Calgary man becomes world's most travelled | Hacker News Reader

Calgary man becomes world's most travelled

canoe.ca

68 pointsvictoro45 comments

Worth taking on board: Many of the "dangerous" places that you're warned away from visiting aren't anywhere near as dangerous as you'd expect. That's also been my experience traveling in places on the State Department's "holy shit! get out now!!!" list. Most people you meet are just people. The tiny handful of people interested in killing Americans tend to head to places where they might actually find some Americans to kill.

I bet that beach in Somalia was pretty nice.

True, but they won't let him enter the US now that he has too many passport stamps.

I presume he's already been to the U.S. by now. There are a number of people I know who have kept a new passport just to travel to places like Israel because of the restriction on allowing travelers from many Arab countries.

Of course, if he wanted to start all over again, he can simply get a new passport now that he'll be home soon.

It depends on the circumstances, as always.

My brother, who is a specialized diesel mechanic and is one of the few people on the planet qualified to operate a seismic vibrator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_vibrator) used for oil exploration just got back from a month of work in Somalia.

Their small team (20-50 people) were accompanied by ~450 guards armed with Kalashnikovs, 200+ of which were on duty at any given moment, and had a very direct policy of a warning at 50ft, and shoot to kill at 25ft on approach from anyone that didn't identify themselves. When he's scheduled to have a similar stint in the Democratic Republic of Congo, they have similar arrangements.

It's worth noting that this level of security isn't something arbitrary, but is rather in response to the environment that they are put in. I don't think they have a single guard in Northern Canada, for example.

A traveling friend recommended Departures to me a few years ago. It's an excellent travel documentary show with just three people in the crew, and amazingly beautiful footage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Departures_(TV_series)

It's worth tracking down. Some clips for a quick idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WULrGX23vD4

Anyone interested in the documentary can purchase the DVDs via their official site (found it on the wikipedia entry) - http://www.departuresentertainment.com/shopping.html

Israeli border control will give you temporary insert pages if you're worried about it affecting your travel to other countries. You just have to ask.

To me, this comment is the essence of hacker news. Guy goes around the world. Guy visits tons of dangerous places and miles of border paperwork. One presumes he did a ton of research. And yet, there's a guy on the internet saying "oh, here's this thing you missed".

Sorry if you take the huff.

I'm not trying to "correct" him, just want to make sure aspirational HN travellers take advantage of a tiny piece of information he may have missed. Of course, if you'd rather read too much into a trivial comment on a trivial article, knock yourself out. That's also par for the course.

Also my country can issue you a temporary passport if you're planning to travel in country A and you have a visa of country B in your passport, when countries A and B are at war.

I expect more countries do the same.

I was under the impression we did that for exactly this case in America but when I searched I found a page saying we only issue two passports in extraordinary circumstances. This might count though.

Chris Guillebeau had two American passports for precisely this purpose. Also, you have to send your actual passport to get some visas and that leaves you without a passport for weeks at a time. So having two helps there too.

Canada won't do this. I had my passport stuck with the UK's Home Office for six months and the Canadian High Commission said they couldn't issue me a second travel document.

In Taiwan, “I need to get visas from multiple countries at once” is a valid excuse to get a second passport valid for 5 years.

Or use the most universal way: get multiple passports. Just lie to police that you dropped your old passport in some rural Russian toilet. This is a way Russian traveller and designer Artemiy Lebedev (http://tema.ru/travel/ ) uses.

You only had to make it one comment further.

Not a good idea if anybody is thinking of doing this. I actually lost my Canadian Passport once, and they take it quite seriously. Canadian Passport renewals are quite simple and painless, but not for me. I have to go to the office and fill out special forms, I can't get a 10 year Passport like other people can, etc. etc.

In some countries it is legal to have multiple passports. Other option is to have multiple citizenships.

I'm pretty sure he knew this, but wanted to get the stamps in his actual passport:

after a pint of Guinness in Ireland to celebrate landing his final passport stamp this week

After that trip I don't think anyone would suggest he was wrong to make sure he had it stamped.

This makes sense and I really hadn't considered it.

Israeli border control also no longer stamps passports. They give you a little slip of paper with your picture on it. This piece of paper is your "temporary visa."

Or at least that's how it was a few months ago.

Some places are more cunning. I've read reports of countries looking for stamps from the Taba border pass (a border between Israel and Egypt) and not letting someone in base on that (since if he passed through Taba he was either from Israel or going to Israel, even if the Israeli stamp was not in his passport).

I'm pretty sure it's actually one of these guys:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_astronauts#Apoll...

"Two years ago, BBC World Service and Time Magazine were among the outlets buzzing over the unexpected appearance of a tourist in war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia — the first recreational visitor in more than two decades."

Quite the claim with no way to verify this. I am sure there were other tourists in two decades. There are plenty of people who seek extreme adventures. Seems impossible no other non Somalis went to check it out.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g294440-i9215-k2945624-...

in 2009 (assuming not a joke)

Man I really hope this guy is a good writer.

I was thinking the same exact thing. Also, I hope he kept detailed journals, at least, of all the time he spent dodging danger.

That was my first reaction too. I would love to read about his adventures. 23 years is a very long time travelling. I am not sure of my facts but Alexander the great traveled (or was on an expedition) for about 15 years. He has far surpassed that feat.

Well tbh, I'd say it's more important he has a good memory; even if he's shit at writing, as long as he can either tell his stories for a biographer to write down, or write them down half-arsedly for a good editor to polish. In this case, I don't care about whether he's a good writer, but whether his stories are good; the rest can be fixed by others.

I enjoyed reading some of his status updates on Facebook, especially about his date with a Muslim Chinese woman. https://www.facebook.com/mike.s.bown

Sounds like a great adventure, too bad there aren't any photos in there. The only source I found was this http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/10/04/spencer-bown-worlds-... - the last video on page has some real photos with him during his travels, including the one in Somalia (mogadishu).

Hi everyone. We are developing (http://eyevel.com) an app that allows you to "travel without moving" :) Although you can't compare it with the real experience, imagine if he had been wearing google glasses, would you have liked to at least see / live /experience through the web some of the key moments of his journey?

I wonder how he did this from a financial perspective

He "sold his business in Indonesia."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5im2jwahdq...

Always wanted to do this. But my inferior passport makes it infeasible.

To even spend a weekend in most countries, I would have to document every detail of my life, and every detail of what I intend to do in the country, before some bureaucrat might decide if I am worthy enough for a visa stamp. Traveling spontaneously, and changing plans during a trip are almost impossible.

Everyone who has a good passport should take advantage of it and see the world. Its one of the best things you can do.

I'm really curious how his re-settlement back in Calgary will go. The Travelers Curse is that one can't feel at home anywhere after a long period of traveling. You're never quite at home in the foreign culture but you also feel alienated from your hometown too.

Or perhaps not: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2239087/Graham-Hughe...

  “Some of the least travelled people I’ve ever met have been to 100 countries, 
  or even as high as 170 countries — what they do is fly between major cities 
  and especially capital cities, stop off in the airport or take a hotel for the 
  night, and then say that they’ve ‘done’ such and such country,” said Bown, 
  speaking with the Sun via Facebook.

  “To my view, such people are passengers, not travellers.”

For the record, this guy spent 23 years travelling; basically most of his adult life. The British guy: "Hughes used buses, taxis, trains and his own two feet to travel 160,000 miles in exactly 1,426 days - all on a shoestring of just $100 a week."

I have seen people come to Kerguelen island, which involves a four-week trip by ship in rough waters (and seven thousand euros or so) and not even set foot on the island once there, because all they wanted was the stamp on their passport. Or disembark but not leave their room once on the base, to at least say they had set foot on the island. These people usually had no idea and didn't care about learning anything about the place they had come to.

People like this are some of the least interesting persons I have met, and they clearly aren't "well travelled" indeed.

That's an especially sad and wasteful example. What a beautiful place and what a privilege to get to see it, to squander by not even going out and touching it is such a travesty. I hope someday to have the kind of free time, money and connections that might afford a trip there, but it doesn't look likely. What a sad waste.

If you have the free time but don't have the money (connections aren't really that useful unless maybe you are a scientist), a few people have learned how to sail in order to go back there on their own (like Antarctica, people often become obsessed with the place once they have stayed there for a while)... that would be quite an adventure. (The mooring tax is cheap and a visa or authorization can't be refused once there).

I'd like to go back there this way, one day.

Take me with you. :)

I still think that to call them the 'least travelled people' is a misnomer. 'Shallow' may be a better term. I'm reminded of a friend who met a Scottish woman on the train to Edinburgh. She was elderly, had lived only 50km outside the city, and yet had never been there. There are also people in modern, developed countries who never even leave the city they were born in.

I've had a couple of other friends who simply don't know how to travel - they are okay with the thought of it, but should something minor go wrong, they are clueless with what to do. It reminded me that there's a lot of unappreciated skills that go along with being a traveller.

Would really love to read a journal of his trip and experiences during them.

He's been to more places than Tim Cahill!

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