A tourist in Damascus

I'd rather go to Damascus than NK right now lol

Last thing you want is to get caught up in NK if it kicks off with the US.
 
its mad to think it was a tourist destination until recently..I still see the top gear where they drove across the middle east.

they just seem to have been fighting for such a long time
 
Great read. Those sort of things just make me so sad that wonderful parts of the world with so much history and culture are pretty much no-go areas. These places should be as safe and easy to visit as Italy, Greece, Peru etc. :( Why can't people just get along :(
 
Nasher said:
I'd rather go to Damascus than NK right now lol

Last thing you want is to get caught up in NK if it kicks off with the US.
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NK sounds riskier than it really is at the moment. I had 40 clients there on a tour a few days ago and have 7 still there on an extended trip. The rhetoric has been really high for the last few months but in terms of actual military posturing not much has changed. I'm in contact with the British embassy in Pyongyang and they've expressed no concerns about tourists travelling in to the country.
 
Scam said:
Well, I can't be the only one surprised that there's actually an embassy in NK!
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There's plenty actually, although not a huge amount of western ones. There is a compound that contains the British, Swedish, Polish and I think German embassy's. Historically it used to be either the East German or Polish embassy back in Soviet times.

There's some big ones dotted around Pyongyang, the Russian one, Iranian one, Chinese etc.
 
MickeyFinns said:
Our offices are on King street of all places, next to Ibiza bar :). I only do a few days a month in the office, getting to quite like Wigan though!
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King Street! I couldn't think of a more unlikely place for an unusual travel company. Good for you though, must be very interesting being involved with it all.
 
This was a very good read indeed. I am fascinated how secular and modern Damascus always come across in everything I have read. It also fascinates me the lack of truth about what is going on there. The so called rebels now seem to be made up of mainly foreign fighters. The ideas this is a civil war seems long gone, clearly this is a proxy from all sorts of interests.

The Assad family are certainly unsavoury characters by our modern Western standards but the idea of seeing Damascus falling to these so called "rebel" groups worries me far more than Assad staying in power.

I remember reading an article years ago when the war first broke out interviewing people about how life in Damascus had carried on. In the interview there was a young guy who had just opened a trendy gin bar and a women who ran a ballet school. Even then I was thinking, hmmm I wonder if the Islamist rebels will allow these kinds of freedoms once they "liberate" the capital.
 
MickeyFinns said:
NK sounds riskier than it really is at the moment. I had 40 clients there on a tour a few days ago and have 7 still there on an extended trip. The rhetoric has been really high for the last few months but in terms of actual military posturing not much has changed. I'm in contact with the British embassy in Pyongyang and they've expressed no concerns about tourists travelling in to the country.
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is there a large premium for a NK holiday, or the reverse, since they really want the foreign trade and good PR ?
(... a tightly choreographed tour, with rules for using cameras .. or pretty 'relaxed' ?)
 
jpaul said:
is there a large premium for a NK holiday, or the reverse, since they really want the foreign trade and good PR ?
(... a tightly choreographed tour, with rules for using cameras .. or pretty 'relaxed' ?)
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They are much more relaxed than they used to be, but it's still a pretty controlled tour. Our 4 nights in NK tour starting and ending in Beijing is £749. We are one of the cheapest but yeah it's more expensive than other countries.
 
That's pretty cool, I don't doubt that the government areas are (relatively safe), as cruel and barbaric as Assad has been re: the uprising and rebellion he was still running the place in a fairly secular manner and certainly Christians would likely feel safer in such areas.

MickeyFinns said:
NK sounds riskier than it really is at the moment. I had 40 clients there on a tour a few days ago and have 7 still there on an extended trip. The rhetoric has been really high for the last few months but in terms of actual military posturing not much has changed. I'm in contact with the British embassy in Pyongyang and they've expressed no concerns about tourists travelling in to the country.
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Not trying to be funny but how will they know, the biggest risk at the moment comes from whether the mad man in charge decides to do anything, while I'm sure they're trying their best to keep tabs on that sort of thing he's not exactly a predictable person, the regime has already taken the rest of the world by surprise with the extent of progress of their rocket program and the recent tests. I know it is your business but tbh.. I think it is pretty irresponsible of your company to organise tours there at the moment.
 
dowie said:
Not trying to be funny but how will they know, the biggest risk at the moment comes from whether the mad man in charge decides to do anything, while I'm sure they're trying their best to keep tabs on that sort of thing he's not exactly a predictable person, the regime has already taken the rest of the world by surprise with the extent of progress of their rocket program and the recent tests. I know it is your business but tbh.. I think it is pretty irresponsible of your company to organise tours there at the moment.
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You're welcome to that opinion for sure, but I would disagree. To be honest in terms of escalation I'd be far more worried about Trump than Kim Jong-un. Hell I wouldn't of taken my Mum and Dad there on a trip recently if I didn't think it was a good idea.

The embassies in PY we deal with have been on point with advice in the past and we have some indirect military contacts that have been great too. Security is something we take incredibly seriously everywhere we go, some of our newer trips are into more hostile environments (Mogadishu, Chechnya etc.). We aren't wild risk takers, although at a glance it can appear that we are.
 
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