Teo Cheng Wee (right) and photographer Lim Wui Liang (left)
I ask her where my seat is, handing her my boarding pass to Air Koryo flight JS156, bound from Shenyang in north-eastern China to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
Without smiling, she shakes her head and waves me in. She doesn't speak English.
As I fumble my way down the aisle, strains of Korean folk music crackle from the plane's broadcast system.
A passenger points out the row numbers to me. On these 20-year-old remodelled Soviet Tupolev planes used by North Korea's national carrier, they are found above the aisles, not the seats.
Instead, the signs above the seats command in English: 'No smoking! Fasten your belts!'
Photographer Lim Wui Liang and I settle in, as do about 70 others in the plane.
The Singaporeans on the flight - 27 of us on this Universal Travel-led tour - had all flown from Singapore to Shenyang the morning before. Shenyang, along with Beijing and Vladivostok in Russia, are the only cities in the world with flights to North Korea.
Boarding pass for Air Koryo. The back of the pass (bottom) shows a picture of Pyongyang
Besides the three North Korean stewardesses, I spot a handful of North Koreans on board, conspicuous by the badges of the late president Kim Il Sung that each wears on his jacket.
There are no inflight magazines in the seat pocket in front of us, although they do provide an airsickness bag.
For our reading pleasure, the only newspaper on board is the eight-page English-language Pyongyang Times. The tabloid-sized paper is published by the government and written in grammatical English, with every other article condemning the 'evil actions' of the United States and Japan.
Air Koryo is like no airline I've ever been on. But then, North Korea is like no other country I've ever been to either.
Secretive and elusive, the staunchly communist country of 23 million people is ruled by Mr Kim Jong Il, 65, the mysterious, permed-haired leader who is seldom seen in public and who wears 10cm platform shoes to disguise his 1.6m height.
The eldest son of the country's founding father Kim Il Sung, he took over the reins of the nation when his father died in 1994.
Very little news filters out of the country, which has limited diplomatic and economic ties with the outside world. Its closest ally is China.
When it does make the headlines, it is invariably something unsavoury - starving, indigent masses, persecuted prisoners or nuclear testing.
Although ties with the world improved in 2000 when then South Korean president Kim Dae Jung and then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited the country separately, the country is today a pariah on the world stage.
In his State of the Union Address in 2002, US President George Bush labelled it part of the 'Axis of evil', along with Iran and Iraq. In response, North Korea resumed its nuclear programme, which it had previously abandoned in the 1990s, leading to international condemnation.
Nuclear issues continue to dog the country. The latest impasse was its failure to shut down its nuclear reactor by April 14, something it had agreed to during six-party talks in February.
Pyongyang said it won't disarm before the release of some US$25 million (S$38 million) of North Korean funds ordered frozen in Banco Delta Asia, a Macau bank, by the US Treasury.
On a much smaller scale, remember this trip with a North Korean bookmark.
The country is extremely wary of foreigners, which is why our tour group was warned by Universal Travel Corporation that our activities would be strictly controlled.
We cannot take pictures where we like, go anywhere without our North Korean tour guides or say anything remotely offensive about the country's policies or leadership.
To drive the point home, our Singaporean guide Karen Sin recounts an incident from a tour Universal led a few years ago: A group member had carelessly chucked a publication with Kim Jong Il's face on the cover into the hotel room's dustbin. When the hotel found out, the offender was forced to write a letter of apology.
Okay, point taken. We will behave ourselves.
Yet when we land in Pyongyang after a smooth hour-long journey, you sense a palpable mischievous sense of excitement among us.
We crane our necks to scrutinise the country's landscape, and point excitedly at the huge portrait of Kim Il Sung hanging on the airport's facade.
It is the sort of glee you feel just before someone lets you in on a big secret, and it is no stretch to say that North Korea is the world's biggest secret.
It is 5pm when we set foot on the tarmac runway and the temperature is a nippy 12 deg C.
The Pyongyang airport is about the size of small regional airports in South-east Asia, minus the shops and food outlets we're used to seeing. It has only one baggage conveyor belt, which means we have to wait 15 minutes for our bags.
A vividly illustrated North Korean stamp makes a beautiful keepsake.
We are told to surrender our mobile phones to the unsmiling immigration officers. Mobile phones are not allowed in the country and there's no network anyway. They will be returned to us before our flight home.
The Singaporean group is a mix of couples, families and friends, mostly aged 40 and above. We are herded through Customs by an immigration officer to our tour bus waiting outside.
There we meet our two smiling tour guides: Mr Kim Yong Myong, a slim, dark and small-framed man, is our English-speaking guide. Ms Pak Song Ok, petite and sporting round-framed glasses and long hair tied back into a girlish ponytail, is our Mandarin-speaking guide.
Both are 30 and dressed neatly - he in a suit and she in a light plain dress. For the next five days, they will accompany us everywhere we go.
Independent travel in North Korea is not allowed. Instead, every tourist must sign up with a tour group from the government-run Korea International Travel Company (KITC), and each group must be accompanied by two Korean tour guides.
In Singapore, Universal Tours in People's Park Centre has been its general sales agent and the only company that organises tours to North Korea for most of the last 13 years. But last year, it formed a consortium with five other agencies here to expand its sales of North Korean tours.
In perfect Mandarin, Ms Pak tells us we have time for a quick dinner before we head for the Arirang Festival - think of a supersized National Day Parade with more than 80,000 performers.
Close to 20,000 students take up an entire side of the Mayday Stadium at the Arirang Festival, flashing placards that form the image of a handgun during a performance.
The number is staggering considering that only about 30,000 tourists pass through North Korea each year. Many come from China and other parts of Asia. Fewer than 2,000 are from the West.
The Arirang Festival was first staged in spring 2002 to mark the 90th birthday of the late Kim Il Sung. It swiftly won rave reviews and started drawing curious foreigners.
Since then, the North Koreans have held the month-long event two more times - once in 2005 and this year. It is performed six times a week with one performance every night except Sundays.
This year, the spring schedule is from April 14 to May 5, with an additional season from Aug 1 to Sept 15. Tickets cost more than US$50 (S$76) (the fee is included in the $2,188 tour fee for Singaporeans), and we're told that locals pay the same price as foreigners.
I find that hard to believe since the average monthly income of a North Korean is said to be about $100.
The venue is the Mayday Stadium, an impressive 150,000-seater that is said to be the biggest open-air stadium in Asia. Giant white arches decorate the exterior, making the stadium look like a huge parachute.
In the carpark, hundreds of soldiers are practising their drills, large groups of dancers are running into position with their flowing robes and swarms of tourists are filing their way slowly into the stadium.
The boom of foot drills and the high-pitched shouts of children practising their manoeuvres can be heard echoing from inside the stadium.
Rhythms of Remembrance: Children perform a mass dance to celebrate the 95th birthday of President Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994. His portrait adorns the building in the background.
We are briskly ushered to our seats by our guides and it's impossible not to feel the buzz of anticipation in the stands.
Sweeping my eyes across the stadium, I estimate at least a 30,000-strong crowd - mostly Koreans sitting higher up in the stands. The section hived off for foreigners looks like it has no more than 500 people.
Arirang is a traditional Korean folk song that serves as the theme of this 90-minute performance. It is about two lovers who separate after the husband suspects that his wife cheated on him. Later, he realises his mistake and returns home, only to find that she has taken her own life. Arirang is the name of the man whom she calls out for.
The show opens with the beautiful but tragic strains of the song and goes on to flesh out the history, culture and people of North Korea in various acts - from the hardships of being annexed by Japan in 1910 to the formation of the country in 1948 and the consolidation of its military might.
Despite the absence of a translation - which leaves one wondering what certain scenes depict - it's nothing less than a top-class multimedia light and sound show.
As a mark of respect for the founding father of the country, every North Korean is obliged to wear this badge of the late President Kim Il Sung.
You haven't seen big-scale until you've seen this: a 60,000-strong troupe of children, soldiers, gymnasts, dancers and acrobats perform stunts and dances on the field while close to 20,000 students take up an entire side of the stands creating a gigantic stage backdrop by flashing placards.
The finale of the 90-minute show is a mass dance calling for the reunification of the two Koreas, which have been separated since the establishment of ideologically opposed governments in 1948.
The sweeping score of the theme song is still playing in my head when I get back on the tour bus. Then we notice a large group of about 100 young men marching past our windows. Dressed in white overalls, they had performed a taekwon-do segment earlier.
Instinctively, a few of us start clapping and giving them the thumbs-up.
Turning to see what the noise is about, the men at first appear surprised, then nod appreciatively and smile back.
The trip is off to a good start.
Is big brother watching?
The room the Life! team stayed in was in the Changgwangsan Hotel. It had a small, empty fridge which was unplugged and a bathroom with no lock. But the room was warm and toasty.
The Intenet is rife with rumours that every hotel room is bugged and the authorities are watching your every move. But in our five days there, we don't sense this at all. The policemen are not at every corner.
We can talk fairly casually about most things, though as a visitor, you should not be rude and slam the government or the people, of course.
The two tour guides don't stick to us like Siamese twins either. As long as you haven't wandered out of sight for an extended period, they seem happy to let you have your own space.
The other often-circulated rumour is that the North Koreans will check your camera to make sure that the snapshots do not hurt the country's image.
This never happens to us, though on one occasion, the guides do stop us from taking a picture of an old woman carrying a large pile of sticks in the countryside, presumably because it depicts hardship among its people.
