Chill out, dickwad (ref)

On April 29th, Sonja (a very good friend of mine from Finland), Matthijs (friend from the Netherlands), and myself were waiting to be picked up from the Jade International Youth Hostel in Beijing, China.

It's 3:15pm. He's 15 minutes late. 'Maybe he won't show up and we can just relax in Beijing', I thought. Since the person we were waiting for was about to take us to North Korea. Don't get me wrong, I was excited to go somewhere certainly off the beaten track, but there was definitely some last minute anxiety. Anxiety that would morph into a near panic in less than two hours.

3:21, our ride arrives. Yes! Finally! ... or is it 'Damn!'?! Either way, we all pile into the van as the overly friendly staff insist on handling all our bags for us. There is a driver and our sort of guide, whose name is forever lost so I will name him "Smiles". He did that a lot.

I try to engage in small talk to get my mind off things but the more we continue, the more I feel stupid for being so paranoid. Everything is going smoothly. We effortlessly get through airport-type security at the train station, we are able (probably because we were the only foreigners around) to wait in the 1st class lounge even though we had 2nd class tickets, and we felt comfortable leaving our bags with Smiles while we ran across the street to pick up some food.

At a little over 5:10pm, we head for the train. We pass through a hallway with stairways leading to the platforms, but ours is the only one guarded by men in very dark green military uniforms, which are obviously not Chinese. On the platform, there are plenty more men in similar uniforms. Anxiety starts to creep in again, but we follow Smiles as he leads us on the train and to our cabin.

It is probably 5:15 as Smiles, gleaming with pride, hands me a little booklet of papers: "Here are [sic?] your train ticket(s)".

I flip to the first page, which clearly indicates train passage from Beijing to Pyongyang. So I flip through the other pages. Now I can't remember what the other pages were for, but I vividly remember not seeing a return ticket for Pyongyang back to Beijing.

"Where is the return ticket back to Beijing?", I ask.

Suddenly, Smiles looks like I should have named him "Bewilderment". A long pause. "You buy it in Pyongyang".

The three of us look at each other, all of us had the deer-in-the-headlights look. We change focus to Smiles.
"The return ticket is included in the package price!"
"How are we supposed to get money in Pyongyang to pay for train tickets?"
"What if there are no seats available when we try to buy tickets? Our visa says we must leave in a week."
If questions were bullets, Smiles would look like Swiss cheese.

Suddenly he whips out his cell phone to get a definite answer, I guess. I have never heard Mandarin spoken so quickly. Sweat is oozing out of his forehead and face. I didn't know this at the time, but he had told Sonja and Matthijs earlier that he started this job only a week ago.

He ended the call, turned to us, and said: "Maybe ... maybe you pick them up in Pyongyang."

"No, no, no. No maybes", I responded. More questions rapidly started firing in my head:
"After all that talk on the phone, all you can tell us is maybe?"
"Where the hell are we supposed to pick up the tickets in Pyongyang?"

Instead of asking them, I checked my watch, 5:21, then as Smiles made another call, I turned to Sonja: "The train leaves in less than 10 minutes. No matter what he says, there is no way we are going to have return tickets in our hands before this train leaves."

"I am NOT going to North Korea without a return ticket.", she replied.

I took a peak at our friend Smiles. For the second time in one day, I have never heard Mandarin spoken so quickly.

Sonja and I got up to get off the train. Matthijs threw his head back with his hands up to his face. At the time I thought he felt bad and responsible for the mess since he organized the whole trip. But I think he might have thought we were over-reacting. From my perspective, Sonja's concern was unquestionably reasonable so my instinct as a friend was to support her.

We attempted to exit the train the way we entered, but when we got to the door it was locked! We searched around for a latch or something to open it, but there was nothing. It appeared to be locked from the outside or with a removable handle. We hoped for the former, so we starting knocking on the window to get the attention of the people still on the platform. They noticed, but no one dared to approach the door.

I looked again at my watch, 5:26. We kept banging harder but, even in that panicked moment, I couldn't help but think: "This is cool! It's like we are Sarah Conner being chased by the Terminator. How can I fix the problem at hand while taking a moment to appreciate this real-life movie moment?!" (I love movies). However, my moment was interrupted when we suddenly saw fucking Smiles on the platform waving bon voyage as if everything was OK.

Sonja was pissed. "Ohhh, what the fuck is going on heeeeere!?!"

"Calm down Sonja." I said, worried about the North Korean men in military uniform we were bumping into as we ran through the train car to exit from the other side.

Somehow, Matthijs was already out there, but now he was prepared with a solution: "Before we enter North Korea, we stop at the border town Dandong in China for two hours. Once we are there, we can call the agency to find out about our return tickets before we enter North Korea."

Sonja and I were satisfied with this, so we returned to our train cabin. A few minutes later, the train started rolling and I decided to be a smart ass: "Oh look, we just passed the PNR."

Sonja, puzzled, looked out the window and just saw the same bland platform we were just standing on. "What's PNR?"

Matthijs, smiling, answered for me, "Point of No Return".

Sonja turned to me, "oh, fuck you". That was also a reasonable reaction :)


^Our train cabin, which was shared with a nice Chinese couple, who shared one tiny mattress.