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Thor

Thor Winther is an engineer by profession but has been travelling the world full time since late 2015. He is the author of www.worldwidewinther.com, a blog focused on budget/backpacking solo round-the-world travelling.

The day I decided to count the number of countries I’ve visited

Note: The list on this page is static. Click Here for the updated list

 

One day I was listening to a podcast over at the Daily Travel Podcast (Daily Travel Podcast) where they were talking about Chris Guillebeau’s quest to visit every country. I found it interesting and therefore decided to compile my own list. At the time of writing this post it was no longer 193 countries but 195 total countries in the world.

Object holding the good spirits. Old buddhism books are kept here as they cant just be burned/discarded
Shrine in the fields of Mongolia holding the good spirits. Old buddhism books are kept here as they cant just be burned/discarded. This is definitely one of the places I would love to visit again

Without further ado here goes. Countries I have visited are in broad. By visit I don’t mean layovers/flyovers.

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra (Visited)
Angola
Antigua & Deps
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria (Visited)
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus (Visited)
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada (Visited)
Cape Verde
Central African Rep
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros
Congo
Congo {Democratic Rep}
Costa Rica
Croatia (Visited)
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic (Visited)
Denmark (Visited)
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France (Visited)
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany (Visited)
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary (Visited)
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland {Republic} (Visited)
Israel
Italy (Visited)
Ivory Coast
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Korea North
Korea South
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg (Visited)
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia (Visited)
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Micronesia
Moldova (Visited)
Monaco
Mongolia (Visited)
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar, {Burma}
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands (Visited)
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Norway (Visited)
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland (Visited)
Portugal
Qatar
Romania (Visited)
Russian Federation (Visited)
Rwanda
St Kitts & Nevis
St Lucia
Saint Vincent & the Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome & Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore (Visited)
Slovakia (Visited)
Slovenia (Visited)
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
South Sudan
Spain (Visited)
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden (Visited)
Switzerland (Visited)
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand (Visited)
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad & Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine (Visited)
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom (Visited)
United States (Visited)
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vatican City (Visited)
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

List of countries

Looking over the list I see that I time of publishing this post, I have only visited 32 countries, which in reality is not as many as I expected. Some of them are big (USA, Russia for example) though and there are a bunch of interesting countries in there (Moldova, Mongolia etc.)

But then again I only just visited South East Asia a month ago which except for Russia and Mongolia was my first time in Asia and only my third continent.

Hopefully before New years I’ll be able to cross off a fourth continent by visiting Morocco.

Stay happy 🙂

/Andreas

PS: The list of countries comes from this guy who conveniently put all the countries in textform

List of world countries

Thailand – Ko phi phi & Krabi

  1. First day in Penang, Malaysia
  2. Settling in – To work in Penang
  3. Weekend trip to Singapore
  4. Wrapping up life in Penang
  5. Beach hopping in Phuket, Thailand…
  6. Thailand – Ko phi phi & Krabi
  7. 12m cliffjump in Phi Phi Laguna, Thailand

The next morning i took the ferry to Krabi and I just spent most of my evening in the hostel room and rested up. I slept so much and the next morning I was finally feeling well and from there on out I didn’t have any problems with my stomach.

The evening before I wanted to go drink a beer but I decided to abstain so as to not push my luck. The hostel had a really nice bar though!

Around noon I took the plane out of Krabi to Kuala Lumpur and that was the last I saw of Thailand.

My buddy over at loosetranslations.com has made a great post about Kuala Lumpur if you’re interested

Beach hopping in Phuket, Thailand…

  1. First day in Penang, Malaysia
  2. Settling in – To work in Penang
  3. Weekend trip to Singapore
  4. Wrapping up life in Penang
  5. Beach hopping in Phuket, Thailand…
  6. Thailand – Ko phi phi & Krabi
  7. 12m cliffjump in Phi Phi Laguna, Thailand

… or how I ended up sleeping on a beach, waking up with the sun on a beach chair at Lam Seng

An introduction to Phuket

I don’t even know where to begin. I started my trip what seems like ages ago – although it was only 16 days ago. The first week I spent in Thailand: Phuket – Ko Phi Phi – Krabi. This post is about Phuket.

Phuket was interesting. It was very touristy – especially around Patong Beach; The party beach of Phuket. However, I was very lucky that Alena whom I met last year on my trans-siberian railroad trip in Irkutsk near the beautiful Baikal Lake were able to meet up for the 4 days I was in phuket.

To all of you that don’t know phuket. It’s an island that is connected by bridge to mainland Thailand. It has 15 beaches and a buckload of (white) tourists. The most touristed beach is Patong beach which is also where the infamous Bangla Road is; A road about 200meters long with only bars and 100’s (yes!) of people trying to sell everything from cheap shots to russian girls to ping pong shows. Too much for me as I’m looking for something a little less “set-up”.

Lam Seng Beach

So basically what we did every day was rent a moto-bike and go beach hopping. South the first day, north the second and east the third 🙂 We found some good beaches but the best experience in my opinion was a beach called lam seng beach (from memory) which had no swimming and there was pretty much noone but the local shopkeepers. We sat down, got a beer and enjoyed the view. As the hour progressed we got to talking with the local guy (who had a pet monkey btw) and he offered thai whiskey. Before long i could of course not drive the moto home and it also started raining. So they offered us to sleep at their place which we did. We had thai whiskey and beer and talked with the guys in the shop (who also lived and slept there) and fell asleep under a beach umbrella in the cool rain with pillows and blankets. We woke up at 6:30 with the sun next morning and drove home. Truly amazing.

Lam seng beach
Lam seng beach
Pet Monkey :)
Pet Monkey eating my head:)

Conclusion

We had a great time beach hopping but I must say that I don’t really like Thailand that much and we did see a lot of dirty places and less than sanitary restaurants. Moto riding is fun in Thailand though – perhaps worse than in Penang. I got some great moto gopro footage but that will have to come later