You can find a lot of information on the sites of Alcor and CI, including answers to most (not all) of your questions.
I have inquired, and found that the biggest practical hurdle for someone living outside the US seems to be securing insurance from a US company, which is more or less a dead-end now as (according to Rudi Hoffman, an accountant who has helped other LWers through cryo arrangements) the US insurance companies have started requiring a US social security number.
I don't believe that signing up with the CAA is a requirement. These associations are non-profit organizations chartered to promote cryonics; they don't suspend people themselves.
As far as I'm aware, the only organizations offering a commercial service of cryogenic suspension are the US-based Alcor and Cryonics Institute, and the smaller KrioRus. You need to be signed up with one of those three.
You can fund your suspension by a variety of financial arrangements, but an insurance paying out in the event of your death is popular for the obvious reasons. (If you have the cash on hand to pay in advance, Alcor and CI will take it.)
There are two classes of costs to keep in mind, one is the suspension, with predictable costs and circumstances; the other is emergency arrangements if something should happen to you that triggers the need for suspension. These are by nature unpredictable, so the idea is to provision for standby and transportation services. A new class of organization seems to be arising specifically to provide such services (cf. Eucrio in Europe).
A third practical difficulty is working around your local legislation and funeral practices. In France for instance this is almost a show-stopper, as the law has become even more restrictive recently as to what can be done with the body of a dead person (interment in an official cemetary or storage of ashes in designated sites are the only two options; at least before you were allowed to keep auntie's ashes on a shelf at home - no longer now).
For all these reasons I am still at present cryocrastinating. What I now suspect I should do is get in touch with Alcor or CI directly, and that's what I'd recommend you do. They will have more experience than anyone else, including Rudi Hoffman.
If it helps you overcome procrastination, I'll volunteer to get in touch with them too, and compare notes with you.
In France for instance this is almost a show-stopper, as the law has become even more restrictive recently as to what can be done with the body of a dead person (interment in an official cemetary or storage of ashes in designated sites are the only two options; at least before you were allowed to keep auntie's ashes on a shelf at home - no longer now).
What prompted that bizarre legislation? I doubt they are becoming more religious or superstitious. There aren't any huge health concerns with storing a bunch of ash. The authorities just want to assert their power over folks?
This would seem to prove that there are no non-suicidal rational thinkers living in France (at least as citizens.)
Arbitrary exercises of government power are expected and not opposed because we can't internalize the real opportunity costs of keeping such policies and laws in place and because our monkey brains confuse the decision of legislature with a decision taken by someone high status in a small tribe.
This would seem to prove that there are no non-suicidal rational thinkers living in France
How rational do you think this sort of remark makes you look? (Downvoted.)
What prompted that bizarre legislation?
It's hard to ever answer this kind of question precisely, but I suspect the case of the Martinots had something to do with the timing of it, triggering new legislation specifically to avoid a recurrence.
The more general force behind it is the pervasive meme that "our lives are not in our own hands", which justifies a number of stances: on abortion, on euthanasia, on suicide and assisted suicide, and on cryonics. The meme is, I suspect, more likely to occur as a tribal belief of people who identify as "conservatives" or "the right", and that's who has been in power here for a while.
I live in Sweden, and I've basically given up for similar reasons as well. This is a huge problem.
Here's an update.
Having somehow temporarily overcome my akratic barriers I've gotten in touch with Alcor and CI directly by email/webform.
Alcor has suggested a UK insurer, which isn't ideal; the upside is that they've worked with them before.
CI has written back indicating that they will accept any insurance contract written outside the US, provided a) they are named as sole beneficiary, b) it names an amount sufficient to cover their fees, c) the contract is translated into English and the translation is certified.
Armed with this info, I've been looking at insurance providers for term, "non-investment" insurance. A preliminary calculation suggests that I could get an adequate contract for as little as €320/yr, as a non-smoking 40yo. (One catch: I couldn't find any that insured past the age of 90.)
I'm significantly downgrading the "can't afford" objection as a result. The #1 problem becomes "transportation" - not so much paying for it, as my specifications for an "adequate" contract include an amount large enough to cover that, but how to arrange it.
Today it struck me just how dumb it was to agree fully with the desirability of being signed up for cryonics and yet not be so. I may, in perfect honesty, also be procrastinating from a piece of uni work that I need to do by Tuesday, but I intend to get right back to it after posting this.
Last time I looked into signing up for cryonics I found it confusing and intimidating, which quickly built up to a level where I abandoned the quest. Now that I have a piece of assessment looming, it is time to do something about it.
But I don't really know where to start. What do you do to get signed up for cryonics? Join the Cryonics Association of Australia? There seems to be a requirement for membership of a US organisation too. You can either say "I have joined/intend to join a US cryonics organisation" and pay $1000, or say "I haven't joined/don't intend to join one" and pay $30, which is sufficiently confusing to make me conclude that I don't actually understood how this organisation works. There aren't any facilities in Australia AFAIK, and there is no indication of what the CAA actually does in the event of unexpected death. Plus, they haven't updated their website for over a year.
Do you skip the CAA, and just sign up with Alcor or someone else based in the US? I don't know which ones are good or bad, or even have any firm idea how to find out which ones are good or bad. How do you arrange transportation to the cryonics facility from another country? Do you need to pay for everything in advance? Life insurance seems to be the ticket, but how do you go about getting that? I live with my parents and the car I drive belongs to them, so I've never insured anything.
Is there anybody who knows, or has some ideas, about what I should be doing?