Ding dong, Dandong
Dandong is a city in Northeast China. It's hardly a tourist attraction, but it's known for one special thing - its view into the world's most elusive nation. Johanna and I took a long weekend to go and see China's gateway to North Korea.
Traveling by train here is terrible. Let me go ahead and get that out of the way. Tickets only go on sale four days ahead of time and travel agencies only have access to a limited number of tickets to sell. We were able to buy bunks on the sleeper train for our 14-hour trip to Dandong, but we started the trip without having tickets to get home. We were kind of worried that we would have to write a story called "Stranded in Dandong" as one of our features.
That didn't happen. The first thing we did when we got to Dandong was buy return tickets - which is apparently always easier to do in the city you're visiting. Problem: the only tickets available were for hard seats. Could be dicey.
So here we are in Dandong. The train ride up was nice. The hard sleeper cars have several little rooms with six bunks in each. There are blankets and pillows and you get a place to stow your luggage. The bathrooms are totally nasty though, I guess because the bumpy ride causes people to lose their ability to aim. They don't have Western toilets either, which makes for an interesting trip for girls, I imagine.
Either way, we made it. We hopped into a taxi and realized we didn't know how to say our hotel name in Chinese. Johanna reached into her bag and handed our driver the reservation confirmation sheet and pointed to the phone number. She asked him in Chinese to call them for directions. So he did.
"Blah blah blah blah blah..." he said. Johanna started laughing. I looked back at her.
"He just said, 'I have these two foreigners in my cab and they asked me to call this number. Who are you and where should I take them?'" she said. I about lost it.
So he got directions and struck up a conversation with Johanna while I groggily looked out the windows. Dandong looks like any other Chinese city until you get near the Yalu River, which is the border with North Korea. As we passed it, the driver tapped me on the shoulder and pointed over. He knew exactly why we came to Dandong.
Right now we're at the hotel cleaning up. I'll post as the vacation progresses.
Traveling by train here is terrible. Let me go ahead and get that out of the way. Tickets only go on sale four days ahead of time and travel agencies only have access to a limited number of tickets to sell. We were able to buy bunks on the sleeper train for our 14-hour trip to Dandong, but we started the trip without having tickets to get home. We were kind of worried that we would have to write a story called "Stranded in Dandong" as one of our features.
That didn't happen. The first thing we did when we got to Dandong was buy return tickets - which is apparently always easier to do in the city you're visiting. Problem: the only tickets available were for hard seats. Could be dicey.
So here we are in Dandong. The train ride up was nice. The hard sleeper cars have several little rooms with six bunks in each. There are blankets and pillows and you get a place to stow your luggage. The bathrooms are totally nasty though, I guess because the bumpy ride causes people to lose their ability to aim. They don't have Western toilets either, which makes for an interesting trip for girls, I imagine.
Either way, we made it. We hopped into a taxi and realized we didn't know how to say our hotel name in Chinese. Johanna reached into her bag and handed our driver the reservation confirmation sheet and pointed to the phone number. She asked him in Chinese to call them for directions. So he did.
"Blah blah blah blah blah..." he said. Johanna started laughing. I looked back at her.
"He just said, 'I have these two foreigners in my cab and they asked me to call this number. Who are you and where should I take them?'" she said. I about lost it.
So he got directions and struck up a conversation with Johanna while I groggily looked out the windows. Dandong looks like any other Chinese city until you get near the Yalu River, which is the border with North Korea. As we passed it, the driver tapped me on the shoulder and pointed over. He knew exactly why we came to Dandong.
Right now we're at the hotel cleaning up. I'll post as the vacation progresses.
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