It was the easiest visa I ever applied for (India was the hardest). For the DPRK I sent a simple applications (name, passport number, date of issue, employer etc) and a photocopy of the detail page of my passport to the tour company in Beijing and about 6 weeks later in Beijing I paid the 40 EUR fee. Nothing is stamped in the passport as we all go in on a group visa.
By contrast India needed a utility bill that had both my wife and I listed on it (we had to call the cable company to change it to be in both names) since they had to have proof of where my wife lived (the fact that we are married and I said it was ok for her to live with me made zero headway with them).
They do have a limited mobile phone network but they can only made domestic calls… just like the TVs and radios can only receive a single channel/station. Our guide actually had a iPod from China and had just recently got iTunes to work… their computers do not run Windows but a DPRK-built OS that has no internet capability so we were told.
Just did some googling on this, and apparently it’s a linux-based OS called “Red Star” - some pics on a russian blog here
Did you hear that they recently took down the golden-statue-of-Niyazov-that-rotates-to-face-the-sun? We got there literally a few days after they removed it to find a scaffolding-clad Arch of Neutrality missing a statue.
Thanks for all the NK info, sounds fascinating. And Sudan sounds amazing.
I was in Turkmenistan in 1998, well before it got to excessive levels of weirdness.
Nothing really compares with DPRK… it is unique in every possible way.
Sudan is a gem and we wanted to see it before the referendum coming up in just a few days that will likely see South Sudan split off form the north. I’m not sure how peaceful this will be so it was good to go when we did (Dec 2009). If it stays stable, the north of Sudan from Khartoum to Egypt is a fantastic desert landscape with few tourists (we saw 8 in two weeks). Very friendly locals (we were invited to lunch with a family when we stopped to ask directions), and great old ruins that are largely unknown.
These are my favorite sorts of places to go. I’d say my top 5 countries as far as rewarding experiences are (in no real order):