It Took Me 50 Years (and About $300,000) to Visit Every Country on Earth

[KamaAina]

https://www.yahoo.com/travel/it-took-me-50-years-and-about-300-000-to-visit-120504025512.html

My New Goal, My Even Bigger Goal: The idea of going to every country sort of sneaked in about a dozen years ago to occupy that recently vacated spot in my mind and heart where lodged the quixotic hope of doing something glorious and original, an adventure no one had ever — as far as my research revealed — achieved at that time, of not going gently into that good night, of going out with a bang rather than a whimper. My new quest, after I had plucked the low-hanging fruit of relatively safe countries, was beset with the ones I had kept postponing because of wars and civil unrest, which I called the Terrible Twenty, then down to the Nasty Nine, then to the final danger-filled push through the Savage Seven (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi)....

I ate barbecued rats in Ghana, roadkilled anteaters in Panama, elephant dung beetles in Kenya, and (reluctantly) the brain of a live monkey at a banquet in Hong Kong, where I could not cause my host to lose face.

I was exposed to a terrifying attack by flying crabs in Algeria and came within one minute of being lynched in Pakistan when mistaken for an Indian spy....

I was thrown into jail in Baghdad; detained and interrogated by Cuban secret police; and visited Mogadishu, the most dangerous city in the world..

[seveneyes]

1. An ode to the countries on Earth

[KamaAina]

2. So as new countries form, does he pop over and visit them?

Scotland would have been easy, but most of the newer countries are rather remote.

[malthaussen]

6. I had the same question.

There are a lot more countries now than when he started out.

-- Mal

[trof]

3. I grilled a grasshopper in Narita.

It tasted nutty.

[olddots]

4. yeah well I went to Dennys in Indiana

and finished the Lumber Jack Breakfast all by myself .That is bravery .

[Arugula Latte]

7. *Gasp*!

[BlueJazz]

5. I've been in 9 countries but eating rats, monkey brains, elephant shit beetles, worms or any..

...kind of bug (Ok..Bugs in cereal...we all eat them)...is out of the question.
I'm NOT the most interesting Man in the world.

[eppur_se_muova]

8. I want to hear more about the flying crabs.

That's a species new to me.