Petri
Senior Insider
Finally.. I'll put this into a new thread.
The background
L had booked a dance trip to Cuba for June and originally I had planned to stay home. Early May a friend booked a trip to Hong Kong with British Airways frequent flyer miles on Finnair's direct flight which turned out to be an excellent way to spend the miles. I looked into it a bit and found that the availability for direct flights from Helsinki to e.g. China were pretty good but what would I do?
I've always wanted to visit North Korea. Not because I support the system but because it's rather unique place and one day it will be gone. I spent a weekend googling, found a few agencies arranging trips from China, sent e-mails, checked the schedules and a week later I had booked flights to Beijing and a trip to North Korea. A week later and everything was paid, tourist visa to North Korea was good to go, and everything was set.
I might come back to the Beijing part later, after all you don't always visit the Great Wall by being the "only tourist there today" and meet "Military Zone" signs..
Visiting North Korea
There are a handful of tour companies arranging trips to NK. The itinerary is typically pretty much the same, and one will always be accompanied by a guide. For the same price one can be a member of a group, with two guides and a driver, or do it as a private tour/person with one guide and a driver.
I chose to be part of a small group as it would be more free (just two guides for the whole group), there would be some adventorous souls for sure, and it would be more fun. I'm not a fan of group tours but it made sense this time.
Propaganda? Who cares. Safety? I couldn't think a safer place to visit. At the end, visiting North Korea was dead easy and one of a kind trip.
My group had about 15 people. Mostly people living in Asia but originally from Europe; swedish, german, quite a few dutch, spanish/singaporean, polish, french, one australian who turned out to be a writer for Lonely Planet, canadian, and one american. I was one of the very few who actually lived in the birth country. Businessmen, travellers, lawyers and one of the swedish guys was a writer who was writing a fiction book where North koreans were uber-humans and he was doing research for the book. The agency was run by a british guys and their guy that flew with us had been to North Korea over 120 times.
Overall a great trip. The first night we spent until 4am with the dutch (Cathay Pacific's 747 pilot) and australian guy, drinking beer, playing pool, getting the bowling alley in the "dungeons" opened for us, and even managed to convince the staff to let us walk around with the beers. As the ozzie said, one has enough time to sleep anyway so the trip had quite a few long nights. From a tourist point of view NK is "free world", you can buy your bottle of duty free spirits, take the bottle to the bar and ask for a glass. No problem. Feel like smoking? Just ask for an ash tray.
.. ok, let's get started.
The background
L had booked a dance trip to Cuba for June and originally I had planned to stay home. Early May a friend booked a trip to Hong Kong with British Airways frequent flyer miles on Finnair's direct flight which turned out to be an excellent way to spend the miles. I looked into it a bit and found that the availability for direct flights from Helsinki to e.g. China were pretty good but what would I do?
I've always wanted to visit North Korea. Not because I support the system but because it's rather unique place and one day it will be gone. I spent a weekend googling, found a few agencies arranging trips from China, sent e-mails, checked the schedules and a week later I had booked flights to Beijing and a trip to North Korea. A week later and everything was paid, tourist visa to North Korea was good to go, and everything was set.
I might come back to the Beijing part later, after all you don't always visit the Great Wall by being the "only tourist there today" and meet "Military Zone" signs..
Visiting North Korea
There are a handful of tour companies arranging trips to NK. The itinerary is typically pretty much the same, and one will always be accompanied by a guide. For the same price one can be a member of a group, with two guides and a driver, or do it as a private tour/person with one guide and a driver.
I chose to be part of a small group as it would be more free (just two guides for the whole group), there would be some adventorous souls for sure, and it would be more fun. I'm not a fan of group tours but it made sense this time.
Propaganda? Who cares. Safety? I couldn't think a safer place to visit. At the end, visiting North Korea was dead easy and one of a kind trip.
My group had about 15 people. Mostly people living in Asia but originally from Europe; swedish, german, quite a few dutch, spanish/singaporean, polish, french, one australian who turned out to be a writer for Lonely Planet, canadian, and one american. I was one of the very few who actually lived in the birth country. Businessmen, travellers, lawyers and one of the swedish guys was a writer who was writing a fiction book where North koreans were uber-humans and he was doing research for the book. The agency was run by a british guys and their guy that flew with us had been to North Korea over 120 times.
Overall a great trip. The first night we spent until 4am with the dutch (Cathay Pacific's 747 pilot) and australian guy, drinking beer, playing pool, getting the bowling alley in the "dungeons" opened for us, and even managed to convince the staff to let us walk around with the beers. As the ozzie said, one has enough time to sleep anyway so the trip had quite a few long nights. From a tourist point of view NK is "free world", you can buy your bottle of duty free spirits, take the bottle to the bar and ask for a glass. No problem. Feel like smoking? Just ask for an ash tray.
.. ok, let's get started.