Public Hangings:
Tickets for these are understandably popular, but your hotel can usually get you good seats for a small fee.
Restaurants / Dining Out:
Westerners in particular find many of the meals offered to be unusual, although nutritious dog and (protein rich) caterpillars are making fewer appearances on tourist menus these days.
Always remember that if you don’t actually enjoy a meal, it is unlikely that you will keep it for long, anyway.
Pornography:
Please do not bring pornography into the country.
It will be supplied in your hotel room, on your coach tour TV (usually in black and white) and inside your restaurant menu (except at breakfast time, for obvious reasons).
Departure Tax:
A departure tax of USD127 (no change given) is payable, only in fresh US dollars.
93% of visitors in a recent survey declared this as “a bargain”.
A dollar cash machine is available in the departure area of Pyongyang International Airport.
If the electricity is off due to maintenance, please use the adjacent winding handle to retrieve your cash and, usually, your card.
American Express is particularly welcome.
Your Hotel:
Location: in the middle of Taedong river on Yanggak island
Floors: 47, of which 23 have been mostly completed
Rooms: 1,000 rooms. Deluxe suites, and standard class rooms. International phone, tv, refrigerator in each room all of which occasionally work
Warm water supply : 24 hrs a day from 1am to 3.15am
Restaurants: 2 Korean food restaurants (mostly dog and a local variety of succulent hedgehog), 1 Japanese (serving sushi, DPRK style. Mostly dog and a local variety of hedgehog, wrapped in rice, and served raw) and 1 Chinese food restaurant (all Chinese style food served, especially dog and the local hedgehog. Here they are mixed with curried dog and hedgehog (local variety) and won ton soup.
There is also a revolting bar/restaurant on the 46th floor (planned for when the remaining 24 floors get built).
Other facilities: A full size bowling alley, a beauty salon, a full international standard casino, a karaoke hall, a ladies hairdressing saloon, a billiard saloon, a souvenir shop, bookshop and a post office are not available.
An open air-grill and a golf track with a floor of space 9,000 square meters are also not included in this hotel, but were on the original plans and therefore often get mentioned in tourist guides.
What to Eat:
This is a typical North Korean restaurant meal and is eaten by worker peasants (2nd class) at special celebrations (a rich uncle dying and leaving no debt, for example).
There’s nothing better on a warm crostini rubbed with a clove of garlic and nice glass of cold white wine on a warm summer evening, but none of that is currently available in North Korea.
It consists of tomatoes (grown along the local river bed, which also serves as a water supply route and sewer), grass pollen, pasta shaped twigs and all is ensconced in a satisfying bed of sheep mucus.
Place onto a lightly oiled (industrial oil is perfectly acceptable) baking tray, cover with a damp tea towel, then leave to prove in a warm place for around 1 hour, or until doubled in size, if no-one hungry passing by grabs it first.
This is also great mixed under a large platter of hot spaghetti with a big sprinkling of parmesan and we hope to get both ingredients in future years.
All our bread is gluten free as we don’t like gluttons.
Useful North Korea Phrases:
What is that smell?
naemsae neun mueos-ibnikka?
Do you have toilet paper? How much for 4 sheets?
dangsin-e
