The follow on posts and photos are amazing. The photos of crowds of North Koreans are really interesting, as were the earlier station photos. The material culture of the place is kind of fascinating.
It's also kind of mind boggling to contemplate the lives Arirang performers[1]. What must that be like?
This reminds me of a rail trip I’ve always wanted to take: Western Europe to Singapore, which may not be as geopolitically interesting, but may be the longest possible continuous rail journey.
Unfortunately you may have to wait some time, at the moment the journey is not be completable because the Paris-Moscow express service (and indeed all train service between Russia and Western Europe) is suspended due to sanctions against Russia.
Reading this made me nostalgic for the old internet and sad about what it's become since.
I miss the days of blogs and forums and authentic content like this.
Today it's all hyperpolished platforms filled with clickbaity influencers. Every step of the way, somebody's trying to extract as much money as they can.
I can't help but think that we in this community played a big part in turning it into what it is now and that thought fills me with regret.
I am reposting one of my favorite Quora adventure stories for the sake of posterity:
What is the strangest thing you've seen at the airport?
By Aurelio Germes: The strangest thing I've seen was to find nobody not even police or security at the airport, so I took a plane and left the country without anyone noticing it. It was at the international airport in Malabo, island of Bioko in Equatorial Guinea.
It happened that I had missed my flight from Malabo to Madrid departing on Sunday and I didn't want to wait a whole week for the next weekly flight, so I decided to call a pilot in Cameroon and charter his plane to come and pick me up in Malabo and take me to the Douala airport in Cameroon where I could more easily catch a plane to Paris. We arranged date and hour of his arrival to Malabo.
On the date agreed I went to the international airport only to find out that it was closed since that day no flights, neither international nor domestic, were scheduled. There was nobody there not even a guard or a clerk, but it was already too late to cancel the trip. The only way out was to jump the wall surrounding the airport and wait on the runway until an aircraft arrived, and that's what I did.
I didn't have to wait long. A small plane with a French pilot arrived and soon we were ready to fly to Douala with me in the copilot seat. We could not take off in our first attempt since a door of the aircraft opened unexpectedly when we were about to take off, but we succeeded in our second attempt.
Due to lack of security, nobody noticed that a plane had arrived at the international airport and left with a passenger.
The old internet is still there, it just hasn't scaled as quickly as everything else. And frankly, we have a role to play if we want to preserve and nourish it. You say you liked the site. Drop the author a thank you note. Amplify it beyond pressing the "up" arrow on HN. It's not just about the author: show others that this kind of stuff is valued.
Today, the signals young content creators get is that they can make dumb videos on YouTube or TikTok and get 10M subscribers and ad revenue, or set up a geeky blog that will get 100 views a month. But it's not Google or TikTok that did this: it's the content consumers.
> But it's not Google or TikTok that did this: it's the content consumers.
Given the intentionally addictive algorithms and psychological manipulation used by the big tech companies, I think at least some of the blame can be placed on them.
I think I spent maybe 2 hours appreciating the author's journey.
This has been one of my best reads of the month, and I hope that I'll one day get to visit Pyongyang myself, without the US visa waiver issues that come with it.
This reminds me a bit of Paul Theroux’s “The Old Patagonian Express” where he tries to make a trip from the northern US all the way to the southern tip of South America. It’s a great read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Patagonian_Express
This was a really great read (read the whole travelogue), and I'm really glad these photos are still being hosted. I always wonder how long the shelf life of this sort freely published content will be. Even within the blog, he includes links to blogs or photos of others he encountered, and most of them seemed dead.
The author wonders aloud several times about the contents of the huge piles of passenger boxes constantly blocking the train corridors. Most coming from russia I'd love to peek in !
Fascinating that they really had the freedom to go about in the middle of nowhere once they reached the 1st station in NK from a seldomly-used point of entry. Bold move!
If you wanted to explain to someone what the 00s-blogging phenomenon was all about, and to given them an example of the best of it, you may well point to this.
Photos of NK like these are incredibly difficult to come by. What a beautiful country.
Also, I admire his courage. In several photos, military people are staring at him, as they may well be. He was lucky as well. He states he hid the photos in a zip file in his C:\windows folder when leaving the country, having deleted them from his SD Card.
What a crazy place to see the Pacific Ocean for the first time in your life. The point where the Russian, Chinese, and N. Korean borders meet has to be one of the weirdest, most fascinating, most forbidden (for most of us, and especially Americans) places on earth.
Maybe someday tourists will be able to stand on it like the 4 Corners in the US. Well I guess technically it's in the river. But they could rig something up.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DURwu3dHtt9aUWBm8 At the very least you can go to this mountain on the Chinese - NK border ("you"... I, as an American, went along with a mainland Chinese person). People do live in these places and there are (well, were...) cross-border interactions. I just stood kinda close to the border and was like "I guess I could just jump over?"
There were cameras but that's it.
There's not some magical thing when you look across the border and "feel the oppression", in some of the border towns on the Chinese side there were ads for tours where you could go to NK and do some shopping for cigarettes or something. I do not believe I would be able to sign up for those though.
I was just visiting but it's how I imagine some parts of the US/Mexico border are like? It's not like that area of China is super vibrant either, pretty industrial.
I have the impression that when Russia gets involved border stuff gets messy, if all those videos of people driving across Georgia and the like are to be believed.
There are borders in Central America (and I imagine lots of places) that locals can cross to go shopping, but foreigners would get stopped and sent to the official border.
North Korea has some beautiful coastlines and mountains, seems like they could make a lot of money on tourism if they would open up and make sure visitors feel safe.
I don't think its possible for the Norks to "make sure visitors feel safe", its just not how they operate. If they can capture a tourist to turn into a political pawn, they will. Same goes for RU and China and even America. It's a global game and they all are willing to play it.
I think I probably refer a stupid number of people to this post each year when the topic of trains and/or North Korea comes up. Read it when it came out and always found it fascinating.
I researched it a while ago as a Russian. You can't just visit North Korea by booking a ticket and going there. You have to buy a tour, and even then, while you're there, you can't move freely, can't interact with the locals, and can't have North Korean money, you can only buy things from special tourist shops for foreign currency. You're only allowed to see places and things approved by the government to be seen by foreign tourists.
This is from 2008. Back then, North Korea was still living under the previous Kim. Back then, the border was very leaky and Koreans could move to China and Russia without a lot of barriers.
Yes! There are a whole series of posts with photos and maps. Click the red "Tumangan, we are coming!!!" link at the bottom of the first post to jump to the next one, etc.
Keep going and going and going. There are a lot of trains (of course) but once you get past that there are a lot of very interesting photos, especially the shows that look extravagent and unique. This guy documents his trips well!
Hope it is backed up well (guess on the archive sites).
It is quite obvious that happy citizens walking back and forth in PjongJang street are part of massive Potemkin Village playact.
Also I like this blogging style. Most others want to insert their fat face and stupid comments into every frame.
It's also kind of mind boggling to contemplate the lives Arirang performers[1]. What must that be like?
[1] https://imageshack.com/i/exNHDHTVj
I was like "wow that is a big screen although not very bright".
> Each background picture is created by about 40.000 childrens holding tables containing pages with different pictures/colours
[zoom of the "screen" with endless pixels: a color square a little head on top of each - impressionist style] https://imageshack.com/i/exw2BFluj
When I first had the idea there was still a gap in the way in Southeast Asia, but it looks like it may have been closed now: https://www.seat61.com/map-of-train-routes-in-southeast-asia...
Unfortunately you may have to wait some time, at the moment the journey is not be completable because the Paris-Moscow express service (and indeed all train service between Russia and Western Europe) is suspended due to sanctions against Russia.
I miss the days of blogs and forums and authentic content like this.
Today it's all hyperpolished platforms filled with clickbaity influencers. Every step of the way, somebody's trying to extract as much money as they can.
I can't help but think that we in this community played a big part in turning it into what it is now and that thought fills me with regret.
What is the strangest thing you've seen at the airport?
By Aurelio Germes: The strangest thing I've seen was to find nobody not even police or security at the airport, so I took a plane and left the country without anyone noticing it. It was at the international airport in Malabo, island of Bioko in Equatorial Guinea.
It happened that I had missed my flight from Malabo to Madrid departing on Sunday and I didn't want to wait a whole week for the next weekly flight, so I decided to call a pilot in Cameroon and charter his plane to come and pick me up in Malabo and take me to the Douala airport in Cameroon where I could more easily catch a plane to Paris. We arranged date and hour of his arrival to Malabo.
On the date agreed I went to the international airport only to find out that it was closed since that day no flights, neither international nor domestic, were scheduled. There was nobody there not even a guard or a clerk, but it was already too late to cancel the trip. The only way out was to jump the wall surrounding the airport and wait on the runway until an aircraft arrived, and that's what I did.
I didn't have to wait long. A small plane with a French pilot arrived and soon we were ready to fly to Douala with me in the copilot seat. We could not take off in our first attempt since a door of the aircraft opened unexpectedly when we were about to take off, but we succeeded in our second attempt.
Due to lack of security, nobody noticed that a plane had arrived at the international airport and left with a passenger.
This is probably the wildest story. A couple drove across the Democratic Republic of Congo from Lubumbashi to Kinshasa on their own.
https://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/ride-tales/democratic...
Today, the signals young content creators get is that they can make dumb videos on YouTube or TikTok and get 10M subscribers and ad revenue, or set up a geeky blog that will get 100 views a month. But it's not Google or TikTok that did this: it's the content consumers.
Given the intentionally addictive algorithms and psychological manipulation used by the big tech companies, I think at least some of the blame can be placed on them.
This has been one of my best reads of the month, and I hope that I'll one day get to visit Pyongyang myself, without the US visa waiver issues that come with it.
Proves that good content, not fancy CSS or animations, is still the king.
The start of our trip with the North Korean train (still inside Russia):
http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/irkutsk-skovoro...
Approaching the border between Russia and North Korea (the last kilometers inside Russia):
http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/khabarovsk-khas...
Inside North Korea:
http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/tumangan-north-...
UPD: the Eurasia 2005 posts have images from imageshack _us_, all are unavailable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11139896 (155 points | Feb 2016 | 30 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2155794 (124 points | Jan 2011 | 19 comments)
The author wonders aloud several times about the contents of the huge piles of passenger boxes constantly blocking the train corridors. Most coming from russia I'd love to peek in !
Fascinating that they really had the freedom to go about in the middle of nowhere once they reached the 1st station in NK from a seldomly-used point of entry. Bold move!
Photos of NK like these are incredibly difficult to come by. What a beautiful country.
Also, I admire his courage. In several photos, military people are staring at him, as they may well be. He was lucky as well. He states he hid the photos in a zip file in his C:\windows folder when leaving the country, having deleted them from his SD Card.
Maybe someday tourists will be able to stand on it like the 4 Corners in the US. Well I guess technically it's in the river. But they could rig something up.
There were cameras but that's it.
There's not some magical thing when you look across the border and "feel the oppression", in some of the border towns on the Chinese side there were ads for tours where you could go to NK and do some shopping for cigarettes or something. I do not believe I would be able to sign up for those though.
I was just visiting but it's how I imagine some parts of the US/Mexico border are like? It's not like that area of China is super vibrant either, pretty industrial.
I have the impression that when Russia gets involved border stuff gets messy, if all those videos of people driving across Georgia and the like are to be believed.
This video was released a few days ago by a popular American YouTuber, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPmtJSERzys
To save anyone else the hassle, this is where he finally crosses into NK:
https://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/tumangan-north...
Hope it is backed up well (guess on the archive sites).