What was your 100th country?

[drron]

Back in my student mail sorting days I learnt over 60 languages for By Air Post. Remarkable what they teach you in mail sorting school.

 

[SYD]

Back in my student mail sorting days I learnt over 60 languages for By Air Post. Remarkable what they teach you in mail sorting school.

I thought the default was “Par Avión” regardless of language?

 

[drron]

I thought the default was “Par Avión” regardless of language?

Wouldn't work with those who spoke Swahili.

 

[Scarlett]

@Warks, I never really planned to get to 100 when I first started travelling, I just wanted to go different places and see different things. The ability to access different places was greatly enhanced by a couple of years living in the UK (pre-brexit), where even long weekends could mean trips to cities in new countries.

It was after that and some trips around Asia and the Pacific Islands that I realised the number of countries visited was already well above what most people would likely get to see. It was also the time that I was playing less cricket (getting too old) and more different golf courses.

I don’t even remember where the idea really came from, but because I’d been taking my golf sticks around with me I’d played golf in lots of countries. As I played more, the idea of actually trying to play golf in all the countries in the world that had golf courses sort of materialised.

It was that idea that got me more serious about travelling to new countries and for the past ten years I have planned my time off and holidays around it. During a year in Indonesia where I was studying and there were plenty of periods of ‘hurry up and wait’ time, I drew up a spreadsheet of all the countries (and constituent parts of countries / territories that look a lot like independent countries themselves) and where their golf options were. Lots of time poring over Google Maps too confirming whether other sources of info were correct. My spreadsheet lists 201 as the total number I need to get to, so I guess that now puts me firmly on the side of the ledger of people ‘chasing lists’.

At the present I’ve visited 101 countries and played golf in 95 of them. (the delta being: Vatican and Lichtenstein, because they don’t have golf courses; and the four other countries, because I didn’t get a chance to play golf whilst there for…reasons)


This is some of them.