It was with some trepidation a few years ago having been persuaded by a good mate in Hong Kong to assist that I arrived in Beijjing with a group of  7 athletes on route to the Pyong Yang Mangyongdae Marathon in celebration of the (Dead) leaders Birthday !! It was not possible to get a visa except in Beijjing so we had travelled that far with no absolute guarantee of making the final leg, anyway a 24hr wait became 48hrs and eventually we got the visa's having had 2 days in the local equivalent of a holiday inn (origional was over the road, but this one was less than half price...and less than quarter of the quality!)

We headed to the military airport to board the plane for a short-ish trip to Pyong Yang, the plane resembled a 60's relic with actual wallpaper on the sides and real curtains on the windows together with piped music and awfull food... there should have been a warning into what we were to find ahead! So we arrive in Pyong Yang at the army airport and are marched into the terminal, that is more like a small bus station and immediately relieved of mobile phones....not allowed apparently (probably no signal anyway) so it was goodbye outside world for 1 week, great, all bags searched...chocolate and drink supplies taken away and onto a bus to the ''sport city'' complex where all athletes were to be billeted, very military!  

Said hotel is a 15 floor concrete monster, a bit like a Coventry tower block (Wood End !), so home from home, haha, staff don't speak English, but our translators do, and guess what... we have one each! They don't leave our sides (apart from at night) as they have to practice their already near perfect English, and here's the next blow, the Chinese and locals are on the ground and first floor and our group and the other visitors are on 14th and 15th, hmmm, ok, but power cuts are to be a feature of the stay and on occasions that the lift works it's operated by a little chain smoking chap...and it's dammed slow, so stairs or choke!  

Briefing time ... you can run on the soccer pitches, but don't go in the woods, haha. We dont take that on board and next morning one of our Aussie compatriots, being a disciplined marathoner and well hydrated pops into said woods for a leak, one shout and 5 seconds later the poor chap emerges backwards, still flowing with a knee high Rambo complete with gun infront of him....... Fun place!! 

A young african lady with us had never seen a bath tub, and she wouldn't see her's for long as she puts on the taps to fill it and promply falls asleep in her room to be awoken by a crashing noise, she knocks on my door  not able to get out any words and leads me to her room (no comments please!) and I piss myself laughing at a huge hole in the floor where the full bath tub has broken through the rotten wooden floor and landed (fortunately not on anyone) in the lobby bellow..........  Don't think the Koreans were amused but we laughed at the poor girls expense for the rest of the week. 

Race day and off we go in a mini bus with a chain smoking driver to the race, which is actually on an out and back flat highway, fuelled by possibly the worst hotel food ever and massively expensive blackmarket bananas my cheery band attack the race with gusto only to see most of our carefully contrived race plans falling apart as obviously our translators had reported them back to their teams, anyway not bad as we had 3 in the top 6 in the mens race despite their national coach riding his moped through the leading groups at regular intervals! Now for the total humiliation after race party we are treated to roasted dog and cold rice and a free supply of as much rice wine as we could put away, and then loaded onto the bus to the airport where we were re-aqauinted with phones and returned to the relative comfort of the chinky holiday inn Biejjing, with prize money in pockets, half of which turned out to be dodgy notes.... not going to say how we changed them!! 

Good side of this story is that 6 years later I sent Gunther the German (race agent) out with a couple of athletes, one Ivan Babaryka (Ukraine) won in a race record, and his dollars were ok. He says it's probably the worst place he's been as well and maybe we should send the England Footie team there to toughen up!! Stories are all true and there are more, it was trully an eye opening trip and the Welshman who went with us tried for a week to bed his (relatively) pretty interpreter....and failed... a Mizuno T'shirt to the person guessing the ID of said runner!! Moral of this story is never to whinge about Premier Inns or similar... it can be a lot worse. Happy days.

McLadders