How Long Do You Stay when Visiting Overseas?

We often travel to far away shores for our holiday or vacation (depending on where in the world you come from). Most of us will stay for maybe one or two weeks, catch up on the sun or to check on the local culture or whatever is to our liking.

I feel I am very fortunate, I have visited between 25-30 countries, can't remember the exact number without stopping and writing them all down. Some of those visited have been because I have worked in those locations (some good, some bad) others are through choice of destination as a break.

One place I visited some years ago, Liechtenstein, it is very small, positioned between Switzerland and Austria. It is very mountainous and you can drive through it in less than 30 minutes. If you manage to stop and take a look at the main town some delightful sights await you.

On route from the US to South Korea, I had to change planes in Tokyo, Japan. I was in the country less than three hours, as I didn't leave the terminal building perhaps that doesn't count as a visit to the country. Midway through my time in South Korea I had to do a visa run, I was on a ninety day visa and as I planned to stay there for up to six months I had to leave and return to get a fresh visitor's visa.

The easiest way was to get an overnight bus to Busan in the south of the country and then get a ferry across to Japan. By doing this the visa requirement of being overseas was met. The boat was a lot slower getting across the sea and instead of a few hours ashore as planned I had enough time to look around a few souvenir shops close to the embarkation point before jumping back aboard and returning back to South Korea and another overnight bus back to the more northern city where I was staying.

This brings me on to my latest venture into short stops in very differing countries, just recently on arriving into Atlanta airport and the lovely people who work in Homeland security decided that I was not suitable to stay in that wonderful country and would not give me entry, I have visited the US on a few occasions before but this time I was not allowed in. So I ended up on the first flight back to London and instead of two weeks visiting some of my favourite places in the US, here I am back in the cold and frozen UK. Maybe next time they will have a change of heart, if those people have a heart at all, I somehow doubt it, J.