IF IT'S THAT EASY, WHY DON'T MORE AMERICANS GO?

YOU SHOULD VISIT NORTH KOREA IF...

HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT NORTH KOREA I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW:

Less than 3,000 Americans have visited since the Korean War, and less than 300 Americans go each year. That means less than one in a million Americans visit North Korea every year.

The rules for tourists are extremely unpredictable, and what's true on any given day may not be true on any other day. Such is life in North Korea.

You cannot bring cell phones into the country, but about 200,000 North Koreans have cell phones. International service is not available, but international calls can be made from the "upscale" hotels where foreigners stay. The going rate is four Euro per minute. Calls, you are warned, will be monitored by the authorities.

The Internet is unavailable, but you can send email from your Pyongyang hotel. An email costs two Euro to send. I was told that you could not receive any emails, but my roommate said he was able to do so. Emails, you are warned, will be read by the authorities.

You can send postcards to anywhere in the world, except South Korea. Postcards, you are warned, will be read by the authorities.

Hotel rooms are not believed to be bugged. But, hey, you never know. After all, it wouldn't exactly be good for tourism if the government monitored your room. Incidentally, it's also not good for tourism to have no tourism.

If you do something wrong at any time during your tour, it is the guides who will be punished, not you.

Photography rules are strict, but not always enforced with great fervor.

You are not permitted to use the local currency. Bring U.S. dollars, Euro & Chinese Yuan. If you plan to bring dollars, go to the bank before you leave, get a stack of ones and fives and make sure they are crisp, new bills. Even slightly tattered bills will be politely handed back to you.

People in North Korea call their country "Korea" or the D.P.R.K. (Democratic People's Republic of Korea)

Beware of your English-speaking guides misinterpreting what you say to them. Sarcasm and slang are not generally understood. This is a problem for a guy like me who thrives on sarcasm and slang. For example, I casually called one of our female guides "Honey Bunny," and I think she thought I was insulting her or making fun of her. On another occasion, I jokingly said to one of our female guides, "You're bossy!" Within an hour she asked me no less than three times if I really thought she was bossy. I had to thoroughly explain to her that I was only teasing.

Did you ever wonder what happens to all the expired food in your supermarket? I found the answer. It all comes here! That, of course, was a joke, but many of us in our group purchased snacks that had long passed their expiration date, even by as much as a couple of years. We even found some vodka that said on the label it was "imported from the USSR."

You will not get a North Korean visa put in your passport. The guides hold onto it (as well as your passport) for the entire visit. If you play your cards right, however, you can take a photograph of your visa at the airport before you leave Beijing for Pyongyang. Upon return, the immigration officials in Pyongyang will sometimes stamp your passport if you ask, but there are no guarantees.

The Yonggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang has BBC World News on the television in your room, but once you leave the hotel, you will be completely cut off from the rest of the world. If you're away for a few days (like we were), it's entirely possible you could come back and find that your government went bankrupt. Oh, I forgot, that already happened.

The street cars and city buses were dilapidated; the metro was absolutely immaculate.

Some people we came across had a great deal of trouble understanding the concept of foreign currency and often the price of goods seemed arbitrary. Service at unplanned stops was often unbearably slow.

We went to a restaurant in Kaesong where dog soup and dog penis were available. I tried the dog soup. Naturally, it tasted just like chicken. One passenger tried the dog penis. I won't say who it was. What happens in North Korea stays in North Korea.

SO YOU RECOMMEND KORYO TOURS FOR THIS TRIP? Yes I do, and they are not giving me one cent to say that. The office is run by a small staff and headed by the low-profile, legendary Nick Bonner. The relaxed, affable General Manager, Simon Cockerell, has been working for the company for nine years and told us, by his count, he had been to North Korea 93 times. I told him I thought he didn't even realize that he was one of the world's leading authorities on the country, and I really appreciated his approachability. If you go on a tour with him, ask him to tell you the joke about the insulting clown and the joke about the three guys climbing the tower.

Koryo isn't the only company to run tours to North Korea, but they offer better access than any of the others. If you go with one of the Chinese companies, you may save some money, but you won't get English-speaking guides. Also, anyone of any importance tends to travel with Koryo. Lonely Planet's founder, Tony Wheeler travelled with them, although his stories about the trip strangely implied he did it on his own. The world's most travelled man passed through Koryo's doors, but he has a nasty habit of visiting airports without leaving them. The couple that made the ITMB map of North Korea also arranged their trip with Koryo, and Simon pointed out some of their mistakes.

Simon told me a story about a man from India who had a homemade instrument he wished to play in every country in the world. Indians, he said, could only get one passport and add pages, so it was incredibly thick. This Indian man worried that he would never be able to go to Pakistan because of the acrimonious relationship between the two countries. By sheer happenstance, he met the Foreign Minister of Pakistan on his flight from Beijing to Pyongyang. The Indian musician, although he didn't drink, got to drinking with him. He explained his predicament, and the Pakistani Foreign Minister signed an official letter allowing the Indian man to visit, thereby allowing him to complete his mission.

For me there were three fascinating aspects to this tour.

We were 38 people divided onto two buses. Each bus had two male guides, one female guide, a driver, and a cameraman who was documenting the tour and hawking the videos for 40 Euro. Simon Cockerell bounced from bus to bus and occasionally stayed behind.

The flight from Beijing to Pyongyang took approximately 2 ˝ hours on Air Koryo, the North Korean airline. The flight attendants wore red uniforms and were very efficient. The meal was one of the largest I'd seen on any airline in my entire life. It seemed this meal was intended to impress us. This suspicion was confirmed by the pathetic, moist, miniscule burger that was served on the flight back to Beijing. The flight to Pyongyang was routine except for its destination. One of the flight attendants was seated facing me during takeoff and landing. While we were making our landing into Pyongyang, she asked me where I was from. When I told her I was from America, she robotically replied, "Pyongyang is the most beautiful city in the world." That's a pretty good observation coming from a woman who, in all likelihood, has only been to one city in the world.

WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE WERE ON OUR TOUR? The majority of the passengers were male. The majority were under forty-years-old. Some of them were repeat visitors including one man from England who was taking his seventh trip. The youngest passenger was a 16-year-old from Toronto who was travelling with his mom. There was a young woman from Tulane University who spoke less in ten days than most people do in five minutes. There was a surfer dude from Hawaii who had been paralyzed from the neck down after a cliff diving accident. He was told he had a 70% chance of never walking again, but he defeated the odds. There was a Danish aid worker who lived in Myanmar. There was a Bosnian girl who grew up in Austria who I lovingly nicknamed The Bosnian Princess of Love. There was the young, self-conscious, self-proclaimed Communist who worked at Wal-Mart. Try to figure that one out! My roommate was a chatty, Pyongyang-traffic-girl-obsessed man who is the mayor of a small American town and works at a Midwestern university. There were many, many more - all wonderfully interesting people each with some peculiar quirk that made them memorable. It could have easily been a casting call for Survivor: North Korea.

EARNING THE GUIDES' TRUST: It's important to get along with the people who are running your tour. Small gifts will really get them to warm up to you and trust you. Maybe they'll even get a little bit racy. For example, our male guide was telling a story about a man who used to look up women's dresses when they walked up a flight of stairs, desperately trying to get a glimpse of their "secret part". The guides do have a sense of humor.

Their English was acceptable, but certainly not perfect. Once while we were visiting a lake, one of the female guides instructed us to "please don't eat the water." Another time after we had dressed up to visit the Kim Il Sung mausoleum the guide told us we would return to the hotel to "change your dress." Overall, I found them to be really nice, dedicated people who didn't jam a whole lot of propaganda down our throats.

ABOUT THE YANGGAKDO INTERNATIONAL HOTEL: Simon called it a "four-star Alcatraz". It's located on an island in the middle of the Taedong River. Here you will find a small shop with various supplies, a souvenir store, a communications office to send emails, faxes and make phone calls, several restaurants, a decent bar, a few bowling lanes, an ostensibly abandoned photo shop, a bookstore with great propaganda books and posters, a Swiss watch shop, a karaoke bar, a top-floor revolving restaurant, a casino, and a male-only spa. Yes, I tried it. No, I won't tell you the details. More interesting are the elevators that will slam shut at supersonic speed without any notice. It would be a great way to kill foreigners in huge numbers if they put spikes in the doors. On all the televisions in the rooms, you can watch North Korean soap operas, North Korea's version of American Idol, North Korea's propaganda network, and BBC World News. All of that's the good news. The bad news is if you walk off the island you'll be shot. Ok, I lied. You won't be shot, but you're really not allowed leave the island.

NORTH KOREA IN THE NEWS: North Korea is always in the news. Whether it's the mysterious sinking of the South Korean Navy ship Cheonan or their nuclear ambitions, you can always count on something of interest happening. Recently, a website asked what country Justin Bieber should tour next. The good news is he was banished to North Korea. The bad news is he's not going.

While I was in my hotel room at the Yanggakdo Hotel, I saw a story on BBC News about Jonathan Lee, a boy who wrote a letter to the president of North Korea and asked if he could come there to present his idea of a "children's peace forest" in the DMZ. I guess this somehow qualifies as news because a 13-year-old boy wrote the letter. The results, however, were a predictable yawn festival. He was allowed to visit North Korea (but so can anybody), he visited the DMZ (but so can anybody), the president didn't meet with him (because nobody does), and his amazing idea for some stupid, happy kiddie forest isn't going to happen anytime soon (Wow! Really??).

SOME OF THE INTERSTING THINGS I SAW DURING THIS VISIT:

The Mass Games (Arirang Festival): Guinness World Records lists this as the biggest event of its kind. It takes place in the largest, non-auto racing stadium in the world. It has to be seen to be believed. You can find the videos on YouTube.

Our group was the first group of foreigners to travel to the city of Hamhung. We went to the opera house which has an enormous mural of Kim Il Sung being adored by a crowd. The opera itself was very well done. The crowd had never seen foreigners before and applauded as we entered the theater.

We did not see any terrible neighborhoods, or at least anything in my view that looked that way, and there did not appear to be any homelessness. The streets were as clean as could be, and sometimes we saw women scrubbing the curbs with small brushes. One might argue that we were deliberately steered away from such terrible things, but we drove through some villages and saw a good deal of countryside while traveling on the bus. The one thing I did notice was that people were very thin, and many were dressed as if they were poor.

We visited a schoolchildren's performance where perfectly orchestrated, disturbingly robotic children were singing, dancing and playing instruments. As we left, the children stood at the front of the school and did not stop clapping until we pulled away. we didn't actually see them stop clapping, so it's possible they're still standing there doing it.

We went on tours of a fertilizer factory, an art factory, a movie studio lot, an upper-class children's camp complete with outdoor waterslides and an escalator in their main building. Did you catch that? An escalator in the main building of a children's camp!

While we were visiting a cooperative farm, some young girls wandered out of the school next door, and I gave them some coloring books and crayons as a gift. You'll be pleased to know that somewhere deep inside North Korea, a girl is coloring a picture of Mickey Mouse and Dora the Explorer.

The Mausoleum where the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung, is buried is too surreal to describe. It's like trying to describe that weird dream you've had because you ate a large meal right before bed. The long hallways of marble, the fumigation process, the headset that describes the pain the world endured upon hearing the news of his death ("It's as if the Earth lost a part of itself!" or something along those lines), the required bowing on three of the four sides of his body. My Lord, as one of my former neighbors once said, "Dead is dead!"

Also at the mausoleum was a display of some gifts from around the world that were given to the Great Leader. The only item on display from America was an honorary degree from Kensington University, which was closed by court order for being a diploma mill. On the plaza outside the Mausoleum some passengers spotted Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les y Pérez, President of the Korean Friendship Association who was also staying at the Yanggakdo Hotel.

You still don't believe me that they'll let anyone into North Korea? At the war museum, we saw a girl who had her ass spilling out of her short shorts. I prayed she wasn't from the U.S. but sadly she told me she lived in New York. The Hawaii Surfer Dude told me that he heard her talking with a European accent. My roommate, Ray, said she was probably some Russian who lived in New York and was passing herself off as a New Yorker just because she lived there for a month.

You still don't believe me that they'll let anyone into North Korea? On another tour was a passenger who dressed like a vampire and even had his teeth sharpened. Maybe his guide will lose his passport and leave him there.

There is a huge bowling alley in the middle of Pyongyang. The high score is 280, so if you're a professional American bowler, please head to North Korea as soon as possible, so we can grab that top score.

Pyongyang has an amusement park called "Fun Fair" with rides that surpass anything you'd find on the Jersey Shore's boardwalk.

One late evening, an American man came running into the bar at the Yanggakdo Hotel. He was wearing his running attire, sweating and desperately out of breath. Everyone started applauding. Apparently, he ran his own solo 26.2 mile Pyongyang marathon in the parking lot of the hotel. Amazingly enough, he finished in first place. Even more amazing, he also finished in last place.

There is a Christian church in Pyongyang. I was told that it is purposely filled up with locals only when foreigners come to visit. I was also told it's a way for North Korea to raise money from Christians. The North Korean constitution, after all, does allow freedom of religion. We were not permitted to visit this church. Too bad, I haven't been to confession in quite a long time.

I have now seen the Korean DMZ from both North Korea and South Korea. The strangest thing is how relaxed and fun it is on the North Korean side versus the South Korean side. On the south side, they yell at you when to stop taking pictures and place you in what almost appears to be a firing line while you stare solemnly toward the north. On the north side, we were laughing and taking group photos. It was as if the whole world were turned upside down. I would have bet everything it would have been the exact opposite.

And for the sake of keyword placement on Google, our group visited Wonsan, Hamhung and Mt. Paektu. Did I mention that we visited Wonsan, Hamhung and Mt. Paektu. I quite enjoyed Wonsan North Korea Hamhung North Korea Mt. Paektu North Korea tourism hotels information news pictures blogs maps North Korea tours.

Our tour company chartered a flight from Pyongyang to Samjiyon. Air Koryo took it upon themselves to sell some of the remaining seats to North Koreans who wanted to take the flight. Where else would that happen? On the way back to Pyongyang we had Jong Song-ok on our flight. I didn't know who she was either. She won the world title in the women's marathon at the 1999 World Championships in Athletics in Seville, Spain. Thank you, Wikipedia.

At our hotel in Hamhung, one of our passengers was accused of stealing a blanket, and another was accused of not turning in the room key. For a few moments we thought this was going to turn into an international incident. After all, wars often start over trivial events. So perhaps historians will refer to this one as "The Great Key and Blanket Incident of 2010." You heard it here first.

Unfortunately, we were not able to visit Pyongyang's pizza place, but on the last day of our tour, our guides took us to a café with pizza on the menu. I ordered the spaghetti with meat sauce believing that would be a quick, easy thing for them to cook. Now North Korea has another listing in Guinness World Records: The longest amount of time to prepare a bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce.

There were very few times I was actually alone. Once, late at night, I took a walk on the pitch-black beach next to our Hamhung hotel. It was so peaceful and relaxing. Then I remembered that most people who are up to no good in North Korea mysteriously drown. That was the end of that. I went back to my room and went to bed.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS TRIP