I’m kind of a numbers person who likes to check off the boxes, and we keep track of how many countries we’ve been to since we left the US in 2019, plus our cumulative numbers. Until recently we were stuck at 44 since it had been over 2 years since we visited a new place, which was the Philippines. But our flight to Japan, finally a NEW country, for sure is #45, and included a layover in Hong Kong for about 2 hours. We didn’t leave the airport since there wasn’t time, and Hong Kong is not officially part of China, so the question is, “do I count China as being number 46?” I’m not really sure.

There have been a few countries before where I counted a layover as being part of the count, and there were a few countries that we only visited for a short time, but didn’t stay the night. So I’m curious as to how you all see it