Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, 47, is the Andes Director at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). She is an expert on human rights issues in Colombia, tracking issues related to internally displaced persons, illegal armed groups, indigenous groups, minority rights, and the on-going peace process. She generally visits the country five to ten times a year…
North Korea 2008 – Part 2: Place Advertisement Here
It is not until you encounter a society without adverts that you realise how ubiquitous they truly are elsewhere. As Naomi Klein detailed in student favourite No Logo, western society is awash with adverts. Even activities like festivals and schooling are adverts. Everything is marketed, and everyone is marketing. In North Korea, matters are a…
North Korea 2008 – Part 1: Accommodation Alcatraz
There are several distinct elements for foreigners visiting North Korea . Curfews, for instance, are not merely suggestions, but being in the accommodation come the evening and not being allowed back out. Consider the placement of Pyongyang’s Yanggakdo International Hotel, which is on an island in the middle of a river, and deliberately so. This…
North Korea 2008 – Prologue: That Famous Big Brother Feeling
Tagging a trip to North Korea onto the end of the Beijing Olympics made sense, and was surprisingly easy to do. As foreigners were not allowed to book or organise their own travel to ‘the world’s most secretive state’™, it was merely a matter a handing over money to an official travel company and accepting…
The broken ideology
The Places We See The last quarter of tourism in Cambodia, after the Wats, palaces and nature, is sadness. Whilst undoubtely macabre, there is a draw to the two major sites associated with the Khmer Rouge, namely Tuol Sleng and the Choeung Ek killing field. The curiosity, the history, the disbelief, the respect: whatever reasoning…
Back to Savannah
I initially went to Savannah because I was bored of school. Being aged 16 in rural Scotland was too small, or too plain, or too repetetive, or too whatever adjective expresses pretentious teenage ennui. Thus, when I saw a poster in the school library advertising US study programmes, an aspiration formed. I would go to…
Getting High in Edinburgh
Edinburgh’s undulations are often first experienced on two walks: from accommodation to The Royal Mile; then The Royal Mile itself. That the city’s most famous thoroughfare connects a hilltop castle and a parkland palace means exercise is an unavoidable portion of tourism. Yet Edinburgh punishes locals and visitors alike. Often the gradient is slight, but…
Pit Stop: Zagreb
It rained in Zagreb, and thus with umbrella in fist, and soon damp in shoes, I walked the streets. In frivolous irony, fountains pumped jets of water in three feet columns. The tram trundled by carrying everyday folk. Zagreb is evidently a pleasant city, but the weather made everything feel very common, like a Tuesday….
A simple plan
The arrival of teaching assistant Mlle Bourstain was, of course, the most exciting event that happened during the study of high school French. We were 15, and she was in her early twenties, fluent in another language, and not our regular teacher. In one person existed every stereotype a class of adolescents could desire. The…
The Ghan
Part 1: How the adventure ended Between the temperate climate of its south, and the tropics of the north, Australia keeps a whole lot of nothing. This is not unduly surprising as the sixth largest country in the world contains only seven cities most non-nationals can name. Yet that abundance of space is exactly why…