The Rules of Counting Countries

This is Part Two of our Series on answering the question: “How many countries have you been to?”

A critical skill for any budding (or experienced) traveler is being crystal clear on the very serious task of answering the question, “How many countries have you been to?”

Due to the crucial importance of this matter for travelers everywhere, we decided to answer this question in two parts. 

Part 1: HOW MANY COUNTRIES? – How do you define a “country” and set up your list of contenders? – (to read CLICK HERE)

Part 2: HAVE YOU BEEN TO? – What needs to happen in order for you to say you’ve been there? (this is what you are reading now)

If you’ve already read Part One of the Rules for Counting Countries, you’ll be relieved to know that the second half of this question, while still having room for wiggle room and debate, is also a lot less complicated than the first half. (In other words, this part isn’t going to take quite as long to read!)

Once again, we have come by our rules after decades of traveling the globe. And I’ll freely admit, we’ve changed our stance on a few of them after some lively debates with other travelers. But I feel pretty good that we’ve settled into a place that balances the ideal with the common sense and realities of real life travel. 

To be clear, the gold standard is to go to a place and stay a while, eat some food, meet some locals, and have some memorable experiences. And most of the time, that is exactly what happens. It is easy to know that you’ve “been there”.

But the world being the world, and people being people, there are always going to be exceptions and strange scenarios. 

While more time spent in a destination is always better than less time, what we will be talking about here is the bare minimum required to be able to say “I was there”.

Why Count Countries At All?

There are several reasons you might want to start counting your countries. 

The first is obvious – we count them because we keep getting asked! 

Another dilemma long time travelers face is choosing yet another destination. While I firmly believe there is no “wrong” answer in picking destinations, sometimes it can be overwhelming constantly having to decide. Having a count can give you some direction in picking a place you haven’t been before. (Alaska and the islands of St. Pierre & Miquelon are high on my wish list because once I visit them I can say I’ve been to every “country” in North America.)

But mostly we count because I’m a data nerd and count and track a lot of things, and having the data means I get to have amazing conversations with other people about it.

We recently took a cruise, and while waiting around during the muster drill, started up a conversation with a couple next to us. As soon as we realized we were both travelers they brought up country count. They had us beat by 7, and it instantly showed us how much we had in common, sparking a fun conversation as we waited. 

Worth. It.

There are plenty of people who resist counting because they are afraid it will turn their travels into a chore trying to check things off a list. This is not at all my experience, we return to places we like all the time even if it doesn’t get us a new destination. But if that is how your brain works, then by all means, don’t count!

There are plenty of people who don’t count because they feel like counting is another form of the decline and fall of the entire world as seen through the eyes of those that hate social media. But just because there are a few bad actors out there doesn’t mean you have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

As we cautioned in Part One, your country count is a data point, and does not infer anything about the quality of a visit. The fun part is not in bragging about how traveled you are, the fun part is comparing notes with other travelers. It is fun to wax nostalgic, share information, and learn about new places, ideas, and political situations. Your count number is meaningless without context, no matter how high it gets. But counting can be a motivator, conversation starter, and a fascinating way to relate to other travelers. 

In other words, we have a lot of fun with it, but we don’t take it too seriously.

The Minimum Basic Requirements for Counting a Country

You just have to be there, in the country, boots on the ground, so to speak. You don’t have to sleep there, you don’t have to have a warm and fuzzy cultural interaction, you don’t have to eat an unfamiliar snack, you don’t have to take an instagrammable selfie in the main square. So ruleth the official travel destination conclave of Ten Degrees Warmer. 

But to clarify, let me take some made up questions (many from my younger self who didn’t know as much as I do now) and bring out my best Judge Judy gavel to make official rulings. 

“I flew to Italy, spent a week in Rome and a week in Venice. I ate the food, I made some new friends, I got lost, I got caught in a rainstorm, I took a lot of photos. Does that count under the Rules for Counting Countries?”

Yes it counts, this is the gold standard of traveling somewhere. 

“I was in an airplane that flew over Europe, so can I count all of those countries since I could see them out of my window?”

No. I can see the moon from my window too, but I haven’t “been there”. 

“I was on a cruise ship, and we sailed by several islands up close that I could see clearly but we didn’t stop. Can I count those?”

No. It’s better than flying over at 30,000 feet, but the idea is to touch it.

“I was on a cruise ship, and we stopped at a port, and I got off and walked around for eight hours on a tour. But I didn’t go through immigration, does it count?”

Yes. You touched it, your feet were on the ground. 

“Well, I was on a cruise ship, and we stopped at a port, but I was tired that day and didn’t get off the ship. There was a cultural dance on the pier that I was able to watch from the pool deck though. Does that count?”

No. You didn’t get off the ship. [NOTE: Yes, the “touching it” rule is arbitrary. But we had to draw the line somewhere.]

“I was on a cruise ship and we stopped at a port, so I got off the ship but just did a little shopping right off the ship and didn’t leave the port. Does that count?”

Yes, your feet were on the ground. While doing more is always encouraged, these rules are about the minimal requirement, not the best case scenario. Admitting you didn’t leave the port is kind of an embarrassing case scenario, but as far as the rules go, it counts. 

“I was flying from England to Greece, and my flight stopped briefly in Frankfurt but I didn’t get off the plane. Can I count Germany?”

No. You didn’t have boots on the ground. 

“I had an airline layover in Frankfurt, spent a few hours in the airport to change planes, but didn’t leave the airport. Can I count Germany?”

This is probably going to be our most controversial decision, but yes, it counts, and hear me out.

I actually didn’t used to count airport layovers. I’ve been through Japan four times, but have never left Narita Airport. I always thought saying I’d been to Japan based on that was pretty darn cheeky, so I didn’t count it. 

The argument that changed my mind was simple. 

I was literally there in the country! My feet were on the ground. When I bought some food, I was interacting with locals. They didn’t leave Japan to come to work every day, they were working in Japan. How does it make sense that they were in Japan and I wasn’t?

Obviously, this is hardly an example of a rewarding cultural exchange. Yes, I am very interested in going back and checking out all of the amazing things Japan has to offer. (See also, Ethiopia and Belgium.)

Now some will take issue that I wasn’t legally in Japan, since I didn’t pass through immigration. And I agree. We would never encourage or condone the illegal crossing of borders just to say you’ve been somewhere. Counting countries is something to do for fun, not to risk jail time. 

But also, I wasn’t illegally in Japan either! These rules are agnostic on getting stamps in passports, or paying a visa fee, or engaging with bureaucracy, not to make a political statement, but just because my list of countries isn’t called “The List Of Countries I’ve Passed Through Immigration At”. It is “The List of Countries I’ve Been To.”

At the end of the day, I have literally, physically, been in Japan. It counts. It’s embarrassing, and in my brain it still has an asterisk next to it that needs to be removed, but it counts. 

“I was in Colombia, and couldn’t get a visa to Venezuela. So we went to the middle of nowhere and ran across the border, had lunch under a tree, and came back. Can I count Venezuela?”

This is an important rule for counting countries, and the answer is a resounding no. Not because you weren’t there, you were. But because that is deliberate illegal behavior, and deserves a punishment. Your punishment is that you can’t count it. #SorryNotSorry

“I went to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. There is a bridge connecting Zimbabwe to Zambia. I went through immigration leaving Zimbabwe and walked across the bridge to Zambia to see the falls from there. But I stopped short of going through Zambia immigration and returned to Zimbabwe. Can I count Zambia?”

Yes, but only because this is different from the previous question, and is more like the airport layover. You had boots on the ground in Zambia, and while you did not have legal entry into Zambia, you were also NOT there illegally. Intent matters my friends!

 “I was in a car/bus/train and we drove from Budapest across Slovakia to get to Prague. Can I count Slovakia?”

Ah, you’re getting tricky. My answer is maybe, and I’m going to add some nuance to the rules here. If you were able to spend time looking out the window and see the countryside, hopefully talk to the local sitting next to you, then yes. If you were inside a train carriage with the windows drawn, or worse, asleep the whole time, then no. Context matters! 

This is a little different from being in an airplane or cruise ship that you don’t disembark from. Because driving through you can at least get a sense of a place. Again, stopping and getting out of the vehicle is preferred and encouraged, but as stated this is about the absolute minimum requirement. 

“I was on a cruise ship that sailed through the Panama Canal. There wasn’t a port to get off the ship, can I count Panama?”

Sailing through a country (as opposed to past the coastline) is the same as driving across a country, so yes, this counts, as long as you were awake and watching the country slide by. Same thing for taking a river cruise.

“So on the Country list, Hong Kong is counted separately from China. If I go to Hong Kong, then I can say I’ve been to both China and Hong Kong, I get two for one!”

Calm down. You have to make a choice here. You can count parent countries, or you can count some of the weird situations that exist in the world, but you can’t count both ways. Whatever your political thoughts are, if you count Hong Kong separately, then you can’t also count that as China. No double-dipping!

“I’ve been traveling for a long time, and back in the 1980’s I went to Yugoslavia, which no longer exists. Can I still count it?”

Great question! The reality is that borders and countries change from time to time. If you visit a country that later disbands, then yes, you always get to count it. But even if I visited all of countries that used to be a part of the former Yugoslavia, I could never count it, since it had ceased to exist before I got there. On the other hand, after visiting the parts of Yugoslavia that are now Montenegro, could you now say you’ve been to Montenegro? Here I’d say no. Even though the land is the same, this is similar to the China/Hong Kong question. No double-dipping!

“Well, I think you can only count a country if you’ve left the airport/spent the night there/ate a meal there/had a significant cultural experience. Everything else is cheating.”

Feel free to argue your case in the comments below. I have changed my mind before. But the question I am answering is “How many countries have you BEEN TO”, not “How many countries have you left the airport/spent the night in/ate a meal in/had a significant cultural experience in.” 

These are all the weird circumstances I can think of, so thus concludes my TED talk. 

I hope you found these Rules on Counting Countries helpful. As always, remember, these are OUR rules. Though they make sense to me and fulfill my idea of what the spirit of travel is all about, you may be surprised to learn I am not actually the Worldwide Country Count Police. So unless you bring it up to me, I will never know how you decide to do it. Feel free to adopt/adapt/throw away any of these rules as you see fit. Cause you can count however you want. 

Whatever you decide, just be sure you can defend your choices, because you will eventually be asked! 

If you have other questions, please leave them in the comments below and I will give you my best Judge Judy (except probably nicer).