I have made it out of the DPRK and am back in civilisation in one piece.

After a night in Dandong (China's 'biggest border town') celebrating the second half of my birthday with a lot of very warm beer in a nightclub with a spring-loaded dancefloor! I caught an overnight train to arrive in Beijing this morning before catching another train out to Xian this evening.

Needless to say, there are many stories to be recounted from the last week or so; sadly they will have to wait as more pressing matters such as my laundry have to be completed before I catch my next train. I do have a few photos to add to flickr (here)...As you probably can guess, DPRK is very keen to manage its representation in the foreign media to the minutest degree and as such 'interesting' photographs are hard to get. Not only are the guides quite strict about where they will and won't let you photo...

• Impersonal monolithic statutes/masolueums and other 'feats' of juche = ok
• Everyday images of Koreans riding bicycles, sitting in the park, or any other daily activitiy = maybe
• Train stations, construction sites, military in uniform (even the chicks with their best makeup on) = big no no.

...But, in our case, this is backed up by a manual (ie bag empty and rummage) customs inspection on leaving the country which involved an image-by-image examination of everyones digital camera's. Luckily I had the sense to separate my more surreptitiously taken pics from the acceptable ones on two cards and to put the safe in the camera for inspection. The camera customs guy was also distracted by a 1:125,000 map I had of the peninsula in Korean that his colleague wanted to confiscate from me to go all the way through my camera. (I managed to argue a good cause of innocence and get my map back after all). Some of the others did get pictures deleted, one guy even had a whole undeveloped film taken off him.

Apparently you can tell a lot by a person by the way they treat animals...If the same is true about a city and the way they run their zoo, then I may be going of Beijing.

Granted, most of the place was built in the 50s, but considering the massive investment that I have seen in almost every area of Beijing to ensure it presents a 'modern' face to the world over these few weeks it certainly highlights where the zoo comes in the city government's priorities. But then again, the bureaucrat are not the only issue...

Despite innumerate and prominent 'do not feed the animals' signs (in Chinese and English) at almost open-fenced every exhibit I witnessed either parents or teenage boys (trying to photograph their child or impress their girlfriends) by either taunting the animals or teasing them with nutritious fare like processed cheese sticks. At first I had thought it a shame so many cages were featureless sealed glass and concrete, but at least these creatures were spared the junk food and poking.

Of particularly poor order, and odour (of stale urine ammonia), was the big cat 'enclosure'; a wide range of tigers, a panther, a siberian tiger and a pair of lions were all housed alone and continually pacing up and down their concrete boxes that were barely twice their length square!

Anyway, I have posted a few snapshots here (including, the obligatory Pandas).