A Few Feet From North Korea!

(The Yalu River between China, left, and North Korea, right.)

This last weekend, I was able to go to take the train for 4 hours to Dandong. Dandong is a smaller city (by China's scale) and is on the Yalu River, which separates China from North Korea. It was a really fun weekend, and by far, the closest I will ever get to go to Pyongyang or anywhere else in NK.

It was really fun to spend some time by water! After living so close to either Tempe Town Lake or the Willamette, I have missed being by water, and running by water. Not to say I went running on vacation this weekend though! :) But, we spent most of our time just walking along the river looking over to North Korea. In true Bates' family tradition, we made up many stories about who was on the other side and what the soldiers were doing.

(Shaun climbing up on the bridge next to one of the bullet holes.)

The main highlights of the trip were...
*Taking a boat tour along the river. We found out the hard way that binoculars cost 10kuai a person, but, had a sweet pair of binoculars to see NK even more clearly! Mostly all you could see of NK was smoke stacks, small buildings, many many boats, and lots of soldiers walking around.
*There is a bridge that used to span from the China coast to the NK coast, but the Koreans dismantled their 1/4 of it. This is also the same bridge that the US Air Force bombed in 1950 in the Korean War. We got to walk across the bridge and get as close as we could to North Korea...and the bridge was sweet too! There are still bullet holes, or small pieces of the bridge missing from when the US bombed it.
*The next morning, we found a coffee shop owned by a Canadian man. We had an American breakfast and I very much enjoyed a caramel latte while reading Time magazines! It is the little things like that which make for such a relaxing weekend!
*Spending time walking in the sun and wind (it felt very much like the Oregon coast), and just doing nothing but talking and hanging out.

(Doing a handstand on the bridge between China and North Korea.)

One of the great parts about traveling in different countries is traveling by train. I love it. I was able to see a huge part of the Czech Republic this last summer via the train, and it is such a different view traveling with other nationals from the country and getting a pretty sweet view of the countryside. The train ride both ways was during the day, it is always fun to just look out the window the whole way. The ride made me realize how diverse China really is. We passed through mountains and snow, and then ended up in a sunny city...We passed many small towns, where life is definitely a lot different than in Shenyang, saw people pulling carts through water by horses...I love getting a different picture of the country, one that you can't see in the big cities or on airplanes.

I am so glad that I got to go away this weekend, it was definitely a very fun and relaxing getaway and really cool to see a different part of China!