...except for ads and (mostly terrible) music playing in public buses.

Yes, without VPN, most of the internet is simply unusable. I also think the connection to the outside is throttled - so as to discourage people from using foreign servers. Hope it gets better soon, after the 1989 massacre aniversary.

With water about 10000 times cheaper than oil it's usually not economic enough to pump it anywhere.
Also, oil pipelines are dangerous only when there is an accident, whereas when you change the flow of water, you always screw up the source environment in the long term.

I was just recently there and tried to draw the extent of destruction into Openstreetmap. It's only a rough guess though.

The system here doesn't allow me to post links, so go to openstreetmap.org and search e.g. Shangelila. The destroyed parts are in brown.

I just had a tourist visa and now I'm waiting for a short term student visa (the school has done all the necessary administration concerning the visa change at the PSB, not me.)

For the tourist visa I booked some random hotels and after I got the visa I cancelled the booking. (I'm sorry for misleading the hotels, but I saw no other way.) With return ticket I did it similarly.