North Korea travel guide

Nowhere on Earth can you experience such a spectacle as the Mass Games in North Korea. Synchronized mass gymnastics and choreographed military parades performed by tens of thousands of NK's best youth, all accompanied with card flicking propaganda inside the world's biggest stadium, Rungnado. A mind-blowing show that only Kim Jong-Il could pull off (though we doubt he himself found it interesting). The shows are held annually and normally in August or September. Foreigners are welcome (through a booked tour).

A visit to Pyongyang is more a trip back in time than anything else. The broad streets are vacuumed of everything besides political manifests. The few shops that exist do not advertise, the bright blue traffic directors (strangely all makeup-wearing young females) look like something from a children's book, and all the women fancy haircuts from the 50s. Even the subway (which by the way is the deepest in the world, going 120 m underground) looks like a toy model. It is a wicked mix of drab Soviet-style buildings and grand monuments, which are all dedicated to their dear, dead, leader Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il. This fascinating city is built on ideology and fully cleansed from all capitalism - and where else on the planet do such places exist? Welcome to people's paradise!