Mini Vacation in Dandong

Last weekend Nick and I decided we needed a little vacation from Dalian. We decided to head to Dandong for a night. It is the Chinese city on the North Korean border. Our original plan was to go by bus, but when we got to the station Friday afternoon about 3:30 we found that the last bus had left an hour earlier. Well we had a hotel reservation, and we were really looking forward to getting out of town for a few days so we found another way. For only 30 RMB more per person than the bus we paid to go in a car. There are people that sell seats in their vans so we ended up with 7 other random people in the back of a van and headed to Dandong. It was quite an adventure. I think I've mentioned how crazy people drive in China, but this guy was especially bad. The freeways have lots of tolls on them, so not as many people travel on them so he was going fast!

Well, we made it in one piece to the hotel that was right on the river that divides China and North Korea. It was super cheap, and we had a beautiful view. It is crazy to look down the river. The Chinese side is very developed (I think some one told us Dandong has a population of 2.3 million) with tall apartment buildings, while the Korean side is empty. There are a few buildings you can see during the day, but apparently they were built by the government and no one actually lives in them so there is no electricity there or anything. Anyway, we got in pretty late so we went out for dinner (the one I posted pictures of a few days ago) and then went to bed. The next morning we were up early and ready to go out. We called a taxi driver and ended up getting a pretty nice private tour of Dandong for 2 hours. He drove us all over and was telling us about everything, very informative!

Here's a quick picture summary of our trip.

A picture looking down the river. China on the left and North Korea on the right. Crazy contrast!


In the back of the van that took us to Dandong.


Fishermen. We saw a show about how these fishermen use birds to catch fish before we came to China, but it was crazy to actually see it. Basically they have birds and they tie a string around their throats so they can't swallow. When the birds dive to catch a fish they can only halfway swallow it, then the fishermen haul them up and pull the fish out of their mouths. It was crazy. They also make these cool noises to call the birds as they move down the river. I wish I had a recording of it.


As past of our tour the taxi driver took us through this little town. It is crazy how fast we went from the city to this rural area. It was actually pretty funny, they were staring at us because they don't see too many foreigners and we were staring back at them because we don't see carts like this very often.


Nick with North Korea in the background. We had quite a few pictures like this.


If you squint really hard you can see the eastern end of the Great Wall of China in the background of this picture. We could have toured it, but it was expensive and the driver told us it wasn't worth it. This was my first glimpse of the Great Wall, but I guess I'll have to wait a little longer to climb on it. In the front of the picture you can see a green fence and that marks the border of North Korea. The river in between is neutral, but the North Koreans have a small part of land on the Chinese side of the river where they can launch boats and give people tours. They put up this green fence to mark the boundary. We were just 3 feet away! Apparently it is possible to get a Visa to go on a heavily supervised tour to North Korea, but you have to hang out in Dandong for a few days and now probably isn't the greatest time to be traveling there anyway.

Short story real quick. We were taking pictures by the green fence that marks the border to NK and we looked across the river. I mentioned before how it isn't really developed over there, so there were no buildings, well we saw 2 men in a field and at first glance we just dismissed them as farmers. The taxi driver told us to take a closer look, he said they were snipers watching the border! Sure enough we took a picture and zoomed in on the camera and it became pretty clear they were not out there just farming. Its safe though as long as you don't do anything stupid or try to get too close to the fence.


Here I am on a bridge that went about halfway out into the river. Our taxi driver/tour guide told us that this was a bridge that the Americans bombed during the Korean War. It was pretty cool, because it was farther away from the city we could see a few buildings, houses and cars on the North Korean side. There were people taking boat tours on the river that got closer, but we opted not to do that this trip.


This is the bridge that currently connects NK and Dandong. It looks really pretty at night.


Nick in front of a Chinese looking building in a park. We had a few hours before our bus left to go back to Dalian, so we found this park. It was built on the side of a hill, so we had to hike up to it. It has a really nice view of the city. I wish we had a park like this near our house in Dalian.


The entrance to the park where we went hiking.


It was a really quick trip, but we had fun. I would love to go back in the spring/summer and explore more. I was told by Mona at work that there are lots of fun places to go explore in the mountains around Dandong.