Without any international travel since the global pandemic, my passport actually expired in August 2023 and I didn’t even realise it till many months later! I finally got round to getting a new one recently but there are no still plans to go overseas. I’d love to do a quick trip to Seoul or Taipei but finding a convenient time to do that (as well as the money!) is not so easy. It did get me thinking about the shortest times I’ve spent in countries though so, of all the countries I have visited, these are the ten which were very much in ‘n out jobs…

10. Myanmar (December 2013) – The original idea was for us to stay for about a week here but things didn’t quite go to plan and so we ended up just having a couple of nights there. We probably spent more time sorting out our visas at the embassy in Tokyo than we did in the country itself! All of that wasn’t going to stop us from getting the most out of it and it proved to be a hugely memorable trip. More details here.

9. Bosnia & Herzegovina (2010) – A five hour bus delay put paid to my initial plan of not even spending the night in the city of Mostar. There wasn’t much more to the place  than a touristy, cobbled shopping street running parallel to the river over which Stari Most (Old Bridge) crossed. It was lined with small cafes, restaurants, artist studios and souvenir shops selling a mix of tacky stuff as well as former-Yugoslavia goods which I found fascinating. More details here.

8. Scotland (2012) – This time it was a cancelled flight to Glasgow which had me redirected to the capital at a much later time than originally planned. Subsequently I arrived at a mate’s place at 9:00 pm and flew out early afternoon the next day. That gave me about four hours to explore the city in the morning. Thankfully it is quite a small place which is easy to walk around whilst taking in some beautiful buildings. More details here.

7. Qatar (2014) – A transit en-route to the UK where I paid for a visa to get out of the airport and explore some of the sights of Doha. I had a lovely time and was fairly content with what I managed to do in such a limited amount of time. More details here.

6. Belgium (January 2011) – After a very early morning flight from Berlin I arrived in Brussels for breakfast. After a quick look around the capital I took a train to Bruges which was a really lovely, picturesque place with many bridges, canals and medieval buildings. As much as I appreciated that I was there to hunt down the filming locations for the 2008 dark, comedy thriller ‘In Bruges’. More details here.

5. Mexico (May 2002) – Border town Tijuana is around 30 kilometres south of San Diego in the States. I don’t think it really counts as having been to the real Mexico does it? I have no idea why I had the photo (below) taken as I don’t know what the building in the background is! Maybe it was because photographic images were limited or was it just because there was a Mexican flag on show! More details here. 

4. Macau (July 2017) – To be honest, I’d never really had any interest in visiting Macau as I’m not fussed by casinos and gambling. What I wasn’t aware of was the Portuguese  architecture and so, with a few filming location sights thrown in too, I decided to take a day-trip across the waters. More details here.

3. Austria (January 2010) – Whilst based in Bratislava (Slovakia) I decided to take a short train ride over the border to visit Vienna. Getting on the wrong train that morning cost me an hour or so but I was still fairly content with the four hours or so I had in the Austrian capital. I went to the beautiful Schönbrunn Palace and then to Stephansplatz back in the city centre where I visited the humungous Stephansdom and walked on over through the picturesque Hofberg Imperial Palace area. More details here.

2. Liechtenstein (August 2010) – Whilst in Switzerland, the chance of visiting another country was too good a chance to turn down so I stopped in Vaduz for a few hours as I moved between Zurich and Lucerne. I was really excited to see a capital city which has a population of just over 5,000 people. Vaduz was basically just one shopping street full of restaurants, souvenir shops and a few museums with a picturesque castle nestled up in the hills behind it. More details here.

1. Denmark (August 2000) – My time in Fredrikshavn on the north-east coast of Denmark was so short that I don’t even have a proper photo from there! The only one I could find was one of me going there on the boat from Gothenburg in Sweden. My friend Hugo made a mistake with the boat times so we basically had to turn around on arrival at the port in order to get back that day! He stayed on the boat but I did disembark to spend about eight minutes looking around the street leading away from the port!

Click here to read ‘Hong Kong 2017 Pt III: A Day-Trip By Ship To Macau’

Click here to read ‘Euro Trip 2010 Pt II: Vaduz (Liechtenstein)’

Click here to read ‘Euro Trip 2008/09 Pt V – Vienna (Austria)’