𝖤𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗁 𝗂𝗌 𝒫𝒶𝓇𝒶𝒹𝒾𝓈𝑒

I’ve been deliberately conservative in how I count the countries I’ve actually traveled to. 

I didn’t count places where I only stopped over or had a layover, even if I happened to spend a couple of nights in a hotel there—places like Malaysia or Singapore, for example. I also went out of my way to review the more ambiguous cases, such as Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan, which are already part of the United States, as well as places whose status is politically disputed in relation to China. 

I didn’t want to inflate the overall number by counting territories or disputed places separately just to make the figure look bigger.  And, of course, those 376 days abroad don’t include a single day spent in my home country. 

 

    36🎯 - (🇭🇰+🇲🇴+🇲🇵+🇬🇺) of 195 🗺️ = 16.4% 

    36🎯 - (🇹🇼+🇭🇰+🇲🇴+🇲🇵+🇬🇺) of 195 🗺️ = 15.9% 

    36🎯 + 🇨🇳 - (🇹🇼+🇭🇰+🇲🇴+🇲🇵+🇬🇺) of 195 🗺️ = 16.4%  

                    (36 − 4) / 195 = 32 / 195 = 0.1641 → 16.4% 

                    (36 − 5) / 195 = 31 / 195 = 0.1590 → 15.9% 

                    (36 + (1 − 5)) / 195 = 32 / 195 = 0.1641 → 16.4%   

I’ve traveled to spend time somewhere—long enough for a place to become more than a destination, and for a few weeks to become a small piece of life. I’ve visited 16 percent of the countries in the world, and spent more than 370 days abroad. 

From the outside, that might make me seem like someone constantly crossing borders, always moving from one place to the next. But that was never really how I traveled. 

Travel has always been personal to me. It was never a job, a challenge, or something I did for an audience. I traveled because I wanted — and sometimes needed — to get away, to rest, to heal, and to live differently for a while. That is why I’ve always preferred staying somewhere long enough to settle into its rhythm. 

What stays with me is not simply the name of a country or the places I visited, but the whole context of the time I spent there. I like remembering things that way — not as isolated memories, but as parts of one continuous stretch of time. And when I come home, that time doesn’t simply end. I carry it with me. The places, the routines, the people, the clothes, the little objects, the moods, and all those tiny moments become something I can draw from long after the journey is over. 

So perhaps what I’ve really been looking for all these years was never simply a destination. 

It was a period of life complete enough to become part of me.   

00:00 — Opening: A Visual Memoir 00:26 — Seventeen days I once spent in France — half a month. 

00:31 — A little context behind those 376 days abroad: no work, no working holiday, no language study — just travel. And I wasn’t even on Instagram or TikTok back then. I spent all that time abroad purely for myself. 

01:30 — Half a month I once spent in the Maldives. I’ve been there so many times that, somehow, I’ve experienced all four seasons there. 

02:02 — A visualization of the countries I’ve visited. I made the flags of the places I’ve returned to more often a little larger. I’ve traveled abroad a lot, but I’m not a flight attendant, and this isn’t my job. More importantly, nobody ever asked me to do any of this. 

03:45 — By the time I had traveled to 16% of the world, I had already accumulated enough footage to create a visual memoir like this. But I wasn’t collecting countries or chasing a challenge. 

05:22 — The story of a kind, handsome German man who helped me find my brand-new, very expensive iPhone Pro Max. 

07:08 — To be honest, traveling this much did come with some exhausting days. 

08:16 — Even so, what I really value is slow travel. I generally avoid itineraries that push my body too far out of its rhythm. 09:01 — Half a month I once spent in Santorini. This is how I really like to travel. 

09:53 — I need a lot of space. I bring a ridiculous amount of stuff with me — enough things to enjoy myself for a couple of weeks, plenty of books, outfits for playing around with, and sometimes even a nice bottle of liquor. 

12:35 — It may look like I’m after luxury travel, but what I really want is stability. 

13:32 — And by stability, I mean the whole accumulated mass of a few weeks of life — the outfits, the people, the food, the thoughts, all those tiny details that somehow come together into something much bigger and more meaningful. 

15:27 — I’m deeply drawn to continuity and context — having the whole stretch of an experience rather than a series of isolated moments. That’s why I prefer long stays, and that’s really what this film is about. 

17:30 — In other words, throughout my life, I’ve created these self-contained stretches of time — whole sections of my life accumulated into one continuous context. 

17:58 — Continuity. Context. The whole thing, taken together. That’s why I stay in one place for so long: I want to bring those memories home with me — the routines, the moods, the thoughts, the places, the people. 

19:27 — A precious connection I made while traveling. 💕 

21:39 — Enjoying a private, unhurried moment at a resort in the Maldives. 

23:00 — Honestly, there was a time when I didn’t want to spend even a second in my home country. Why was I so obsessed with being abroad? I won’t give a long explanation. I simply turn to the Bible. 

24:56 — Bonus: Infinite loop.    

Earth is Paradise. 

And, Paradise is Earth.