Day 194, North Korea/China day 8

First full day of freedom, so to say.
Started off the day with a good buffet style breakfast in the 4 star hotel were staying at. Heated and so much selection, no more frozen salami slices!! It's very unfortunate that half of our tour group is out sick. They were throwing up and just generally not feeling well. It's probably a bad case of food poisoning from the lunch on the train yesterday. So, our Dandong group turned into a 3 person tour. We started the tour with a visit to the "1 meter hop" which is China's equivalent to the DMZ, since at it's nearest point, the border with North Korea and China is just 1 meter apart. The real 1 meter hop was more upstream and there would be a fence and guards posted there. The part we saw though was just a shallow stream that was over a meter apart, but still very close to each other, you could just walk in the stream and be in North Korea. Of course that's not recommended at all since there are regular military patrols on both sides. After that, we walked another part of the Great Wall, tiring as usual, and soon after a visit to the Chinese Korean War memorial. What a difference from the North's version of events. I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but during the visit to the museum in the North, they never mentioned once how much the Chinese intervention saved them from complete collapse. All that was mentioned was how great Kim Il Sung led the North's counterattack against the US...obviously the Chinese museum was more truthful. Even the Chinese know the North began the war with the South and they don't hide that fact. They also don't hide the letter written personally by Kim Il Sung requesting assistance from China...overall it was very good, even learned the US had tried to use biological warfare against the Chinese too.
Lunch was at a North Korean restaurant but with Chinese amenities: heated, different dishes and with light. It was good and resembled more southern Chinese cuisine again, but I'm not an expert on this so ehh...
A cruise on the Yalu river was next, but the boat needed to be full first before departing, so the wait was a good opportunity for a rest/nap. It was good...(how many times have I used that already on this trip? :P) saw North Korea again and with it the slogans on the buildings. After we got back on land, we went on the half broken bridge.
The Korean half having been bombed by the Americans during the Korean War. And with that, the Dandong day tour ended. Now came the 14 hour overnight train journey to Beijing. Nathan will not be joining us on the train, too sick, so he opted for a flight out instead. In summary, 6 people arrived for the Dandong tour, 3 were sick and couldn't do anything for the tour, and in the end 5 will leave for Beijing on the train. I'd like to thank Mr. Shen for guiding us around Dandong. He was very informative on many things and was extremely polite and nice.