis felt a bit out of place… [Ed. note: The music. Oh the music. Every place we ate played the same DVD, on repeat, of some musical group singing the joys of the Party or something. Over and over and over…]

The entire city seemed to be a facade. The streets were lined with shops, but no one worked in them. The “clothing stores” each had 10 outfits hanging on the racks. The “grocery stores” had an empty deli display case and a cooler holding one row of beer and one row of water bottles. The shops we were allowed to enter only turned on the lights and unlocked the doors as our guides knocked – the workers apparently sitting in the dark all day long until one of the 10 or so tours in the city each day were permitted to come inside. [Ed. note: some shops even had plywood leaning up against their front door windows from inside, and it was moved aside as the shop opened for us.]

It was like living on a movie set.  We didn’t dare speak badly of anything because upon arrival our guides (handlers) had taken our passports and visas for hotel check-in, and when I asked for them back I was told they would keep it safe for us. Yup, we were well and truly stuck here for 4 days with no way out and no contact with the outside world. Nothing about this sounded like a good idea and we still had to visit all the monuments and learn the “truth” of the Korean War…

My husband has some truly hair-brained ideas…and the fact that I go along with half of them has made me question my sanity more than once. But none of those will ever top the stupid life plan I agreed to 7 months ago, which left me standing outside customs as a stiff-backed official led him and his passport (which I only let him hold for the time it takes us to clear customs every travel day after an incident of misplacing it a few years ago…) into a back room of the airport where we just landed… in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. [Ed. note: Otherwise known as: “North Korea” or “Best Korea”.] 

That’s right folks, it’s yet another super secret trip story! However, instead of blaming Delta for this leg, this was all our [Ed. note: my] doing.  We signed up for 4 days and 3 nights in the most secretive and hostile nation on Earth…so much so that the visa and passport stamp cannot actually be in our possession or on our passports! Oh, and we only let one person know we’d be there…just in case we didn’t come home on time…

Anyone keeping up with the bad life decision count for me?  This week definitely is going to rack those up…

Our first day in Beijing was scheduled for the local highlights…Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City…but first we had to maneuver the hotel breakfast.  Mock all you want, but unless you battled the throngs of Chinese and German tourists anxious for their fill of congee and deli meats before 8am, you never be fully prepared for a day navigating in China. We were pushed, jostled, and shoved around the buffet and once we loaded up on our tea and croissants, we tried to find a seat…for a hotel with 12 floors and a few tour buses parked outside each morning, the 15 dining tables seemed insufficient. Eventually we asked to join the empty seats besides some Canadians (we knew they were Canadian because despite the near-freezing temperature outside, both seemed comfortably geared up for a sightseeing day wearing shorts and t-shirts), and while they seemed wary of us, we must have looked pretty pathetic because they gave in!

After the breakfast hustle, we met our Beijing guide and set off for a day in the main sites. Tiananmen Square was huge. [Ed. note: largest public square in the world!] The hoards of people pushing through security was overwhelming at only 9am. Since we came with a guide, we were able to go through a special line without metal detectors, but we watched the Chinese police rather forcefully turn away those who were solo towards a more stringent checkpoint…they were very concerned with avoiding a repeat of the late 80’s here it seemed.  Once inside, we saw what might have been the only organized line in all of our Asian adventure. Hundreds (or thousands?) of people were queued in hopes of walking past Mao’s tomb to honor him. [Ed. note: yes. Millions of Chinese people still come and honor Chairman Mao, he of Great Leap Forward and Great Famine fame…] Our guide graciously volunteered to hold our bags and cameras if we wanted to make the 3 hour wait for that site, but we decided to skip it in the hopes of more time in the Forbidden City.

Confession time…the only thing I know about the Forbidden City is that it used to have a Starbucks inside. I’m really bad at history because I found myself wondering where it was alongside the Terracotta soldiers. [Ed. note: sigh.] So once inside, I was in for a surprise. The place was pretty large, although the number of tourists streaming in should have made it seem overcrowded, but every single group simply walked down the middle from one gate to the next, so each of the vast sides were wide-open for us to stop with the guide and give me a desperately overdue history lesson.  Once we reached the middle, it was time to see the highlight of the Emperor’s City: the throne room. Our guide knew what was coming next and pointed us in the direction with a smirk and instructions of where to meet him if we got out. This didn’t bode well…

The lack of line wasn’t surprising. The pushing of the crowd we even expected at this point. But the sheer force with which we were propelled both forward into the metal barricade protecting the throne, while simultaneously being shoved backwards from every angle as people who had succeeded in their selfie attempted to escape the crush was unlike anything we had ever felt before! As 2 mothers pushed past with their arms shielding the heads of their kids, my husband had an idea. Using the fact that he was a foot and a half taller than everyone around, he latched onto me and dove forward so I could snap the picture we literally fought for. And then just pushed a path backwards until he dragged us both safe from the swarm. [Ed. note: hey, when in Rome…] And the sight we risked life and limb for? I’ll let you be the judge, but personally I think I would have fought harder if this place still had a Starbucks…

With the Hong Kong highlights behind us and the weekend ahead, we suggested our friends join us on a quick overnight getaway before we ventured off to discover China for the next week.  And as expected, our ever reliable travel friends are just as incapable of saying no to a trip as we are, so they helped us book a ferry ticket and promised to meet us after work…in Macau!  Feeling like public transport pros at this point (the wrong direction detour of the previous day was long forgotten), we loaded up our belongings and attempted the Hong Kong trolley to the ferry dock…and after 30 bumpy minutes and a hike up a very steep hill, we gave into a taxi.  Apparently we still needed some practice with this, but maybe we’d win the taxi fare back in the casinos tonight.

Macau is a very old city which in the last 5 to 10 years has begun to morph into Asian Vegas, but as much as my husband feels the lure of the bright lights and blackjack tables, old and crumbly will always win out.  Determined to explore the Old Town for our few free hours, we dropped our luggage at the hotel bag check and jumped in a cab…and went no where. I was under the impression that my map-loving husband had scoped things out and knew what was what…but apparently he didn’t even open Macau on Google Maps until we were on the ferry from Hong Kong and at the point our “work anywhere international data cell phone” stopped working…for 10 hours! [Ed. note: in all fairness, T-Mobile says it works in Macau. Our friends have the same T-Mobile plan, and it worked on previous trips…but their phone didn’t work this time either. 100% not my fault.] Okay, option B, we tried to convince our driver, who spoke only Cantonese, to take us “somewhere cool” in Old Town. The skeptical glare basically said it all, but he put the car in gear anyways and we headed down “the strip” for parts unknown.

And a short journey later, our driver stopped, and pointed out of the car and up a hill a bit…I guess we were there? In truth, we seemed to be in the shopping area with street upon street an unusual mixture of gold jewelry stores and street food stalls. Maybe this is what people come to Macau for… We decided we had a few hours to kill on a nice afternoon and just started to roam. We found an old and crumbly church, stumbled upon the Bellagio fountain show…at the Wynn…and put $200 (Hong Kong, so about $30 US) on red in the MGM – and won! Deciding to end our solo tour on a high note, we caught a cab back to our hotel to cross paths with our arriving friends…by sitting on our over-sized backpacks in the lobby of the nice casino hotel since our cell still didn’t work…I’m surprised security didn’t eject us!

The real party was set to start however – we had a full Friday night in Macau and couldn’t wait to live it up! Dinner was first and what we expected to be a simple  Portuguese meal morphed into pitchers of amazing sangria, bottles and bottles of beer in foam coozies, a suckling pig, and none-too-subtle hints by the restaurant staff trying to kick us out so they could finish closing the place! No fear, this was Asian Vegas, we could find somewhere else to welcome us.  We started walking between the casinos, which all seemed to be connected by bridges just like in Las Vegas, and suddenly we had surprise floor seats at the Venetian lounge. We rocked out to the slow jams of the house band “Funk Shui” who seemed to have hired the forgotten Huxtable daughter (Denise!) as their lead vocals…and a Marcus Lee lookalike from Houston as her backup dancer/singer! What we planned on as a quick drink before some gambling was once again us shutting down the house…early ferry and flight in the morning long forgotten, of course!

While we failed to see much of the cool city and definitely didn’t win back all those taxi fares [Ed. note: no tables of blackjack, no craps…], we found a love for another gambling town and were happy that unlike Monaco, they didn’t seem too put off by our backpack-wielding ways!  And…we got to hang out with someone besides each other for several days in a row which might have been the only thing to keep our sanity in check as we delved into more of Asia over the week ahead…

After some delay at Chinese customs (the husband was pulled into the back room, but he assured me the rubber gloves didn’t come out…this time) [Ed. note: A couple of Chinese officials kept looking at me, looking at my passport photo, and rubbing their chins – discussing my beard. I haven’t trimmed it to its normal short length since before we left, so it’s getting really fluffy!] we made the slow drive across the Hong Kong border.  Although it was late on a “school night”, it was so nice to finally arrive in Hong Kong. After months of hotel living and the dreaded camping, we had a few days to stay at our friend’s house…our friends who had fresh chocolate cookies awaiting our arrival.  We might just cancel the last third of the trip and make our home here!  They supplied us with Octopus cards for the public transport and a few ideas of what sightseeing to do the next day before we all went to sleep with plans of a big night out together the next day. 

Hong Kong is a very cool place…and a very tall place.  It seems to be made entirely of giant skyscrapers and vertical shopping malls…which was lucky for me, as I had a pair of jeans to replace!  After some initial struggles with the local tram system (we played eenie meenie miney mo to pick the car and when it turned right at the big intersection and we wanted to head left, we knew that gamble didn’t pay off…) [Ed. note: you’d think we’d be good at this by now…] we got back on track and started our day off by finding the highest spot on the mountain top to watch the ships go by.  We also caved and ate a pizza, but promised ourselves we’d fully immerse in the local cuisine starting that night!   Basically, we were just killing time until our friends came home from work to talk to us…because after 2 months we were more than ready for English conversation with a different person!

Our evening ahead was a big event…the Happy Valley Horse Races were on! Usually held each Wednesday, we thought we would miss out since it was Thursday, but due to a public holiday to celebrate the 9th day of the 9th month (you know, October 21st…) the races were moved one day and we were able to walk down the hill after dinner to join the masses.  Since we met living in Kentucky, my husband and I like to pretend we know horse racing. In truth, I bet based on the silk colors, and he only goes for the bourbon. [Ed. note: mmm] The horse races in Hong Kong were nothing like what we grew up with.  First, it was Octoberfest, so instead of men in suits and ladies in hats, we had Asian servers in lederhosen selling us jugs of Chinese beer.  I was excited at the prospect of placing some bets, but every around us were much more concerned with the polka band and drinking contest on the large center stage rather than the horses thundering home behind them!

We managed fight past the beer tents to grab an open spot on the fence and catch the last few races in action.  Being surrounded by glittering skyscrapers instead of rolling green hills definitely brought out a different aspect of race spectating, but the general event was the same.   You scream and yell “Number 11, number 11” or whatever horse you picked and it leads the pack for a turn and a half…until it inevitably falls backwards to lose by 27 lengths…every single time.   Luckily, we never did manage to make it back past the lure of the beer tents to place any bets, so we could save our gambling money for the next day’s adventure!

• So, we totally got into Russia. Cleared immigration, walked-out-through-customs into Russia. And then went to the Red Square and the Kremlin and Revolutionary Square and took the metro around all day long. That’s just crazy talk.
• And we didn’t tell anyone! The time UPS lost our passports for 3 days? Yup. They were going to the Russian embassy.
• But we’re safely out of Russia, and while Putin likes to bomb places, like Ukraine and Syria, he has yet to indicate his desire to attack China or Australia. So I think we’re safe. Hooray!
• Southeast Asia…my head hurts. I’ve hit it so many times. I have bumps on my bumps. Ouch.
• I have never been more thankful for innerspring mattresses than I am right now. Rock hard twin beds. Or bedsprings that stab my in the side or back all. night. long. Or…no beds. Just a thin mat on some sticks. I miss my pillow-top mattress.
• Cambodia – they use US dollars. Everywhere. The temple tickets (which they put your photograph on to prevent theft) are all priced in US dollars. The ATMs have US dollars. Everything is in US dollars…or Cambodian Riel. 4000 Cambodia Riel to 1 US Dollar (ish). The math hurt my head after a while.
• We saw some gibbon monkeys going between temples. I’m kind of sad there were no monkeys in the temples though. I think it’s because we were there too long after sunrise.
• Angkor Wat is massive. Huge. Giant. And overrun with tourists. See it – 100% worth it, but then go somewhere else. There are a bajillion temples around in the forests – look at a map and explore. We spent 24 hours in Cambodia, but I know how you can spend over a week exploring temples.
• Speaking of temples, my favorite was the forest temple – [insert name]. It was just like the Forest Temple in real life!!!! [Ed. note: and by in real life, he means the Zelda video games…]
• Thailand – overnight trains are useful in that they are both transportation and hotel, but 14 hours on a Thai sleeper train, twice…
• Tigers…we were the only people there without a guide or driver. This “do it yourself” Thailand thing started out well.
• I sent a friend of mine a photo of me walking a tiger. His response: “I don’t know if you know this, but a tiger ate the dog you were walking.” That made me laugh.
• Elephants! I have a lot I could say about elephants. But mainly I’d like to emphasize the good the Conservation Center is doing for their health and welfare. They have a free hospital for any elephant in the country, including free lodging for owners. They take in any injured, sick, or retired elephant. In Thailand, elephants are half owned, half free. Like…2,000-3,000 wild elephants are all that are left in Thailand, and another 2,000-3,000 domesticated/owned ones. And while logging and thus work elephants have been banned since the late 80’s, Asian elephants are endangered, and so there are still many elephants that are owned but can’t be “free” and survive on their own and they live to be 70+. The Conservation Center is the only government-run one in the country, and while they still use the elephants for tourism, they’re making due with the situation they have and caring for them as best they can. They’ve tried reintroducing elephants to the while, but the herd killed the last one they tried to introduce. Our elephant’s owners (mahouts) cared deeply for their elephants, and had for decades (the elephant I cared for was 57 years old). Anyways, enough about that – for more information, please see: http://www.thailandelephant.org/en/thaielephant.html
• I love my elephant. “Dee mak” – good elephant. And then I pat her head or belly and she flaps her ears a lot and wags her tail happily.
• I wish I had more elephant photos, but they all have me or my wife in them looking at the camera. That and I was focused on riding and dealing w/the elephants v. taking photos.
• Bangkok was another crazy city, this time looking for food. I love spicy food. I enjoyed our Thai food experience.
• Next stop – China!

And again, where we’ve been over the past ~7 weeks:

So the grand “plan” for this 3 month adventure was basically find old and crumbly things for my husband and let me eat and drink my way around the world.   The best way to accomplish my plan seemed to be booking food tours in various cities.   I spent days pouring over Parisian wine and cheese shops and Italian pasta making classes trying to decide on just the right ones to enjoy…and then for some reason I booked none.   I spent a month in some of the best food cities of the world and didn’t once have a local guide us towards the best and yummiest.   We managed alright on our own (remember all that casa vino blanca??), but I don’t really know how or why I dropped the ball there.   For some reason, I did manage to book us a food tour of Bangkok.  I think I booked it really early on in the planning thinking it would be one of many and I could compare.   I also planned for us to be experts at the markets and street foods long before Southeast Asia so I would be able to gauge what was safe to eat…but we were flying blind. [Ed. note: Completely blind. No idea what we are doing…still]

We got off the dreaded overnight train and convinced our hotel to let us check in hours early.   A hot shower was necessary after the wilderness week… And then it was tour time. Our guide met us in the lobby and we grabbed a tuk tuk to begin.   She spoke so softly that I only heard every couple words, but I figured that was safer to make us brave enough to eat!  And eat we (sort of) did… It didn’t matter that it was shy of 10 am, these markets had been open since 6 am and we were late, so we had to catch up.   She handed us chicken off a cart the same man ran Tuesday through Saturday for the last 80 years.  It was marinated in fruit juice and then fashioned into a bamboo skewer like basket to grill on the street.  We didn’t want to offend, so we stood beside the canal littered with floating trash and ate our chicken quickly before the guide had time to buy the kebab of chicken feet sitting on her left…

The rest of the first market went about like that…she stopped in front of some stand and named a few ingredients.   If I heard something particularly strange (stewed pig’s blood anyone?), I said no thank you. [Ed. note: not kidding – one stall had a giant bucket of pigs blood. That was a bridge too far.] If I recognized most of it and there weren’t any live animals walking atop the cooking surface, I said ok.  At most I managed 3 bites of eat item…but I think I did better than my husband who stared at me with bug eyes and kept looking for a trash can to discreetly hide the leftover evidence.  [Ed. note: As we walked down the food alley with the cats, the birds, the raw fish being cut, and the various other raw meat and baby pools of water used to wash things, I was sure the FDA would have something to say about all that.   Why did my wife have me eat from that area? I ate, though…]

Thankfully, it was time for a break…at the Buddhist temple.   We bowed and people chanted and some old lady got mad at my guide for bringing me inside wearing shorts (I swear I didn’t know the food tour included a temple or I would have dressed more appropriately!!) so that meant it was time to leave and take a tuk tuk to the next market. And then we encountered the monsoon.   We spent 3 days in the rain forest lugging our raincoats in preparation for the impending storm…and there wasn’t a drop.   So when we got to hot, hot Bangkok, we didn’t even think to consider the weather beyond the heat.   Yes, those trusty raincoats remained in the hotel and we sat in standstill traffic in the open air tuk tuk while it poured.   Sheets of water flooded down the side of the roof and directly onto my right leg, drowning half my shorts.  Karma?  Probably.

We made a run for it into a “restaurant” and sat there wringing out my leg as our guide took her broken umbrella around the market and returned with plates and bowls of stuff. Unsure of where it all came from, we decided to just trust at this point and tried a little of everything.  It was strange…and chewy.   Unfortunately, the monsoon was still kicking so we were stuck inside staring down the plates of barely touched food like a cranky toddler holding out for dessert…Why did we travel during rainy season again? [Ed. note: Hey now, I ate most of my…whatever that spicy minced meat thing was.]

Finally there was a break and we headed out again to another stop…another “restaurant”…this one complete with the 90 year old Thai patriarch who kept walking up and down the stairs wearing nothing but his saggy boxers.  Appetizing site for sure.   Luckily, she served us beer with lunch.  Delicious local beer because alcohol kills germs, right?  Surprisingly, this place was perfection.   We had 3 dishes here–something super spicy for my husband, some seafood for me, and the most amazing crispy lemongrass chicken to share.   We devoured it all.   I asked for the name of that dish but it was about 11 Thai words so I think when I get home I’ll just order lemongrass chicken until some place comes close!

On a high note from finally eating something recognizable and yummy, it was time to wrap up our tour.   And the last stop was not food, but a promised flower market.  Look, I got my hopes up on this once before so I wasn’t really expecting much.   Plus, I had a flight in 24 hours so I couldn’t buy a bunch to decorate as we traveled like the plan was around Europe…but oh my goodness the Bangkok flower market is legit.   We went up and down at least 4 streets packed with flower stalls.   And trucks were rolling up throwing bushels of roses out the back constantly.  This place is open 24 hours and every inch is covered with blooms.   There wasn’t a sad little tulip bulb in sight!

And of course we had to buy some flowers, if only for the short time…they were only $1.50 after all!