DPRK [1], as the locals prefer to call it, and we had just commenced what would turn out to be a five hour border crossing. Normally a border crossing would not have caused a great deal of anxiety, but for the fact that trains generally lock their toilets at stations to prevent vulgar heaps of feces building up between the platforms. Crossing the Chinese side didn't take more than an hour, and at that time of morning I wasn't ready for a dump.
But I didn't reckon for the DPRK's thoroughness on their side. Full baggage searches, books and magazines rifled through, even metal detected -- everything but the rubber gloves were brought out. All mobile phones and computers were held by the authorities. No GPS's, video cameras, or anything looking remotely professional were allowed to be carried on down the line. They were kept until we returned -- if we did.
I won't tell you much about the DPRK or its politics or history in general, as all this information is freely available on the Internet. I'd just like to let you know that this is the most bizarre and fucked-up country that you can ever come across. It has gone way beyond communism as it started out in 1945, thanks to Uncle Joe Stalin, and has turned into the one of the only extreme cultist country in the world -- a cult that also, unfortunately, has a nuclear, nerve gas, and biological arsenal that is truly frightening. The cult of Kim (both Il-Sung and his son, Jong-Il) is amazing. Everyone fears being taken off to the labor camps or being summarily executed for trivial reasons. Whole generations are sent to camps for tens of years for a single family member's slight mistake.
I was among those who were searched first, and after that a couple of us were desperate for a piss. We walked out to the platform and signaled our plight to one of the guards, who reluctantly pointed across the track to a building that presumably had a bathroom. The toilet itself was downstairs, and smelled rank. The floor was awash with water (I hoped), a row of cubicles (which we didn't look into), and a couple of urinals -- proper Western ones attached to the wall. Relief. No water in the basins, which was apparently normal due to rationing. But there was a concrete trough at waist height, full of water -- for hand washing? For toilet flushing? I didn't try it -- I had plenty of wet wipes back on board. What did puzzle me was where the water on the floor came from.
The train got going again, and a little further down the track I had the urge to take a dump. I normally go once a day shortly after breakfast, but I'd been thrown off schedule by the long flights to Beijing and time zone changes. I knew there was no paper in the toilet, but as a seasoned pro, I had brought a roll of our finest with me. It was a squat toilet set in a metal floor, and bouncy as hell as all the DPRK tracks are fucked. It's not just a case of squatting down and dropping the payload -- one hand is trying to grab the window on the right while the other is pressing against the wall in front just to keep braced and upright. Once the turd has been let out onto a small, low flap on the floor and the toilet paper laid on top, you have to stand up and press a large button on the floor with your foot, which frees the crap to drop onto the rails below. Very windy up the ring, as well.
That was an ominous bathroom experience, but the next few days were completely different. We were in one of the few luxury hotels in Pyongyang. (They like to concentrate the foreigners so as to be able to control their movements.) All rooms are bugged to hear what the foreigners are saying about the Dear Leader. God knows what they made of my high-decibel beer farts.
I'd just had breakfast on the second or third day, and was in my bathroom taking a dump. It was a Western pan, but the water level was disturbingly high -- perhaps six inches from the rim. My normal stool is a quality twelve-inch dark brown specimen (although it normally breaks into two or three minor logs on hitting the water), and is a good inch and a bit in diameter. This turd was a little longer, but it was thinner, and broke into five or six loglets. The flush was scary as the water level rose to just under the brim before disappearing down the bend. It rose again to its original level, with no turds resurfacing. Sigh of relief.
A few more days were spent in and around Pyongyang -- the mountains to the east, the west coast, sightseeing at the DMZ. Each day became more and more surreal as history was transformed and reality was seriously altered. The guides/minders, of which we had two, never let us out of their sight. Every place we went to see also had its own guide, whom our guides had to translate into English. All of them, without exception, had a favorite phrase: "U.S. Imperialist Aggressors." This phrase, which stems from the Korean war -- they are still technically at war with South Korea, since only a ceasefire has been called, which is why there are a million-plus soldiers facing off across the 38th parallel -- this phrase was spoken at every available opportunity.
After an especially early breakfast in preparation for a long drive through several ancient sites to the DMZ, I found myself lacking the chance to get the lift up to my room for a shit. I headed instead for the lobby toilets so I could go before the bus went. Three traditional Western pans, one squatter, and two urinal bowls. (Incidentally, I noticed that the Koreans would never use the urinals if a white man was using one; he'd always dive into a stall. Maybe it's dick size paranoia. I don't know.) So I went into a stall -- nice and clean, apart from a little piss on the seat and no lock on the door. I looked for the toilet paper. None. Not even a holder. Back out to check the others -- all the same. Then I spotted a dispenser on the wall. Just the one -- I'd dismissed it as a towel dispenser when I came in.
And this is the amazing thing about the DPRK: when you do find toilet paper, it's genuine, first class quality! Three ply! Almost like cloth -- superb, better than anything I've ever come across. So the attendant stared at me in disbelief and horror as I hauled off five or six feet of his precious three ply. How was I to know how much I'd need, for fuck's sake? I imagined him thinking: "You scumbag imperialist aggressor -- how dare you waste the Democratic People's valuable three-ply on your worthless Western asshole!"
He was probably right -- I only used half of it, and flushed the rest out of spite.
Koreans love a food called kimchi [2], which is a pickled, fermented cabbage with chili. They eat it at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'd developed a taste for it; and together with eating massively more than normal, and drinking copious amounts of beer with every meal apart from breakfast, my stools were becoming bountiful. The worrying thing was the shape of them. The olive color I put down to an excess of cabbage -- but the main difference was that the length had grown to around two to three feet, and the diameter had decreased to an inch or so. My logs were like anorexic sea snakes, usually breaking into eight or ten loglets each three or four inches long. Double flushing was now the order of the day, as there would normally be two or three recidivist, counter-revolutionary turds that would not follow the masses down with the first flush.
We hopped around the country, encountering much the same in the way of pans. The only slight deviation was in Kaesong, down by the DMZ, where they hadn't quite grasped the concept of bolting the bowls to the floor. This meant a very wobbly unloading with a lot of liquid -- just leaking water, I hoped -- on the floor.
On the day before leaving for the train back to China, we got up very early to take in a full day of surreal sights. Too early even to have breakfast, so a packed breakfast came on board the bus. Yet more eggs and rice and kimchi were scarfed down, this on top of several bottles of beer and a massive bowl of dog soup that I'd had the night before. It was a soup of soups: delicious, but containing all manner of dog parts. I recognized general meat, liver, kidneys, and what appeared to be intestine but may have been dick. Who knows? So, during a mid-morning excursion to the Martyrs' Cemetery (another bizarre and expensive alteration of history), I asked one of the guides if there was a toilet. Rover was barking to be let out the back door. The guard replied in the affirmative -- but apparently this was a local-style public toilet.
I followed his directions to a concrete toilet block. Classic eighties commie architecture. It had no lights, but through the darkness I could see a stall door to the side of a concrete slab urinal. A long drop squatter lay beyond. With a window high up, it was easy to see how the locals used these shitters. They didn't use paper, but cleaned their rings with a finger or two and then wiped them on the wall, which was streaked with an alarming variety of colors.
I assumed the position, let the dog out, wiped with my own paper, and went back into the main room before I was gassed with the stench of not just my own offering but the contents of the pit below. My eyes got used to the gloom: no running water in the basin, and another trough, but empty.
Then I saw it. At the base of the urinal, spread from the gutter up across the curb and down again onto the floor, was a two or three pound log. And it was very, very green. What kind of fucker would do that? Didn't wipe, either -- no paper or leaves or even finger marks around. Dirty bastard. Especially considering that the place was surrounded by fairly thick woodland.
If I've brought one thing back from the DPRK, it's that turd terrorism is not just a Western problem. It's a worldwide menace.
