After lunch we took a short Air Koryo charter flight to Orang, on the east coast of Korea. Tim and I again managed to grab business class seats - we had been spoilt and could not travel any other way!
Upon landing at Orang airport we saw a whole array of MiG fighter jets lined up. We were not allowed to take pictures of military-related scenes, but I'll see if any fellow tour members managed to capture any images so please check back to this blog later.
From Orang we had a long 2.5 hour drive along the coast to visit Mount Chilbo. Many of us were due to sleep over at a home stay village that evening, but phone calls by Mr Lee* from the airport revealed that unfortunately not enough homes would be available to accommodate everyone. American citizens were already prohibited from participating in the home stay experience, so volunteers were sought to join them at the Outer Chilbo Hotel. If not enough volunteers were found a random draw of names would be held to choose the home stayers.
Although the bus ride was long and almost all of it was on bumpy dirt roads, Mount Chilbo was a pleasant surprise for everyone. It is not one of the more well known places in North Korea but the scenery was absolutely spectacular. The coast along the East Sea (Sea of Japan) was dotted with villages with the Chilbo rising up dramatically. We stopped several times for pictures and for the "natural bathroom" as Mr Park put it. There was also a short break at a waterfall on the way.
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| Our mini-bus in North Hamgyong province, which endured hundreds of kilometres of dirt roads. |
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| The Mt Chilbo area featured dramatic coastal scenery. |
We finally arrived at the Outer Chilbo Hotel for dinner. There Tim, Raphael and I volunteered to stay in one home stay house as a threesome so that more people could be accommodated for the village experience. A combination of this gesture, some last minute phone calls for extra home stay houses, and more volunteers for the hotel thankfully resulted in the group avoiding the dreaded "home stay lottery".
* - Our Korean guides are part of a privileged set of trusted people who are allowed to own mobile phones in the country.
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