24.06.09 Dandong

In the early morning we took the morning bus from Dalian to Dandong, which is right at the North Korean boarder. When we arrived to Dandong we had lunch in a small place where one Chinese man was very interested and happy about us foreigners. After that we continued our way to the North Korean border.

The old and new bridge to North Korea

Dandong is separated from North Korea by just one small river. There's the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge going between the countries but there really didn't seem to be much movement on that bridge. Next to it is the bridge that was bombed down from the North Korean side by the American's during the war. Nowadays, you can go and walk on the bridge on the Chinese side that is still in one piece. The bridge only has the supporting pillars on the North Korean side.

View from the bridge towards North Korea

From the bridge you could see the North Korean side with a telescope, but it "kinda" seemed very fake. There were some factory looking buildings on the other side (no smoke coming through the chimney though), people in colorful clothing just hanging around, a ferris wheel with carts that didn't look 3D...

The museum on the Korean war

From the bridge we went to the other side of the town to a museum about the Korean war and Chinese involvement in it. The museum was quite nice. There were actually two sides to the museum, the old and the new, and the new was really good and the old was really bad. The old building smelled really badly of mold and there were just pictures of people's heroes.

The Dandong Railway Station

The new side of the museum was really interesting but since we came there too late, I had to walk through half of the museum because they were closing the place down for the day. By then, it was also time to go to the train station and take the night train from Dandong back to Beijing.