Picnic in the Park – Don’t Get Lost!

If you havn’t read my general review, ‘Moranbong Park Walk – S**t happens’, may I suggest you do so before reading this review.

Having walked through the Moranbong Park to the top of the hill (an easy walk) we were invited into a smaller grassy area where seven or eight groups of people were sitting in circles bbq’ing, eating, chatting, singing folk songs and drinking beer and sojo (a local drink). There were about seven or eight people in each group with additional kids running around. Basically a picnic scene you would find in any popular park on a nice Sunday or holiday afternoon.

Our group, of around twenty, was asked to split up as we liked and join any group of picnickers we wanted. Somewhat peculiar I though then and somewhat peculiar I think now.

I cannot imagine my gathering together 20 acquaintances (I don’t have that many friends!), heading down to my local park in Canberra and gate crashing five or six picnicking groups. Imagine the reaction in your own home city if you were to do this. The fact that this is exactly what we did in Pyongyang makes me suspicious that this was a stage managed event. I should add that this is the only thing we encountered that made me suspicious in this way. I do not subscribe to the view that everything you are shown in North Korea is fake – some do!

That said, I must say that the group I joined was certainly warm and receptive. The only problem was that no one in the group spoke English (bad stage management if it was that). As it happened, a couple of our new friends spoke a smattering of Spanish – albeit poorly like myself. I could never have imagined that one day my limited Spanish would save the day, in North Korea of all places.

Through a combination of Spanish and sign language we had a wonderful half hour or so interaction and were certainly well catered for food and drink wise. While we ate and chatted some of our group sang and danced with other picnicking groups.

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Whether or not stage managed (and I prefer to think it might have been pre-organised) we all certainly had an enjoyable time.

At the desired (by our guides) hour we headed back down to our bus now parked at the Kim Il-sung Stadium. Well most of us did!

Given that it was Kim Il-sung’s birthday holiday the park was quite crowded. Two of our group missed the call to return to the bus. After a while they noticed that the rest of us had gone and started retracing their steps back to the bus, unguided. Naturally they hadn’t realised that, in the interim, the bus had moved and the rest of us were exiting the park via a different route.

Mad panic broke out amongst the guides – local and western – when we got back to the bus and two people were missing. Guides are personally responsible for tourists in North Korea and could get into serious trouble in the event of something happening a tourist or a tourist misbehaving. Guides from another group combined with ours and a search party was dispatched. This was serious stuff and the guides ran. About forty-five minutes later our two miscreants returned, rather embarrassed, with guides in tow.

What was interesting is that when we entered the park and wandered around everything seemed quite normal and relaxed – people waved, smiled and warmly greeted us. The guys who got lost reported a very different reaction from the people on their attempted exit – people seemed to be staring and looked uncomfortable and there were no greetings. The only difference of course was that, as a group, we had our guides – now there were two unguided and out of place foreigners roaming the park. Best avoided, though they did point our guides in the foreigners direction when the search commenced.

How ironic it was that one of the guys that got lost had asked, en route to the park, what we should do in the event that we got lost. The guides reply was a rather matter of fact, “You will not get lost”!

Anyway everything was forgiven and the guides, now over their state of mass panic, announced that it was now time for some mass dancing. So, Let’s dance.

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This blog entry is one of a group (loop) of entries on The Rambling Wombat’s trip to Pyongyang, North Korea which I recommend you read in a particular order.  I suggest you continue with my next entry – Let’s Dance – Mass Dance. If necessary, go to my Pyongyang introduction entry –  Pyongyang – A Capital City Unlike any Other – to start this loop at the beginning.

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