North-Korea

Characters:
Me: The worldwide traveler
Mylène: The pretty French girl, my travel buddy
Even: The cool Norwegian guy, my travel buddy
Vocabulary:
DMZ: The Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas.

No, we didn't go to North-Korea. Only a very few select tourist can do that every year, and I am not sure I have the guts to do that. Going to the DMZ was crazy enough.
The DMZ is an area that reaches 2 kilometers on both sides of the border between South- and North-Korea, where no weapons are allowed. However, it is crawling with the military. The North-Koreans have cut down all forests and anything that might hinder their view of the South in their area. The South-Koreans have left the land untouched, and because access is restricted, it is now a paradise for birds and animals that are close to extinction in other places. In that area is also one town on each side, the Propaganda Town on the North side, where no one lives, and the town on the South side that I don't remember the name of (probably something along the lines of Unification Town). But let's begin the story at the beginning.
When we went to Osaka, the original plan was to contact Mylène when we were on our way south towards Hiroshima, so she could come and meet us in Fukuoka, and there we were going to split up and some of us go with her to South-Korea, and some were going to go home. En svo varð ferðin styttri en ætlað var og við fórum bara öll heim og hittum hana Mylène þar.
Ævintýrið byrjaði strax daginn sem við ætluðum að nota til þess að plana og kaupa ferjumiðana. Við Mylène og Even vöknuðum snemma til þess að mæta í Kóoppið um leið og það opnaði til að kaupa miða en þar var okkur sagt að við þyrftum að fara til næsta bæjar, Oita, til þess. Þangað þurftum við líka að fara til þess að fá límmiða í vegabréfið okkar sem gefur okkur leyfi til þess koma aftur inn í landið eftir að við förum frá Japan. Það er mjög mikilvægt að hafa þann miða skal ég segja ykkur. Ég þekki strák sem fékk ekki svona miða og þeir sendu hann aftur til baka þegar hann reyndi að komast aftur inn í landið. Svo var hann svona viku á ferðalagi um hin ýmsu lönd af því að hann fór hvorki heim til Íslands né Indónesíu. (kannski er ég að ýkja, hver veit)
Anyway, I was in an extra hurry because I had to be back to the Coop before 4 o'clock to get the info on weather or not I could get tickets to go to LA. The buying of ferry tickets, getting a South-Korean railway pass, and getting the re-entry permit took so long that I had to spend a fortune on a taxi to get back to APU in time. But I got there, and I got my ticket, the last available seat on the plane, and I got it. It took me more than half an hour though. When I was finally done, Mylène and Even were coming back from Oita, and we all bought tickets for the highway bus. 4 tickets, we only have to make a reservation whenever we want to. Cool. So we made a reservation. When we were about to leave the shop, Bhuddi, the friendly APU student who works at the Coop and knows every single person in this university told us that the weather was going to be bad tomorrow, and the bus would propably not be able to make it up to the mountain. And that's when the other Coop people came to us to say the exact same thing, and advised us to take the bus tonight instead. Ouch, that meant we had to pack in hurry, find a hotel to stay at in Fukuoka, and a hostel to stay at in Korea, and we had two hours to do that.
And hurry we did. Almost everything was full in Fukuoka that night, so we got a hotel instead of a cheap hostel for that one night, but at least we got a place to stay. Phew! And then we hurried outside to take the bus down town where we would take the highway bus. It was raining, so it wouldn't come up the mountain to us. The highway bus cannot handle rain.
But our pre-adventure was not over there, oh no, when the bus arrived, the bus driver told us that the highway was closed and he would have to take the longer way and it would take all night. We didn't care, we're young, we can sleep on a bus, right?
"Aaaa, chotto... I don't really want to drive all night."
Well ok, he didn't really say that. Not in so many words. But that's what he meant, and when we did not listen to that, he said that his company didn't want him to do that either, because they can't really be responsible for us for that long.
"Take train," he recommended us. We looked at the time and wondered if the trains were even still working. Plus, it was going to be expensive. What should we do? We can't go back up the mountain to APU, because we have to take the early bus to catch the ferry, and the early bus leaves before the city bus starts running to take us down town where we are going to take the highway bus... Should we stay at a hotel here? But where are the cheap ones?
"Let's just take the train, let's hurry."
And hurry we did. Again. With our bags.
"Sorry people, we don't have local trains running that can take you all the way to Fukuoka," the train ticket man said, "but," and we felt a little tingle of hope, "you can take the local train from here, then change to the Shinkansen, and that will take you all the way to Fukuoka."
Nooooo, not the Shinkansen! The Shinkansen is fast (300km/h) but it's expensive!
"What other choice do we have?"
"Shigh, allright. There goes my new 5,000Yen bill."
And when we finally got to Fukuoka, we had 10 minutes to find the hotel where we were staying. Luckily, Mylène had been there before, and knew how to get there. Except, she got confused and we left the train station by the wrong exit and had to walk (run) all around the station. The hotel closed at midnight. We got there at 11:59. Phew!
And then we had a good night sleep, woke up for Japanese style breakfast (onigiri and tea) at 7:30, and went straight to the ferry.
And then what? You know what, it's easier to tell you about it face to face. Why don't you come here and I'll tell you about it in person. Ég sakna þess að tala við ykkur augliti til auglitis!! Eigiði ekki vefmyndavél á msn? Sendið mér allavega myndir af ykkur svo ég sjái nú hvað þið hafið vaxið mikið síðan ég sá ykkur síðast.

The ferry was called Beetle, and it only took three hours to sail from Japan to South-Korea. Cool, huh? It felt funny going through customs and everything at both ends without going into a plane, but of course we were still entering another country. The ferry felt a little bit like a plane at first, because they have the same rules. Although, the reason for keeping your seatbelts on is because the Beetle might have to swerve in order not to run into a whale or a dolfin. At one point, I noticed that we did take a sudden turn, and I swear I saw the back of something coming out of the sea. 

When we approached Busan, I did not like what I saw. Tall tall blocks of grey buildings that were so dark, like there were clouds, only for them, but there were no clouds. It was so creepy. 

And the first thing we noticed when we walked around the city was how rude the people are, and how dirty the city is. 

But compared to Japan, everyone is rude, and all cities are dirty. 

We only stayed in Busan one day, then left for Seoul early morning. When we bought the ferry tickets, we got a free railpass around South-Korea! It was great! We could go anywhere we wanted for the next five days, without paying a penny. We used it to go to the capital and back. There was no time for anything else, really. And it was enough. In Seoul our hostel was right next to the second most important palace of Korea, and we took a tour around it. Man, it was so big! The tour was almost two hours, and still we only saw a part of it. I have some pictures. It was so beutiful, even though it was still winter and nothing green. 

When we came home, Mylène and I were browsing through the pamphlet they have at our disposal about where to go and what to see, when my eyes caught the letters DMZ in dripping letters. 

"You can go there?" I thought, "No way!" 

Yes way. There are many tours to the DMZ, organized by many different tourist agencies, including different parts of the DMZ, some lasting only a few hours, others the whole day. Wow. Now that was something. Now or never, let's go! 

And that's how I came to see North-Korea.