This page contains a list of all of the known countries in the world, and I have marked off those that I personally have traveled to so far.  As of May 2012, I've visited 65 to 105 countries.
 
Why such a wide range in counting them?  Well, let me explain.  :)   You see, there is a fair amount of debate as to what constitutes a "country."

• For example, you might count something as a country only if it belongs to the United Nations, in which case you'd amass a master list of about 192 member countries.  Plus let's not forget the non-members:  the Vatican City, Taiwan, and Kosovo. Plus a few territories whose status is somewhat ambiguous: Antarctica, the Western Sahara, and the Palestinian territories. By United Nations rules of currently existing countries, I have visited 65.

 
• Or you might check the State Department's list from the "Office of the Geographer and Global Issues", which as of January 2001, by a completely different method than the U.N., counted 191 sovereign states, plus some 63 other "Dependencies and Areas of Special Sovereignty" such as Puerto Rico, Greenland, Hong Kong, etc.
   
  
• Or you might expand the list to include anything that considers *itself* a country, even if the United Nations and State Department do not necessarily recognize it as such.  For example, try going up to a Welshman or Scot, and asking them if they're British!

 
• Plus there are organizations such as the Traveler's Century Club, which count pretty much anything as a country which is distinctly separate, either politically, culturally, or geographically, from another country.  The Century Club is an organization that has an interesting requirement for membership -- in order to apply, you must be able to say that you have visited at least 100 countries!  Their rules of what "counts" as a country are pretty liberal though.  For example, by Century Club rules, even Hawaii and Alaska count as their own countries!  As of July 2011, the Century Club's master list counted 321 countable "countries" on our planet, of which I have visited 98, and per their "Country Status" Grandfather Clause, as of May 2012 I can claim credit for a total of 105, since I have visited some countries which are no longer in existence.

Islands are especially tough.  Some islands are listed as sovereign areas, whereas some are listed as part of a larger chain. 

A further monkey wrench is thrown in by the shifting borders on our world.  For example, many years ago West Germany and East Germany were two entirely separate countries.  I visited both of them.  But now they are (thankfully) reunified.  In terms of counting countries however, how does one proceed?  Did I have credit for two, and now I only have credit for one?  Or did I have credit for two, and if I re-visit the newly-unified Germany do I get credit for a third?  Or do I automatically have credit for the third since I have already set foot upon the land that it occupies?

Yes, I know, to some of you who read this, these seem like trivial questions.  But to those of us in the hobby of "country collecting," we enjoy debating the nuances, just as vehemently as a tennis player who's arguing with a referee about whether or not that ball bounced *in* or *out* of bounds.  ;)

So, here in this chart, I will try to indicate a complete list, and a few ways of counting the countries upon it.  The most liberal set of rules is almost always that of the Century Club.  They count pretty much anything as a country, and all you have to do is be in it, even if it's just on a plane or a boat making a refueling stop, to get credit.

More restrictive, are the "Dunin Rules".  By our rules (and these apply only to us, so feel free to ignore them), airports don't count, and you have to actually set foot in a country (outside of customs) to get credit for it.  As for what counts as a country, we're somewhere between the U.N. and Century Club rules.   We don't count Hawaii and Alaska, but if a place has its own money or its own stamps, we'll count them.  So that would include places like Wales and Scotland, which, though technically part of the United Kingdom, do issue some of their own money and stamps (with a thistle or griffon on them, signifying where they came from).  The Isle of Man is another one that counts, since it issues its own stamps and currency.  The Galapagos Islands, however, despite their appealing remoteness, count only as Ecuador.  Just as Easter Island counts only as Chile.

Lastly, the Dunin Rules *do* allow for the counting of countries which no longer exist.  So in the above-cited example of the Germanies, by Century Club Rules you would have only counted one country, the current one, and it wouldn't matter that you had previously visited both West and East Germany.  But by Dunin Rules you would get three countries: Two for the previous visit to both halves, plus one for re-visiting the new unified Germany. As of 2012, by Dunin Rules, I have visited 89 countries.

So, without further ado, let us attempt to classify things.  I have listed countries by geographic region, along with checkmarks to indicate if they "count" by Century Club, United Nations, or Dunin Rules, plus an indication of whether or not I have visited that country by *any* ruleset.  The numbers next to each major heading show my "country count" for each region.

NOTE: If you would like to copy this page for your own website, and edit it to include your own counts on it, please feel free.  I ask only that you give credit to me and to the Traveler's Century Club, and a link back to my site:  http://elonka.com
 
Table Key:

• Region - ##  (the number indicates the countries that I have visited in that region)
• Century Club - # - An "x" in this column indicates that this country currently "counts" as a country on the Century Club list. The # in the column heading indicates the total of countries in this section (not the number I've been to, just the number of countries that are countable).
• United Nations - An"x" in this column indicates that this country is a member country of the United Nations
• Dunin Rules (#) - an "x" or "yes" in this box indicates that this country "counts" for the "Dunin" ruleset (used by my family, and completely ignorable by everyone else in the world).  The number in parentheses (#) indicates the "Dunin Rules count" for that region.
• Visited - An "x" or "yes" in this box indicates that I (Elonka) have visited this country, and that it "counted" by some ruleset, somewhere, perhaps knownst only to me <grin>.
• Notes - Will generally have either the date that I visited the country, a mention of which larger country "owns" that dependency/region, or a hint on where the particular country is located.