Day 10 - a) Pyongyang railway station

Monday September 13, 2010

We packed our bags in the morning to experience something that almost all North Koreans cannot - exiting the country. We were to catch a train from Pyongyang to Beijing, a ride that takes one full day.

As we rode the coach to the railway station Miss Jong bid us farewell with a song:

Pyongyang station was busier than I expected. We said our goodbyes to the Korean guides and the tourists who were staying in the country for an extension.

Pyongyang railway station. (Photo courtesy of Tim)

"Pyongyang to Beijing" (Photo courtesy of Tim)

Our train was a mixture of local and international carriages - they separate from each other at the border city of Sinuiju. The latter continues onto the Chinese border city of Dandong where they join a Chinese train for the journey to Beijing. We were in the first class sleeper carriage, with four bunks per cabin.

Timetable for the Pyongyang to Beijing train.

The trip to Sinuiju would take something like six hours even though the distance is not that great - a result of the rundown infrastructure forcing the train to travel not much faster than 40km/hour. Once we enter China all that would change and the train would zoom to Beijing at express speed.