I used to rely heavily on internet resources for trip planning, but in the last two years I have been sticking close to home and taking virtual trips for free. Online information has expanded and improved to the point where I can almost feel like I have been somewhere without leaving my computer chair. In some cases, I can learn considerably more about a place than I could if I was there in person, thanks to Google Earth and Google Maps. For example, I recently virtually toured part of the border area between North and South Korea. No one in their right mind would go there in person. I already knew that it was one of the most heavily fortified national borders in the world, featuring the world’s largest minefield, but seeing it in detail from above made it seem much more real to me than reading about it. Fortifications on both sides resembled those found in America during Civil War times. There are two layers of defenses on each side of the DMZ, and along the east coast. I also wandered into North Korea and followed a desolate highway into Kaesong. This can’t be done in the real world by Americans. I had to identify the city from a printed atlas. Google does not dare to label anything in North Korea, not even the capital city of Pyongyang. It shows the entire nation as a mass of featureless gray if you ask for a map view. I could tell that the road was not in good condition, and signs of the ongoing drought were everywhere. I explored around the bleak, unattractive, dirty town for a while. Its wide streets were mostly empty, including the area around the town square, where a tall, thin monument cast a long shadow in the winter sun, probably a tribute to the communist government. A temple still held a prominent spot downtown, but the streets had been reconfigured by the communists to de-emphasize its importance. Another spire dominated a nearby hilltop to the north. Looking over the closely spaced houses and uninviting apartment buildings, I wondered what the thousands of people who live in them think about on a typical day. Are any of them happy? Do any of them think life is good? Do they have hope for a better future than mere survival? Do they know anything about the rest of the world? Pyongyang turned out to be nicer than I expected, with quite a few modern buildings, impressive sports facilities, monuments, many acres of formal gardens, and large temples that appear, at least from the air, to be well-kept. It looked better in some ways than Seoul, though its office buildings were much smaller. As I expected, the presidential palace on the east side of town is much too nice for a nation living in extreme poverty. A few weeks earlier, I virtual-reality walked around the Notre Dame in Paris at street level, checked out the outrageous line to enter the Eiffel Tower, explored the Vatican complex in Rome, and counted canals in Venice. A tour of the California-Mexico border spoke volumes about how the two countries feel about each other, and I stumbled onto the largest testing ground and firing range in the US military, out in the desert near Yuma, Arizona. Poking around to the south of New Orleans showed me that the environmental devastation left by the oil industry in the vital Louisiana coastal wetlands is just as bad as the news media says it is. The maze of abandoned canals is visually impressive, in a bad way. If you care about nature, it will make you angry. Like the coal strip mines of eastern Kentucky. It would have cost me a small fortune to have seen all these things in person. I’m planning to continue exploring US cities, international cities, and natural areas until I run out of anything worth looking at, which should take a very long time. I won’t be spending a dime or taking any risks while doing this. Anybody else into this?
I do this sometimes, but not on Google Earth. I enjoy reading about other people's travel experiences, going to places I'm not brave enough to go. This Russian artist got into North Korea. Here's a different translation.
Have you seen those composite nighttime satellite photos of the entire earth? It's interesting to note the comparative density of the electric lights around the planet. Western Europe, most of the USA, and Japan are ablaze with lights. The Sahara, central Australia, much of Africa, and the Amazon basin are almost totally dark. The Korean peninsula is particularly odd. South Korea resembles Japan in that the entire country is nearly solid lights. North Korea looks more like the Sahara. The line between the two is very dramatic. As much as any economic statistic you can think of, that right there points out the difference between the two Koreas.
