Whilst things during Soviet Union times were largely a great love fest since the fall of the good old CCCP, relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan have gone south somewhat. There’s a lot of reasons why they don’t get on so well, going all the way back to the Armenian Genocide and then there is the…
The People’s War in Nepal Back in 1996 a group of Maoists in Nepal started a People’s War in the countryside targeting government and police outposts. Ten years later in 2006 they had grown to control large swathes of the country, 80% in some estimates, including nearly all of the countryside, leaving only the urban…
Introduction While Young Pioneer Tours is known for our annual Pyongyang Language Study Tour that takes place annually every July, our other shorter and lesser-known Korean language study program was our “North Korean Rural Study Tour.” Back in July 2018, we ran our very first-ever North Korean “Rural Study Tour” to the very remote North…
The Balkan country of Bulgaria has no shortage of weird and wonderful things to do. From Communist UFO in Buzludzah to Black Sea party cities like Sunny Beach. When I was told about the Roma Gypsy flea market that takes place in the small town of Surorovo just outside of Varna every Saturday, I was…
If you’ve had the pleasure of visiting Turkmenistan, or if you’ve looked it up to excite yourself about a future visit, you’ll have quickly realised that Turkmenistan, amongst many bizarre and unique attributes, likes to snag a world record. Mostly they like to be the biggest of something, usually without much competition, but here’s a…
The time was 01:23 am on April 26th 1986. The first explosion was quickly followed by a second sending the 1,000 ton roof of reactor number four of the Chernobyl powerplant, the subsequent fireballs and deadly levels of radiation high into the night’s sky. The events of that fateful night had catastrophic consequences not only…
Tijuana, Mexico – a city that straddles the U.S. border and is one of eternal infamy through its movie image and very real image. Both of which paint a picture of a city that’s infamous for sex, vice, drugs, the infamous donkey show, and a whole host of things in between. One of our team…
You may think it obvious that Syria has experienced quite a degree of anarchy over the last five years throughout the Syrian Civil War and various international powers engaging with different sides of the conflict and different parts of the country. But here we’re not talking about the lazy media usage of the word anarchy;…