We arrived at Beijing Airport, with plenty of time to spare. After we figured out how to get on the airport WiFi, most of us spent this extra time getting our last fix of e-biss. Surfing and tweeting and pinging and poking our ways through the intertubes. Facebook, CNN, and twitter is blocked in China, but a VPN fixes that problem
Finally the time arrived, we boarded the plane that was going to take us to what some call The Hermit Kingdom. My pilot friends had a hearty laugh when they saw a picture of the plane we took (see below). An Ilyushin 62M, I believe it's called. "It takes a crew of 4 to fly, job creation, soviet style", my friend Steve remarked. (the plane: Ilyushin_Il-62M )
The dainty North Korean flight attendants worked to quickly pack us into the small plane. And, of course, I was given a middle seat next to a big fat guy. To make matters worse, the plane's seats reminded me of flimsy folding chairs made out of recycled cafeteria lunch trays. I did my best to strap in quickly. I've got fat rolls draped onto me from the right. The 80lb woman is gripping both seat arms, and the seat in front of me is flexing under the weight of another large passenger and thrusting a corner into my leg. Ok, we're all ready to go…, Right? Aren't we? But we wait... and wait... A "brief delay" became 90 minutes on the tarmac without moving.
After a few minutes I unstrapped my seatbelt and stood up in the isle. Other tall and chunky passengers quickly followed my lead. The flight attendants badgered us to take our seats and fasten our seatbelts. "No thanks I need to stretch my legs", I said. I was about to cave into their demands, for no other reason than my suspicion that disobeying a direct order from a North Korean authority figure, was probably the wrong way to start the trip. But then I noticed the tall western tour guide that gave our briefing had joined our "Occupy the aisle" movement.
Just to add to the ridiculousness, the planes humidifiers were still going full blast the whole time we waited and after a while the condensation started dripping on people. The flight attendants started patrolling the aisles wiping the condensation from the roof, in the process, climbing over those of us who were standing.
Finally we took off. After that the flight was pretty uneventful. Just over an hour later we were descending. Beautiful green hills were everywhere. This was a very refreshing contrast to the nonstop smog of Beijing (seriously how do people deal with never seeing the sun?). Pyongyang airport is small and very quiet (I'm pretty sure I've been in strip-malls that are busier two hours after closing time on a weekday). The only other planes appear to have been parked a long time. .
After deplaning our cameras were gathered up in a plastic bag and stored away, as promised. For the first time in many years I was completely off the grid. No phone, no internet, no ATM, no FedEx. After our phones were banished, we stood in line for our turn with the angry looking North Korean airport security guys. They did a fairly thorough search of our bags, opening them up and rummaging around. They turned my iPad on and actually browsed through the apps and pictures (apparently nude-y pics are a no-no, luckily I didn't have any). Why do they even allow iPad's? They don't even allow cameras with GPS. iPad is jam packed with GPS and lots of other good spy-worthy gadgets. My theory is that they don't know what the iPad is.
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) A friend of his had been organizing the trip for quite some time and they were opening up for a few others to join. I'm not going to pretend Neil and I are bff's. I mainly emailed with his assistant and furiously googled to find out if this trip was actually LEGAL.... POSSIBLE.... SANE.. (Answers: Yes, Yes, and Probably Not.) 