100 and Done! (Countries that is...)

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We are back! This last trip brought the total countries visited to 100! It is a crazy milestone. It is difficult, time-consuming and can be (IS) expensive. After I got back from Antarctica in 2007, I started thinking about it. After 2010 I was thinking about it more (as I moved from NY to Georgia) and in 2014 it had become a real goal. Between Angie and I we have been to 109 Countries. We are tied at 100 countries each. We have 9 countries different in our lists. For example, I have been to San Marino. She has not. She has been to Israel. I have not, yet. There has been some fun competition in this area. That's why we had to establish rules. 1.) Must be listed (as a country) with the US State Department 2.) Being in an airport doesn't count. You have to get through immigration somehow and not in a DMZ or a no-mans-land 3.) A passport stamp is not required. I have been to Canada, Paraguay, and Uruguay without getting my passport stamped. There are friendly borders in many places...
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I haven't blogged in awhile. I guess I am still decompressing from our most excellent, but crazy vacation in SE Asia. Things really went as planned. We first started considering the trip and these counties over a year ago and bought the transpacific flights 6 months prior. We were making reservations up to the day before we left.

We had 10 flight segments in 14 days. For clarification, we made no tight connections. We did have one long connection in Seoul (12 Hours). We didn't need a hotel since we landed at 5:00 AM and left at 6:00 PM. We had breakfast/brunch in the 4-seasons hotel downtown. I used their business center for some personal business. Never stayed in the hotel. Although the Royal Brunei ticket was to/from Brunei, it was not a layover, but still a a single ticket. Also, we had no morning flights. All flights were in the evening, so we could sleep, albeit in economy. Early morning flights were invented by the devil to totally "F" you up. The money you save is easily taken from your soul.

Airlines: Delta/Korean Air, Thai-AirAsia, Laos Airlines, Vietjet, Scoot!, Royal Brunei, and Philippines Airlines.

All the airlines were great for the most part. It was my second experience with AirAsia (first time was Kuala Lumpur to Chennai India a couple years back). We aren't going to use them again. Scoot! was a better than expected experience. They are a Singaporean LLC (Low-cost Carrier). They called us "Scooties!". Funny enough, but you start to see the utopian Scootie persona and motif in Singapore in public service messaging---I am ok with a sub-utopian life.

We are planning the next trip to Egypt (transoceanic). Then Malta and the Balkans (Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia, etc.).

A pic we got after we got back from Singapore. Gotta love the "hokiness" of Singapore. Like in Korea, we did not stay in the Sands hotel. We had a great/better hotel a short walk away, actually with nice view of the Sands.




And for something totally different: (The Good Bad and Ugly Danish National Symphony) Ennio Morricone





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