Welcome to the TravelPod forums

[stereobread]

Hi, I'm new to the forums. I love to travel but even more than that I love being an expat. I'm originally from central California but I'm currently teaching English in South Korea and a few years back I spent a semester studying abroad in Hungary followed by another semester in the Czech Republic. I've also traveled extensively on the west coast of North America and to a lesser extent throughout the US and Mexico with brief forays into Canada, as well as parts of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Tunisia and Japan.

I'm going to be in Korea until November and I'd like to do an overland trip from here to Europe (the southern route through China, India and the Middle East, not the northern route through Russia) after that, which is really the main reason I'm here. I've been reading every bit of information I can find on visa and security issues since it seems likely that this would be the kind of thing I'll need to plan for well in advance of actually leaving.

Well at any rate, it's good to be here and if I can answer any questions about the places I've lived (Fresno, Ca; Santa Cruz, Ca; Budapest, Hungary; Prague, Czech Republic; and Daejeon, South Korea) or visited I'd be happy to help.

[jacquesl]

Welcome! If you see a question asked that you can answer , please jump right in , our members and guests will appreciate learning from your experiences!

[starlagurl]

Korea would be so interesting. Will you go to North Korea at all? I am intrigued by that place.

[stereobread]

Korea would be so interesting. Will you go to North Korea at all? I am intrigued by that place.

At the moment the closest I'll be able to get to North Korea is the DMZ tour, which I'm definitely planning on doing. US citizens are only allowed to tour the country for a brief period in October (when I'll be working and thus unable to go) and even that would require a trip or two to Beijing to get the visa as well as a trip there to catch the flight to Pyongyang.

Up until December of last year it was possible to make short trips into specially designated tourist zones along the border as part of tour groups from Seoul, these were open to all nationalities and didn't require a visa, but tensions between the two Koreas led to the North shutting down all cross border tourism. The head of Hyundai Asan (the South Korean company that runs factories in the North and ran tours) has said that he thinks the tours will start again by April or May but he didn't cite any particular reasons for that estimate and the tensions have escalated since then so it's entirely possible they'll never get going again. If they do though, I'm definitely up for a trip to Kaesong or Kumgansan.

[polydemic]

Welcome, StereoBread! It looks like you've done a lot of travelling & have so much more planned. You'll make an interesting addition to our group.

[starlagurl]

Up until December of last year it was possible to make short trips into specially designated tourist zones along the border as part of tour groups from Seoul, these were open to all nationalities and didn't require a visa, but tensions between the two Koreas led to the North shutting down all cross border tourism. The head of Hyundai Asan (the South Korean company that runs factories in the North and ran tours) has said that he thinks the tours will start again by April or May but he didn't cite any particular reasons for that estimate and the tensions have escalated since then so it's entirely possible they'll never get going again. If they do though, I'm definitely up for a trip to Kaesong or Kumgansan.

Thanks for the info! I did not know any of that.

You have to let us know how it goes.

[anonfire]

HEY! welcome.

wow.. you have definitely travel a lot.