Top Five Forbidden Vacations for Americans

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  06.18.08 | 10:07 AM ET

imagePhoto by Zoom Zoom via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Fancy a retreat at North Korea’s Mount Kumgang Zen monastery? A leisurely tour of the ruins at Persepolis (pictured)? Dream on. Foreign Policy has a tongue-in-cheek look at five alluring destinations off-limits to Americans.

Tags: Global Village, Asia, North Korea, Middle East, Iran, North America, United States, News and Briefs, Shrinking Planet

Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


4 Comments for Top Five Forbidden Vacations for Americans

TambourineMan 06.19.08 | 3:44 AM ET

From the Mogadishu write-up, I love this: “A 2004 Economist article noted that hand grenades go for a mere $10, and other popular items include antiaircraft guns and mortars.”

Forget Mexico and Nevada, sounds like Somalia is the place to stock up for my 4th of July party.

COL Jim 06.19.08 | 10:13 AM ET

If you can’t visit Myanmar, Cuba, North Korea, Somalia, and Iran, you might want to try Mindanao in the Philippines where you might run into some FARC rebels for a chat, Siera Leone where you can almost certainly risk getting mugged or killed on an evening stroll in Freetown (what’s life without a little risk) , the Algiers Section of New Orleans AND Paris where there are enough truely bad people to keep you on your toes, and the Buenaventura neighborhoods in Columbia offer you the opportunity to encounter some real narco-terrorists.  Best thing is that NONE of these places are off-limits. So go for it!

MarilynTerrell 06.19.08 | 11:22 AM ET

Neil Woodburn wrote a fascinating blog account of his five action-packed days in North Korea last year, on Gadling, which starts here:
http://www.gadling.com/2007/12/06/infiltrating-north-korea-part-1/

Houston tattoo removal 06.20.08 | 6:48 PM ET

This list is pretty good.  Of course, it ignores a favorite hotspot - Iraq.  I was a tourist there in January 2004 during winter break at Harvard.  Took a fun tour of the region from Beirut to Dubai and stopped off in the land between the rivers

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