Seeing Nick wave from the windows, I was beginning to lose faith just as Lee appeared with Sarah and thrust both passports into my hands. Before I’d even pulled on my rucksack, Jem had got one foot on the steps and was squeezing his way into the carriage. Turning to Miss Kim to say goodbye, I gave her a hug as she tried to negotiate her arms around my bag. Her crisp perm smelt freshly sprayed, and I was stabbed by sadness, knowing we would never see her or any of the guides again. She gripped my hand, and I made her promise to get in touch if she was ever able to find her way to London, knowing full well this would never happen. Exhaling with relief as I stepped into the train, I found Sarah had set up shop in the first compartment, taking one of the top berths of the soft sleeper, with Nick below, leaving the other side for me and Jem.
Tommy, Anna and Alice had also chosen to take the overnight train back to Beijing, but as American tourists weren’t allowed to take the trains in and out of North Korea, we’d had to part ways with Geoff and Bob, who now had another Koryo burger to look forward to. The rule was an odd one, as American teachers at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology often used the trains, and there was no official ban in place for tourists: they simply weren’t allowed to travel on them. Tommy and Anna were next door, and Alice was two carriages away in a hard sleeper, bunking with rowdy North Koreans for a few hours as she was hopping off early in Dandong. Travelling on the Pyongyang–Beijing service provided one of the only opportunities granted to tourists to interact freely with North Koreans, but the language barrier hindered probing of any real value.
Having spent the previous few months sharing compartments with strangers, it was a treat to be travelling with friends. Even though our companions had usually been a good-natured mix, there were always personal boundaries to respect, which required a certain level of train etiquette lest we disturbed meals, interrupted conversations or kicked anyone in the head while climbing down for late-night trips to the loo. This, however, felt like the sleepovers of my childhood, as we shook out blankets, pooled bags of sweets, and sat cross-legged waiting for the train to leave, lifted by the aura of relief that the trip was over and everyone could relax. Nick appeared at the door.
‘Is it all right to leave my things here, do you think? I’m going to find my seat once we’re on the move.’
‘Your seat?’ I asked.
‘My seat … in the seating carriage.’
‘This is your seat, Nick.’ I pointed to where his bag was placed. ‘During the day, that’s your seat, the one next to it is Sarah’s, and at night she goes up to the top berth and this becomes your bed.’
Nick looked confused. ‘You mean this is it? There’s no other seating carriage?’
‘Nope. That was a fancy chartered train so we all had nice seats and a separate compartment for sleeping, but not here I’m afraid. But there is a dining car,’ I added, hoping to soften the blow.
‘Pfffffff.’ Nick sat down and plopped his hands in his lap. ‘I shall have to get a drink once we’re moving,’ he huffed.
It was barely ten o’clock in the morning.
As we began to pull away from the platform the guides crouched down and waved through the windows. With the exception of days off to celebrate the Kims’ birthdays, and the odd anniversary thrown in here and there, they received no holidays and would be back to work the following morning as soon as the next tour group arrived. As the Ryugyong Hotel sailed by, it was with mixed emotions that I watched the city of Pyongyang slip from view. Victor was right: it was a selfish need that had brought me here, the need to paint myself into a moment of time before it was confined to the history books. But what we had witnessed wasn’t the same as watching the Berlin Wall come down or protesting in Tahrir Square. Those events had a finality that birthed a beginning, but none of us could predict what the future held for North Koreans.
The previous evening, we had gone to a barbecue duck restaurant for our farewell dinner and enjoyed a soju-sodden night with the guides. After the meal, Lee had stood up to make a speech, which I had managed to write down:
We want to become a member of world society. Inside of DPRK there are so many people. We don’t like sanctions, we don’t like hostile policy against our country. We are not guilty. So when you go back, please tell the truth. What have you done, what have you seen? Let them come to our country. We are 20 million people, we are not guilty. There is a very big gap between Western mass media and DPRK reality, so please make people understand. And even though there are so many problems of ‘no photos’, I think you’ve seen and felt what is life in DPRK. We are developing step by step, in our own style and at our own pace.
He’d finished by downing his soju then brandishing the glass. Alice’s eyes had filled as ten days’ worth of suppressed emotion finally erupted.
As I reread his words, I wondered what to make of them. I kept hearing Victor’s voice saying: ‘Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.’ Was the speech a part of the show? Or had the soju loosened his tongue? One thing was certain, with the exception of a few dedicated reporters, the Western media did propagate a horrible stereotype of North Korean people, stripping them of their humanity. Yet how much of what Lee wanted us to tell was ‘the truth’? Until the day the regime fell, no one could ever know precisely what went on. Closing my notebook, I looked out at the countryside retreating into the distance. Owing to the state of the tracks, which had fallen into disrepair, the train crawled along, offering plenty of opportunity to absorb the gentleness of the journey. There was an enviable peacefulness about the scattering of thatched villages where a couple of oxen stood tethered to trees, radishes dried in the sun, and women bent over their allotments. In a few hours we would be back in the smog and grind of Beijing, clogged with cars and angry people, and I wondered who really had the better lifestyle. Knowing – or at least being told – that most of the country lived in abject poverty was at odds with what we could see, and I didn’t know what to believe, wanting desperately not to be duped.
Nick and Jem had gone in search of the dining car, and Sarah, bunged up and coughing, was reading in her berth. Feeling braver without the guides hovering around, I asked her what she had made of Lee’s after-dinner speech.
‘They usually make a closing statement at the end of a trip, but he’s never said anything like that before,’ she replied. ‘I was quite taken aback actually. That was something very special.’
‘How much do you think they buy into the official story? He’s lived abroad so it seems a bit odd that he wouldn’t know what goes on.’
‘It’s really hard to know. You can glean a bit from their body language and their general attitude towards visiting monuments and stuff. I used to work with this guide who would deliberately dirty his shoes before we went to the mausoleum, and wear them in defiance. You would never hear him praise the Kims the way the others do, and it was his way of quietly protesting against them. From my years of knowing him, and from what he’s told me, he somewhat resents his situation and feels frustrated. He’d experienced a great deal of freedom growing up abroad and I felt like he never really adjusted properly to being back in North Korea.’
‘Would they ever say outright what they think?’
Sarah shook her head. ‘No. It’s just not in their interest. I mean, some of them read BBC news and various other bits of coverage that aren’t censored and they don’t bat an eyelid, so whether it’s because they don’t believe it or they just can’t say anything …’ she trailed off. ‘On one of the tours I did, there was a guide who carried a small picture of Barbara Demick in his wallet. Obviously, I was quite taken aback, and asked him why he had it and he said it was so that he would never forget her face.’
Immigration and customs officials always have a way of making me suddenly wonder if I’ve got a kilo of heroin in my washbag, as they eye my passport, looking back and forth from my ten-year-old photo to my casual countenance. By early evening we had reached Sinuiju, and as the sound of boots and voices approached our compartmen
t I began to sweat with anxiety. A guard ordered us to hand over our phones and cameras, writing down the brands and models of each one. Within minutes a second guard arrived with cheekbones that could carve rock, and gestured for all the iPhones. There had been no access to wi-fi, 4G or any kind of mobile network for the previous ten days, so I’d been unable to send off the photographs I suspected would be deleted by the guards. Thinking myself a genius, I had already saved the photos I wanted to keep in the trash and was perplexed to see the guard go straight for that folder. I also had a bundle of Korean won – rolled up in the dirty socks in my rucksack – which foreigners weren’t allowed to own, let alone take out of the country, but that we’d managed to exchange in a department store for a wad of sought-after euros. The guard’s eyes moved sideways to meet mine as he carefully scrolled through the selection, deleting anything he considered inappropriate. Handing back my phone, he barely touched Jem’s before going through Nick’s camera and ordering him to delete a selection of photos that featured local people. Disappointed that my favourite shots had gone, I sulked by the window and waited for the passports to be checked. More than an hour passed until we were cleared and on the move towards the border, my dirty socks untouched.
Together, we gathered at the window to see the two countries flanking the Yalu river, and watched the sun cast its tired rays across the water, around silhouettes of fishing boats. As we crossed the bridge into China our compartment glowed as if with pleasure. At the end of the bridge my phone buzzed across the table and the first messages began to come through as we officially re-entered China. Nick beamed.
‘Now that we’re out, I’m slightly euphoric and hysterical,’ he said, rubbing his thighs. ‘Imagine though, we’re all feeling so free and liberated in China of all places. It’s all relative isn’t it, when you think about it. Now come on, who’s ready for dinner?’
Hot and smoky, the dining car was packed with North Koreans, Chinese and a mass of tourists from various other tour companies who were sizing each other up over bottles of local beer. Sarah was napping, and Nick had joined Tommy and Anna, so Jem and I slid into a table at random, next to Ed from Utah, and Jacek from Poland. Curious as to whether or not Ed was a Mormon missionary, I let Jem initiate the usual traveller chat, while I judged and made assumptions. Tanned like a Benidorm granny, bearded and wearing a couple of leather bracelets that frayed at the knots, Ed had obviously been away from home for a while. This wasn’t just a one-off trip to North Korea. He looked to be in his late-forties, which made me suspicious: there was nothing wrong with middle-aged, professional holidaymakers who often devised laudable ways to contract for six months, make a fortune, and then jet off for the rest of the year. But on the whole, they could usually be grouped under the same umbrella. I had encountered a number of them while on backpacking trips to Southeast Asia and while inter-railing around Europe: they always travelled alone, yet attached themselves like limpets to groups of people at least ten years younger than themselves whom they could then patronise while expertly rolling a spliff on the beach. They always carried a worn Camus paperback in their backpocket, knew the best stall to find pad thai in Ko Phangan, and had almost died in the jaws of a python/crocodile/wild boar. They usually had the meaning of life all figured out, despite having pissed away most of their years, and amounted to nothing more than being a creepy bore sitting on a pebble beach in Biarritz with a group of eighteen-year-olds and a box of Desperados from Monoprix. Their peers were probably married with children, driving a Lexus, and holidaying in Costa Rica.
I smiled to myself, realising that I had now become that same judgemental traveller. It must be a rite of passage. Tuning back into the conversation, I asked Ed where he was off to next.
‘Vietnam, Laos, maybe Cambodia.’
‘We haven’t been to Laos, but we took the Reunification Express down the coast of Vietnam and then went across Cambodia,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but you can’t beat Laos,’ Ed said, emphasising the ‘oh’ in La-oh. ‘I spent three months there last year and I’ve taken that Vietnamese train.’
‘It was a lot of fun, but probably one of the worst compartments I’ve ever travelled in.’
‘The worst?! Try taking the Tazara to Zambia. Or the one to Kigoma or Angola. Man, Asia’s got nothing on Africa. Derailments guaranteed.’
The guarantee of derailment was hardly a selling point to a seasoned train traveller.
‘Where did you travel in Vietnam?’ Ed continued.
‘From Hanoi to Da Nang. We spent a couple of days in Hoi An, then went back up to Da Nang and took the train down to Saigon. It was okay, though not as comfy as this one,’ Jem replied, following a bean around the plate with his chopsticks.
Ed smirked. ‘You travelled sleeper class? That’s a shame. I find it kinda fun to travel with the Vietnamese people.’
I was about to tell Ed that ‘the Vietnamese people’ also travelled in sleeper class when they weren’t flying Vietjet Air, when Jem flashed me a look from across the table and stepped on my foot, signalling that he was ready to break free from traveller one-upmanship and head to bed. Whether or not Jacek could speak English was debatable as he’d stayed silent for the entire dinner, but I suspected he was playing a wily game and I bade goodnight to them both. Nick was pink in the cheeks and had evidently made good on his promise to begin drinking as early as possible, so we left him with the others and swayed back to our compartment.
Though red-eyed and drained, with the obvious beginnings of the flu, Sarah was still looking a lot more relaxed now she had fewer people to manage, and was closer to home and her own bed. It turned out that a few days earlier another group at the Yanggakdo had gone in search of the fifth floor, got caught, and been forced to write letters of apology, which Sarah had had to oversee. Having cleaned teeth and washed faces, we slipped under our blankets and began chatting with Sarah about Beijing life, how often she got to see her family in England, and whether or not she tired of traipsing in and out of North Korea every fortnight. Eventually, we got onto the topic of how she had left school and moved to Australia. She was midway through a story when the others arrived, bringing a strong smell of garlic oil and beer. Tommy parked himself on the end of Jem’s berth.
‘I was probably about nineteen,’ Sarah went on, ‘and living in Canberral with this guy who was in his forties. We lived in this really small studio room and he was quite mean to me.’
‘In what way?’ I asked.
‘Well, I thought at the time that he might be selling drugs, and then one afternoon he went out and sold our mattress.’
‘What?!’ Nick looked appalled.
‘Yeah, he was quite horrible. And then after I came back from a trip to Perth, I realised I’d picked up scabies, and he threw me out saying the scabies creeped him out. I had to spend the night in the garden. I didn’t have any money, so he paid for my bus fare to this farm in Victoria where I worked pruning vineyards. The farm was full of Chinese illegal immigrants who lived in the back garden in two caravans, and I had to stay there until I had enough money to move on. It was pretty dodgy, but they were all so nice and they helped me to get rid of my scabies.’
Tommy had been listening with his mouth slightly open. ‘Was that your gap year?’
Once the others had gone back to their own compartments, Nick lay on his back, playing peekaboo with the curtains.
‘Had a few beers, Nick?’ I asked, as he wrapped his bedsheet around his head.
‘I didn’t have any beer! Had one and a half bottles of wine, though.’
Nick was beginning to sniffle, and I could tell he had the beginnings of Sarah’s flu. One night sealed in this Petri dish of a compartment was guaranteed to make us all ill, but there was no way of escaping it. Nick picked up a bottle of Tylenol and started wrestling with the childproof lid, until Jem eased it away from him, popping it open and rationing him a couple for the night. He soon quietened, and Jem flipped off the light. That night we tossed and turned amid a chorus of co
ughs, snores, and clearing of phlegm, waking in Beijing with runny noses, sore throats and churning stomachs.
A different Beijing was waiting when we woke the following morning. Clean blue skies revealed a modern, arty-looking skyline that had until now been obscured by the smog. With a Midas touch from the sun, the colours of shops, clothing, trees, cars and people had brightened and deepened, casting the city in a fabulous light. It was a national holiday, and over the previous week the government had simply ordered the factories to shut down, and forced cars to drive on alternate days to limit traffic pollution. Amazed that it was so simple to reduce the pollution levels, we were, however, housebound by illness and unable to enjoy this brand-new Beijing.
My friend Adrian and his wife Hannah were from Wimbledon, but had spent the last ten years living in Beijing. She worked for the British embassy and he’d given up journalism to join the company that had taken us into North Korea. We’d briefly crossed paths at the Yangakkdo, where he and his group were finishing their trip as ours was just beginning, and now that we were all back in Beijing, Hannah and Adrian had generously thrown open the doors of their spare bedroom for as long as it took us to mend. Falling ill was part of the adventure, a minor setback that required little more than good books, patience and sachets of Dioralyte. But it was a blessing to be infirm in someone’s home, rather than on a moving train or holed up in a hovel with bad TV and scratchy toilet roll. Before leaving for work, Adrian pointed out the tea, the washing machine and the wi-fi code, before explaining that Ayi would be coming by lunchtime.
Around the World in 80 Trains Page 23