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…
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;…
The very word pandemic means that its something that affects the whole world, which clearly it has, but through the midst of the darkness there are actually 12 countries that are free of COVID-19. Unsurprisingly 10 of these countries are in the Pacific, a region famously the Least Visited on earth and also notorious for…
I imagine most of you have heard of LSD, also known as acid or Lucy. You probably picture the hippy movements of the 60s or people tripped out of their minds, screaming at a melting world as they slip into insanity. It’s hard to deny that it’s a powerful cultural icon in its own right,…
I admit, I went a bit far with the title in terms of comparing two very different cultures. But you know what? Sometimes people from opposite parts of the world can have common traditions without knowing it. As a result of my dizzying travels around the world, I’ve learned that both groups have at least one…