Please take me to the Violet Fashionable Hotel

After arriving in Changbaixian the driver said he would take us to a relatively cheap hotel that he knew. It was called 紫羅蘭時尚賓館, the Violet Fashionable Hotel. The violet that was this hotel's namesake was the Violet, the flower, but they used their powerful mastery of English to produce a hotel that took "Violet Fashionable" to a whole new level.

Ladies and gentlemen of the western world, I am so grateful to be able to share this with you today. Let's give our guest a warm welcome, the Violet Fashionable Hotel! (clap clap clap, time for a montage!)

I'm still not sure if we walked into a sex-hotel, or the manager thought that covering everything in cheap purple silky fabric would make the hotel that much more appealing to guests.

We checked in for 2 nights at about 20USD per night.

The next day was spent walking along the Yalu river, taking pictures of the North Korean city that faces china, Hyesan (惠山). This section of North Korea, on the surface, did not seem as terrible as most western media would make it out to be.

First of all, they have this awesome banner.

And they also have houses with plants and easy access to water.

Splashing around in the water, North Korean kids are just being kids.

Of course, this is in the summer and the weather is nice - in the winter these people probably have minimal amounts of electricity or heating and pray [to the great leader Kim Il Sung] that this year's summer comes early.

We walked along the embankment for a couple of hours, snapping pictures, hoping that nobody saw us or no CCTV surveillance cameras recorded us. At one point, we noticed that there wasn't much left that was photo-worthy, so we started looking for cabs to take us back to the city-center. Amazingly enough, a man in a non-cab car pulled up next to us and started speaking to us. Mostly he was waving his hands because he, I assume, assumed that we didn't speak any Chinese. I told him that we needed a ride back and was wondering if he was a cab or if he would take us back. He told us that we weren't allowed to take pictures.

The man was a local border-police who was driving in an unmarked car. He asked to see our pictures to make sure none of them were of NK. I pretended not to know what he was saying, and so he went over to Matt to check his pictures. Matt told him that we were just strolling along with our cameras, but not taking any pictures. He popped open the empty CF card slot so he could put in the card with his "pictures" in it. He scrolled through pictures of his trip to Burma with a couple of friends from a few years ago.

Rewind. Matt sees the officer's uniform, and, like Harry-MOTHERFUCKING-Houdini, slides the card out and slips it into his pocket, while he prepares to take the fake card out of his other pocket.

The cop believes Matt's story and neglects to check my camera, thank Confucius. He offers us a ride back and asks us where we're staying.

"Could you take us back to the Masturbation Hotel?" I say with a straight face.

"Wait no, that's not it... I think it's called the Violet hotel." Says Matt.

"Oh, I think I know the place, I'll take you there," the cop answers.

CHINESE LESSON TIME!!

好好学习天天向上！

Let's break it down one at a time:

1. The hotel's name is "Zi Luo Lan". In traditional characters, it looks like this.
2. The character "Luo" looks very similar to the character "Wei."
3. I did not know how to say the character for "Lan."
4. The word "Zi wei" means "to masturbate."

Next time I'm in Changbai, I think a room for one at the Violet Fashionable Hotel might be more appropriate.

-OR-

Final pithy one-liners from Kim Gemme:

For North Koreans, visiting the Violet Fashionable Hotel would be a dream cum true.

It's going to be hard to forget my stay at the Masturbation Hotel.

I'll always remember those [sch]long nights at the Violet Fashionable Hotel.