Reflections on 100 Countries

 

Reflections on 100 Countries

 

One hundred is not a very big number.  A hundred pennies is but a dollar, and hundred dollars doesn’t buy much anymore.  Even 100 miles in a car doesn’t register much of a blip on the odometer.

 

But a 100-years of age?  Now that’s a big number and very few people make it even to 90.  And 100 countries?  That’s a milestone in its own right, and one that more people make that reaching 100 years old, and there are certainly more of them that centenarians.  But it’s still not something most people get to their lives unless they really work it.

 

I joined that club on Valentine’s Day 2025 when I landed in El Salvador to be present at the birthday of a Mexican friend now living in San Salvador.   Not being 100, of course, but finally reaching the elusive 100 nations.  It’s not a goal I aimed for initially, but one I’d found myself diving into once I made up my mind.   (I’m very sticker motivated.  ADK 46er #2694 / New England 111er #874.)

 

On last year’s birthday—75!—I developed a personal campaign—“100 by 75 in 50,” the 50 being how many years it had taken to get to this point.   There was sense of expediency about the whole thing.  If retirement is seen as a three-legged stool supported by the three legs of health, time and money, all it takes is for one of those legs to crash and that takes care of that.  The most likely thing to go at 75 is health, so off I went.  I still have it, and still plan to have it, but hey…you never know.  (I saw that 7 years ago when the stool crashed and I spent 8 months so sick I could barely leave the house.)  100 by March 30, 2025 was the goal.

 

I did not expect to get so reflexive with this number.  I just thought I’d reach the goal like every other goal I set for myself.  But 100 is significant and it got me thinking about what a life of travel has given me. 

 

It is impossible to visit 100 countries and spend years out of the USA without it changing the person you are.  Have you ever noticed that the people who so vehemently announce that the USA is the greatest nation on earth have never been anywhere.  Doing so might change their perspective and that’s threatening.  I’ve never seen anyone in the world as the “other.”  I’ve never had problems with religion, skin color, language, nationality or sexuality.  (It’s only in the past ten years that I’ve viewed MAGA as the “other” and I’m here to tell you I get it.)  People are still people not matter where one is in the world.  They cry, rejoice, smile when smiled to and are pleased to be acknowledged.  

 

What follows are some random thoughts in no particular order.  Memories are as numerous as a night sky full of stars, and that’s not a great simile which I why I don’t write fiction.

 

Here are some of my most vivid images.  Some will never fade unless loss of memory takes over, but even then some of them are so profound that I like to think that some of them will be imprinted sufficiently in some corner of my brain to bring a smile of an event years earlier.

 

Remembered is a full moon over the Taj Mal, birthdays spent at Iguazu Falls in Paraguay and sitting on Ayres Rock in the red center of Australia.  I will never forget standing in awe on the Tibetan plateau at 15,000 feet, on a moonless night looking at Orion straddling Mt. Everest, or the sound of a loon on an August night on a lake in the Adirondacks.

 

Remembered too is riding in the back of my friend Charlie’s motorcycle through the main streets of Saigon, two gorgeous ladies of the night bestriding both us on their motorcyles..  Smiles still abound when I think of what I thought was going to a massage when I accidently walked into a brothel in Indonesia. 

 

Glenda and I had hired a car and driver for the day.  (Always a good thing to do.)  “Joe,” I said as the day wound down.  I want a massage.

 

“No problem,” Mr. Daniel.

 

“Joe,” and I tried really hard to be clear as I put my thumb and index finger together and inserted my other index finger in the space.

 

“Oh, no, Mr. Daniel,” Joe replied. “No sexy sexy.”

 

I should have taken a clue when I had to choose a woman from a book of mostly naked ladies.  I’m not that naïve anymore.  I got out only after I paid $10.00 to the thug of a bouncer at the door.”  It’s gotten enough chuckles over the years to have been a good travel investment.

 

I’ve sky dived over New Zealand, dived the waters of the Great Barrier Reef and climbed glaciers in Iceland.  I met a bear head on in the Canadian Rockies and rode a camel (ugly animals) through an Indian desert.

 

The images I hold are limitless and some of the most vivid are not what you’d imagine.  Yes, there was the full moon over the Taj Majal and Orion spread over Mt. Everest, but there is also an early morning image in Bangkok of a woman rummage through garbage with a tee shirt that said “My girlfriend is lesbian,” and a small Buddhist shrine in God-knows-where Laos that was adorned with multiple deities.  Hung inside the shrine was a string of Christmas lights that flashed Christmas songs.  “Si-e-lent Night, Ho-ly night, All is calm….Jingle bells, Jingle bells,…Oh coooome all ye faithful…Rudolphh the Red Nosed Reindeer, Had a very shiny nose, Si-e-lent Night….” And then loop began again.  This was before the days of iPhones and instant video, but who cares.  The image will stay with my until I either slip into dementia or die.

 

I remember once sitting in a mall to escape the heat on a searingly hot July day in Cairo listening to the Kenny G Christmas album and later watching “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” in a guest house on the Malaysian coast. It’s virtually impossible to escape American culture (whatever that is) anywhere in the world.”

 

I’ve had emergency surgery in Nepal, dental work in Bangkok, was hospitalized in Singapore, had a motorcycle accident in Mexico and spent three weeks recovering from influenza in The Netherlands.  (I never understood why kids were out of school for a month with the flu until this happened.  I see why people still die.)  Travel is not without its hurtles.  I can’t tell you how many times the kindness of strangers has gotten me through some tough times.  The world is full of kind people and, while some stereotypes are true, the majority of humankind is warm and helpful.  A smile is a smile anywhere in the world and the most understand language on whatever continent one.  It’s the rare person who doesn’t smile back.  The most essential word to learn in a new country is Hello and Thank You.  They go a very long way.

 

I’ve slept in posh hotels, in tents, teepees, on boats, trains and in European parks.  I’ve been invited into people’s homes, slept in hostels, mud huts in Africa and sod and yak hair adobe structures in Nepal.  I spent a week once living in a sand dune on the Oregon coast and once spent 67 cents for a room in Turkey.  Trust me….

 

 

I have stood in quiet groves of trees that are still pockmarked with indentations of bombs dropped in the northeast corner of France where the ground once was soaked in the blood of thousands of men who were killed in one battle in World War 1.  I have followed my father’s footsteps where he was stationed in World War 2, and stood looking at the graves of young men killed on D-Day 1944.  I hold in disgust the millions of Americans who have forgotten these sacrifices and who support the likes of Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin.  They have voted in a demented anti-Christ who wants to dismantled the very government these men fought to preserve.  I am grateful to have traveled to all 50 states, because the majority of them will be boycotted as long as I live.

 

I’ve been invited to weddings, funerals, baptisms, birthday parties and bar mitzvas.  To this day I quietly crash any cultural experience that comes my way.  A wedding in Slovakia is still a wedding in Spain, but there are always differences.  Once, I saw coins placed on a dead man’s eyes before the coffin was closed and lowered into the ground—a carryover from the time the departed soul needed to pay to cross the river Styx.

 

I’ve meditated with Buddhists in Burma, joined Muslims in their mosques, and prayed in the great cathedrals of France, Germany and Italy.  I’ve witnessed open air cremations in Nepal, India and Guyana and scratched my head as Hindu devotees decorate piles of cow poop with marigolds.  The divine is everywhere and how people express it is limitless.  

 

There have been times when I’ve had to ask myself where I am in the world.  Let’s see…it’s March, I’m in Thailand.  I only wear long pants about 2 months of the year, sometimes less. God forbid there be such a thing as sudden onset dementia.  I’d be lost permanently.

 

There have been times when I’ve been lonely and the road seemed long and unforgiving.  Travel friendships are ephemeral and travel companions come and go.  There have been times I’ve been afraid and didn’t know what to do.  Long, long ago I’d ask the Spirit to be 15 steps in front of me and, you know what…he always is.  One of my life’s philosophies that I’ve taken very seriously are the words of the Medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich.  “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things of things shall be well.”  Those words have proven themselves right all the time.  Whatever you want to call God—now the “G” word for me—he always, always wants the best for you.  Ask and you shall receive.

 

Throughout my career I always made it a point to expose my students to the word.  Greek myths?  Slides of Greece.  A story set in Paris—slides of France.  I once spent a year traveling around the world and maintained contact with the teachers who wanted to be part of the project.  (Most saw no value in this at all, but a few did.)  At Christmas, the third grade performed “Where in the World is Mr. Ladue.”  I like to think someone in all that time was influenced to get out of Mooers and see the world.  Who knows.  All one can do is plants seeds.  Once, I was told not to do this sort of thing because their parents didn’t want them to leave their hometown. 

 

I didn’t follow her advice.

 

Looking back over the span of 50 years, I see that some people really didn’t know what to do with me.  I was different.  I knew that.  And that was ok.  (I know that when I was a school librarian, I geared the space around the fact that lots of square kids were out there who didn’t fit into the little round holes they were supposed to fit into.  They filled the library and had a place to call “home.”)

 

I’d come back to school after spending the summer in Europe or Africa or Asia or South America.  Most people didn’t care. Some people were openly envious.  “You’re so lucky,” some would say, to which I’d reply, “Luck has nothing to do with it.”  Or… ”I could never do that.”  Not with that attitude, I thought.  Or… ”You’re a man.  Men can do things like that.”  To which I’d reply, “I’ve traveled with lots of women who travel by themselves.” Or, “You don’t have kids,” to which I’d say “Lots of couples travel with their children.”  Sometimes I think they’re just looking for excuses to validate their fears.

 

The limits people set for themselves…

 

Most of these countries were done alone.  People thought that was sad, but the truth is there are lots of solitary travelers out there who are perfectly happy traveling alone.  Traveling with another person is often a hindrance, which isn’t an unkind thing to say, but it’s the truth.  Luckily, I’m married to a man who understands.  His sense and need of travel is not mine and that is perfectly ok. I remember coming home from Myanmar, sick (again) and saying… “Under no circumstances are you ever obligated to travel with me,” I told him.  I knew he’d be miserable and make my live miserable as well.

 

I think he was grateful.

 

Throughout all these years, some people stand out.  Steve, of course.  We once spent three months traveling around Europe on $2,000.00.  I think that was his big last trip.  He long ago had long-term travel beaten out of him. 

 

My dear friend Glenda ranks high.  After quitting smoking and saving $3.00 a day for two years, I bought an around-the-world air ticket.  One summer.  Eight weeks.   Eight countries.  $1,000.00. When I told her my plans she asked if she could come along.  Sure,” I said, “but I won’t carry your luggage and if it doesn’t work out I’ll see you back in Plattsburgh with no hard feelings.”  (I’d heard enough horror stories of travels gone wrong and friendships ruined.)  She said yes.

 

Thus began a wonderful travel relationship.  She’s one of the few people I’ve traveled with who could claw her way out of Bombay and live to tell the story.  We have agreed to do each other’s eulogies.  If she dies before me, I would tell these three stories:

 

Airborne between Plattsburgh and Saranac Lake.  Our first big trip.

 

G: “I only have a ticket from here to Singapore.  After that I don’t what I’m going to do.”

D: “What?  You’ve had 5 months to get this ticket.

G: “I’ll figure it out.”

D: “OK.” Picture here the emoji with the bulging eyes.  

 

Bangkok, late afternoon.  She’s walking a few steps behind me.  I hear her gasp, then gasp again.  “What’s wrong?” I asked her.  “Look at that, and that, and that,” she marveled.  I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.  It was only later that I realized that whatever it was she was seeing was nothing she’d seen in Plattsburgh and that I’d long ago run immune from those things.  It was probably the first time she’d ever experienced culture shock and that’s a good thing. Growing pains that broadened our perspective.  She likely went home a different person from the one who left. She went home a little bit different, a little less afraid, a little more thankful and much better citizen of the world.

 

Jakarta.  Mid-day.  We’re on our way from Central Java to Singapore. 

 

G: “I’m going into the city.”  

D: “You can’t do that.  It’s 50 kilometers one way and the flight’s in 4 hours.”

G: “Watch my luggage.”

D: “I’m not going to watch your luggage.  I’m getting on that flight if you’re not here.”

 

Off she went. I walked over to the Qantas air counter.  The flight was in an hour and the travel agent in Yogjakarta had it wrong.

 

I left her luggage with the men at Qantas.  (You could never do that today.)  And I got on the flight.

 

Thankfully we had arranged for a hotel before we left.  

 

Eight hours later she walks in.

 

G: “Where’s my luggage?”

D: “I told you.  I left it with Qantas.”

 

In the end, we got her luggage although someone had rifled through it and stole her camera.

 

Ay!

 

Later, people raised eyebrows about that story.  Me. The man. Required to save the woman.  But they don’t know Glenda like I do and that was the last thing I would have done.  

 

There are countless travelers who’ve peopled my past.  Sometimes we’d travel for a day, part of a week, even a month.  Back in the old days, we’d write letters, then emails.  In the end they would like one-night stands—good for the moment then on to something else.  

 

For some reason, I hold no fear, and I’m sure where that came from.  People tell me I should be afraid, but what’s the point.  I’ve learned to be cautious and that is enough.  The world is more friendly than people want to admit and you and I are not the target unless its random and that can happen anywhere.

 

At 75 I hold no illusions.  We’re all just time bombs at this point waiting to go off.  My body has been betraying itself for some time.  Little things.  I’m fortunate that nothing big has come my way.   (By the time my father was my age he’d had coronary heart disease for 25 years, cancer, a quadruple bypass and a stroke.  I’m beginning to think I’m blessed with my mother’s health.)

 

There are about 195 countries in the world, and I’m not planning to stop traveling anytime soon.  There are many places in the world where I will have to take a tour.  Solo traveling is either just too difficult or not allowed.  The other reality is this question: should I really be slogging through Bangladesh on a dilapidated bus as a septuagenarian? That probably was never good idea at any age.   I think you know the answer.  It’s not likely I will ever finish the entire list, but 150 would be nice.  I realize there will come a day when only cruises will be left to bring me to those places I never got to.

 

All these travels are written up in journals, recorded on Kodak slides, imprinted on disk drives, in countless photo albums and on a blog. It’s essential to record a trip as it happens because it’s impossible to write about it when you get home.  Reading some of those old journals is like sitting in the café where I wrote them, meeting a much younger me and reuniting again with all those travelers who shared a dinner, a day or a week with me.

 

If you’ve gotten this far, thanks.  I think you have the idea.  Travel not only changed my life, it became my life and helped define the person I am.  I’m broadly paraphrasing Rick Steves on this one.  Travel is a cumulative thing.  These little seeds add up, and if you’re a good traveler, you’re more exposed.  Some people…don’t get on the bus if it’s too crowded.  You might get pickpocketed.  There was a time I’d get on that bus with luggage on the roof and people hanging off the side.  That’s a beautiful part of the world that people who are too careful will miss.  I draw from these things even to this day.

 

I am who I am because of the thousands of miles and byways and trails and people I’ve met.  It’s absolutely impossible to distrust people at this point in my life.  People still try to put limits on what I do.  I still hear, “You can’t do that,’ or “Yeah, in your dreams.”  That’s ok.  

 

People often ask me what my favorite country is.  I have some, but all countries are my favorite because each place on the globe offers something different.

 

I hold close to my heart the Island of the Sun on Bolivia’s Lake Titicaca; a quiet Greek island on a summer’s day; the Annapurna’s in Nepal; fields of lavandar in France and miles of sun flowers in Turkey; standing at the top of Chair 6 on Whiteface on a clear blue sunny day in March and looking out over the Adirondacks and Champlain Valley; camping on an island on Lower Saranac Lake.  

 

Oh, and El Salvador?  It was good.  I was sick most of the time.  E-Coli carried down from Mexico City.  The antibiotic coupled with heat made me exhausted and nauseous most of the time.  I’d return, but not likely.  There are too many other new places that beckon, plus all those places that I’d love to see again.

 

My next goal is 110.  Then 115.  Then 125.  I still can’t die, though. There’s too much left to see.  

 

It would be nice to reach 150.

 

In your dreams.

 

You’re darn right!