Drew Binsky got paid to travel the world

According to your tally, you’ve been to 197 countries. How do you define “country?”

You’re hitting me with a hard one right away. It’s very political. The U.N. has 193 recognized sovereign states. I add four to that — Kosovo, Palestine, Taiwan and Vatican. Some of these are observer states of the U.N., and they are also the four most recognized of all the unrecognized “countries.” I think I’m like the 250th person to visit every country.

Is there a name for this group?

The “every country” club. It’s a small community, and I’m friends with maybe 20 of them. There’s a lot of drama. It’s like: “You actually haven’t been to North Korea because you only went to the border of South Korea.” I don’t get involved in all that.

You’re planning to stay in Saudi Arabia for two weeks. What’s the average amount of time you spent in each country?

The average is about a week. There are about 10 countries that I spent more than three months in, and I spent more than six months in Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, South Korea and Czech Republic.

But some of them — Luxembourg, Monaco, Liechtenstein, and there’s a couple of countries in the middle of South Africa — you can go in and do everything you want to do in 24 hours. In the future, I plan to stay a minimum of two weeks because you can really soak it in.

How do you organize your visits?

It might be shocking to hear this, but my plan is to have no plan. I really like to be spontaneous. The best moments in life happen when you step out of your comfort zone and you don’t know what’s going to happen next.

I have a unique way of traveling in that I rely on my social media followers and local friends. They pick me up, and they show me their country. Most of the time I arrive in a country I don’t know where I’m sleeping that night.

So planning isn’t too hard?

Getting visas is the single biggest challenge. I’m very fortunate to have visited 160 countries without needing a visa. But the 40 visas that I needed — Iran, Turkmenistan, North Korea, South Sudan, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria — they’re hard for political reasons.

Which countries did you save for the end?

I handpicked my last six countries because I’m shooting a docuseries, and I wanted the last six to be different. So we did Ghana, Ecuador, Venezuela, Palau, Jamaica and Saudi Arabia.

How did the pandemic affect your plans?

I had six countries left in March 2020, which I planned to visit in a twelve-week span. Here we are 18 months later, and I finally finished.

I’ve had…