Hi Fat Traveler,

My name is Shelley. I've seen you on the boards in Dave's a lot lately and have really been enjoying your own web site. I'm an English teacher in Taiwan and a die hard traveller as well and have battled weight in various degrees most of my life, so I can really relate to and LAUGH at a lot of what you write.

I thought you might find this passport game amusing. Perhaps you've heard of it in your travels already, but I thought I'd pass it on. I've just finished up two years of globe roaming in Africa, India, SE Asia, Pacifica and the Middle East and got a kick out of how many times travellers stuck in railway stations or on broken down buses choose to play this little game and then roll with the travel stories that inevitably spring forth from there.

You get a "point" for every country visited. "Visited" means:

1.) you spent at least 24 consecutive hours in the country

2.) you left the airport, seaport, or bus for some of that time, sleeping 25 hours in the airport in Dubai doesn't count

3.) you cleared immigration if necessary (I've always thought 3 is redundant after 2 is pulled off, but who knows)

You mentioned some island places like Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The passport game has clear rules on this.

It is only a COUNTRY when it is recognized as such by the United Nations.

For example, I live in Taiwan, but I get no "points" for being here in this game because we are not recognized (indeed, more than that, heavily disputed and hassled by many UN types)as a country. Ditto for most of the islands in the Caribbean (Jamaica, Grenada, the countries of Hispanola, Cuba and Trinidad and Tobago being notable exceptions).

It had to be a country while you were there too. So if you visited, say Hong Kong in 96 for example, you can't now claim a point for China because it's part of China now. Ditto for all the "stans" in Central Asia: if you were the when they were the USSR, no extra points, and former Yugoslavia countries and so on. In contrast, you get a point for East Germany if you were there when it was such because it was indeed a UN recognized country then.

The territories and colonies that make up so many of the little islands in the Caribbean and South Pacific don't count. Disputed border areas mean you get points for whatever country you cleared immigration on to get into them.

So, what's the point of the "game"? I disagree with it, but the deal is this. You count the number of countries visited according to the above guidelines and divide by your current age. If the total is 1.0 or higher, you qualify as a "world traveller" and thus, are one of what could be many winners of the game (sometimes all of us qualified and then we'd go for highest ratio if we hadn't already been sidetracked by "oh, you were in South Africa too! when were you there? did you ...." and on and on and on - which is what usually happens.)

Silly all of it really, but I still get a kick out of adding a new country to my list. And when I saw the list you'd made of international places you'd visited, I thought, ah, perhaps another potential player out there, if you're already making the list.

Good luck to you and thanks again for increasingly cool web page.

Zaijian,

Shelley

Here's my list in order too:

1. USA (native countries count as long as the guidelines apply)
2. France
3. Canada
4. Great Britain
5. the Netherlands
6. Denmark
7. Sweden
8. Norway
9. Nigeria
10.Mexico
11.Italy
12.South Africa
13.Zimbabwe
14.Mauritius
15.India
16.Nepal
17.Thailand
18.Laos
19.Vietnam
20.Cambodia
21.Malaysia
22.Myanmar
23.Singapore
24.Indonesia
25.New Zealand
27.Fiji
28.Russia
29.China
30.Pakistan
31.Iran


alas all those Caribbean isles and even little Macau where I went last weekend for a visa run don't count in the game, but they sure do count to me ...travel, I don't think I'll ever get enough of it! hopefully come Chinese New Year I'll be adding the Phillipines :)


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Email: wendy@avhana.shinsung.ac.kr