I am often asked where I have been. But over the years I have done so many oodles of trips that the answer is blurry- several countries I have been to several times, with little rhyme or reason- sometimes I’d need to travel for work, sometimes I followed my heart someplace and sometimes my heart yearned for someone I’d met on a distant continent. I make this list as a little catelogue of memories and moments as much for myself as for you.

Please note I have defined a visit in the most literal sense of the word. I have noted in the list below if it was just a few hours or a transit.

That’s the most beautiful sunset I ever saw, thought I. But hang on a second. Where am I again?

1. Australia

Born and raised in Sydney, you can take the boy out of Australia but you can’t make him drink… or something like that. Comfortable with the Australian wildlife despite several unfortunate encounters.

The 12 Apostles on the Great Ocean Road, Australia

2. USA

Lived and worked in Portland for 18 months and did research in Delaware for 6 months. Went on an Alaskan cruise. If you are where you’ve been, then I’m approximately 8% American, based on time spent there.

America…… America….

3. Mexico

Only visited Tijuana once as a kid. I remember having fun though. I must rectify this situation.

4. England

Too many visits to count. Probably the place I was least interested to travel to but a revelation of history and culture and now one of my favourites.

London, England

5. France

Three or four visits. Met friends there that I will never forget but will never see again.

The eerie underground tunnels of the Paris Catacombs

6. Belgium

Visited once; got notification of my TER (final highschool grade) here.

7. Netherlands

Visited once as a kid, walked through the red light district of Amsterdam with my parents.

8. Germany

Worked for several German companies, too many visits to count. Visited for Oktoberfest. One of the most historically interesting places and home to one of my favourite capitals- Berlin. Doing my best to learn the language.

The Berlin Wall, East Berlin

9. Switzerland

Three visits for work and play.

Looking over Jungfrau from Thun, Switzerland

10. Italy

Three visits and home to Venice and Rome, probably the most exotic places in all of Europe.

The Grand Canal. Venice, Italy

11. Austria

Visited three times. Broke my wrist here snowboarding. I can recommend the hospital system.

View from a little cottage in the Austrian Alps near St Anton, with a barn attached that smelled of cows. Stayed here for 2 nights

12. Thailand

Three visits. All of them completely crazy and resplendent with unexpected adventures (both good and bad).

Thailand adventure time. Ko Phi Phi Leh.

13. Norway

Two visits, travelled extensively. Coming from Australia, I was intrigued by this other-world of mountains and ice. I’ve been almost everywhere from the party South to the wild North, during both the cold dark winter and the glorious summer.

Flåm, Norway

14. Sweden

Visited once, extensive travels there as well. Many good parties.

Camping in the rain and a crappy tent in the Stockholm Skärgård (archipelago), Sweden

15. Spain

Four visits including an epic roadtrip adventure from Malaga to one of my favourite cities, Barcelona. An acquired taste for me, like a good red wine.

The isolated abbey of Montserrat, Spain

16. Singapore

Too many visits to count. Stopovers, friends living there, work colleagues living there. Check out Confiscated Toothpaste’s definitive guide to the island city-state.

Colonial Singapore. View of the Arts House and Asian History Museum

17. Maldives

Visited once, spent 10 days living on a boat and surfing.

Having fun after a day of motoring from surf break to surf break, Maldives

18. Denmark

Visited Copenhagen once and drank a lot of Danish beer.

Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark

19. Finland

Having a Finnish ex-girlfriend meant several visits including living there for brief periods. And extensive travels, from Helsinki in the South to Inari in the North. Had my best Northern Lights experience here and also went dogsledding.

Somewhere near Juorkuna, in the north of Finland

20. Estonia

Visited twice. Tallinn is a wonderful city and very interesting due to its modern history.

The walls of Tallinn, Estonia

21. Tahiti

Visited once, threw coconuts around. I was supposed to be there for a couple of days longer, but my flight from LA had to turn back midair due to a cracked windscreen. So instead I spent some more time in LAX instead. Joy.

Island men, Tahiti

22. Cook Islands

Short transit while on my way home from Tahiti hungover and tired early morning, but wow! Imagine a stunning forested volcano with the runway on the beach and the breaking waves right next to you as you taxi to a terminal the size of your loungeroom.

23. Scotland

Visited once, loved it.

Riding in the late, late, summer sun on the Isle of Skye, Scotland

24. Japan

Visited twice, the last time for an epic snowboarding trip. Was here during the 2011 9.0 earthquake. Also had one of my strangest travel experiences here.

Niseko, Japan

25. China

Worked with several Chinese companies, 4 visits, and stayed with a family in a regional area a few hours drive from Shanghai.

A barge packed to the brim with coal on Lake Tai, Wuxi, China

26. Brazil

Fiancee is Brazilian. Four visits and will get married there in 2014! Rio is one of my favourite cities and has some great surfing.

Looking towards Leblon and the Two Brothers mountain as the sun sets over Ipanema beach. There is plenty of football kicking going on all day

27. Czech Republic

Visited Prague once for the weekend, incredible place.

Prague, Czech Republic

28. New Zealand

One visit, roadtripped both islands with an ex. Plenty of amazing places but Queenstown is my favourite.

Despite what you may have heard, New Zealand really is full of sheep and mountains

29. Canada

Been twice to Vancouver. Does that count?

The Capilano suspension bridge, British Columbia, Canada

30. South Korea

Visited 3 times for work, but South Koreans know how to party and there was plenty of that done as well.

If anything, I think Seoul could use more neon.

31. New Caledonia

Visited once on a South Pacific cruise from Sydney.

Isle of Pines, New Caledonia

32. Argentina

Transited on way to/from Brazil.

33. Chile

Transited on way home from Brazil.

34. United Arab Emirates

Visited twice and found the more traditional Arab areas fascinating. Check out my 10 Cool Things to Do in Dubai.

The incredible Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, UAE

35. North Korea

Only visited North Korea by crossing to the the North side of the UN conference room in the Joint Security Area in Panmunjeom. Would love to visit properly some day.

Looking towards North Korea from the UN Joint Security Area, Panmunjom. South Korean soldiers guard the border, which is the concrete threshold between the huts.

I would love to know if you have been to any of the above, what your favourite countries are, and where I should travel to next??

The post List of Countries I Have Visited … Plus a Photo for Each appeared first on Confiscated Toothpaste.

The first time I ever went to Norway, I visited my friends Maria and Todd in a town called Bodø above the arctic circle. It was in January and the middle of winter. As such, and being so far north, there were 24 hours of darkness. Well, this is actually not quite correct. For about 3 or 4 hours of the day, there is a sort of twilight which allows you to see around you for a while, and then it gets really dark again. In fact, while I was there I didn’t see the sun at all for 3 weeks. My body clock got completely out of whack. I would wake thinking it was still the middle of the night, and find that it was 12 midday. And then my body would either want to fall asleep at 4 pm or not at all. On the plus side, it was extremely good conditions for viewing Northern Lights.

Except that it rained nearly the whole time I was there. On the few cloudless nights, we would drive up a nearby mountain for a good view, only to find that there was no aurora activity. This went on for several weeks. I’d had a great time, partied with some beautiful people, but I decided that it was time to bail south and my mode of transport was to be the Hurtigruten ferry. As I set the date for my departure, a disappointment lingered in the back of my mind. I hadn’t seen the northern lights. I had come all this way north and had ticked all the boxes except that one.

What happened next was the stuff of travel legend. The Hurtigruten docks in Bodø around 3:30 in the morning. Driving out to the dock at the godforsaken hour of 3 am, I was awestruck when the Aurora Borealis suddenly appeared, as unexpectedly as could ever be, as a big green curtain in front of us. We stopped the car and got out and drank in the green glow. It was incredible. Once on board the ship, I watched from the outdoor deck in the darkness on my own as the green lights faded and we started the trip south. I finally went to bed, breathing the salt air, my mind abuzz.

A red and green Aurora over Norway. Photo: Frank Olsen

I had to wait 2 years to see the Northern Lights again, this time above the arctic circle in Finland. The weather here had been truly unbelievable, 7 days of the clearest driest weather ever with the temperatures starting to reach the early pluses. So I had been doing some serious Aurora hunting! My Finnish girlfriend Outi and I visited Outi’s cousin Kaarina in a beautiful city called Oulu which is about halfway up the length of Finland, maybe 100km from the arctic circle. On a Saturday night we walked through crisp fresh white snow on our way home from a local bar. The air was still and cold and the snow covered everything in a fine white powder and reflected the moonlight in a million different facets. I looked up as a plane left a vapour trail across the full moon, as if to scar the night right down the middle. As if flicked on by a switch, the sky suddenly lit up with Northern Lights, a huge green and red curtain which grew to fill the entire sky! The colours reflected in the white snow and I never had never seen nature more beautiful. We went deeper into the forest to escape the streetlights, and walked to the top of a mound in a clearing. The colours twisted and shifted above us. At one point a huge lilac flower opened above us as if summoning us to heaven. Even the Finns agreed they had never seen a better aurora. With the full moon and stars and everything else! (Another random memory is that a hare went running past us as we sat on the hill. I had never seen one before.)

A typical green curtain of the aurora. Photo by United States Air Force Senior Airman Joshua Strang. Yeah, I wish I took this shot.

We went to visit Outi’s grandma, seriously out in the sticks, in a beautiful place called Juorkuna. Apart from the full moon, it was seriously dark there due to no streetlights or city lights and with incredible clear weather so the scene was set. Unfortunately despite depriving myself of sleep and getting a sore neck from looking up and a cold back from lying in the snow I didn’t see much lights, only on the last night when a pretty green curtain lit up the frozen lake.

We then went to Inari again. This is way up in Lapland, wild frontier country. This is the quirky town where we met Pistol Packing Neo Nazi Homosexual Bikie Pete in my previous trip to Finland. Luckily we didn’t see him again- a good thing lest he remembered my failure to accept his invitation of a sauna in his summer cottage and jam donut he offered me, and then let his knuckledusters do the talking. Well, anyway, what a surprise to hop off the bus arriving in Inari and have Northern lights in a beautiful rainbow formation above us… another sleepless night, and the first of many, as the lights did their thing almost incessantly. However, I never saw more colours than the usual green and sometimes a little red. We never had another night like the hillside in Oulu.

The Northern Lights above Inari, Finland. Yes I took this shot myself! Not a bad effort, I was a crappy photographer back then. It was taken on a really old film SLR camera. The exposure time is about 1 minute. You can see how much the stars have moved during that time, due to the rotation of the earth.

Another place to see the northern lights is aboard a jetliner crossing the north pole. If you fly from North America to Northern Asia, or vice-versa, there’s a fairly good chance you’ll flyover the top of the globe since this is the shortest path (look on a globe if you don’t believe me)! I once flew from Chicago to Shanghai. In the winter it is dark over the pole. For some reason I had my window closed and I couldn’t sleep. So I decided to have a look outside the window. To my surprise, there was the green curtain of the northern lights, all around the plane. It kept up dancing until the sky grew light again as we crossed the frozen wastes of Siberia, also an amazing experience, but another story altogether…………….

Geek alert ahead!

The Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights forms in a region around the north pole while the Aurora Australia, the Southern Lights, form in a region around the south pole. Since there is less landmass and less habitation in the region in the southern hemisphere, most people that view the aurora do so in the north. Charged particles radiating from the sun travel at high velocities towards the earth and are accelerated towards the poles by the earth’s magnetic field. They then collide with oxygen or nitrogen atoms in the earth’s atmosphere, exciting or ionising these atoms. When the atoms return to their ground state, the excess energy is released by the emission of a photon of light. The colours of emitted light depend on the atom excited, and the excitation energy of the electron transition.

• Green – oxygen, up to 240 km in altitude
• Red – oxygen, above 240 km in altitude
• Blue – nitrogen, up to 100 km in altitude
• Purple/violet – nitrogen, above 100 km in altitude

The post Chasing the Northern Lights – Aurora Borealis appeared first on Confiscated Toothpaste.