Lonely Planet guidebooks have inevitably become the kind of extra weight I rarely want to put in my backpack anymore. Why? Because they lead a traveler to the same ol’ tired paths everybody else is going to: a kind of one way ticket for jaded travel entertainment made up of bars, guesthouses and a bunch...

We can be fascinated by the evil and the scary. Certain countries just scream, "Danger!" which only makes us all the more interested in them. One such nation is North Korea. This article in The Guardian UK will go down as one of the most memorable articles I've ever read: How one man escaped from...