Thats not what I said.
I said it was similar in the banks issued their notes.

I won't count the repeated trips around the summit of Mt. NAIRANDAL, which forms the border between Mongolia 🇲🇳 and China 🇨🇳. China doesn't know, but I spent a marvellous month in Mongolia

That can lead to some funny situations. I've had small merchants in the south of England refuse to accept them; they thought they were something like Monopoly game money. Since then, whenever I go from Scotland to England with some Scottish banknotes in my wallet, I stop into the first bank I pass to exchange them for Bank of England notes. The tellers all know exactly why I'm doing it, and find the request ordinary and reasonable. (Haven't gotten any with Charles III on them yet, though. Last visit to the UK was in 2022, about a month before his mother passed away. Changed planes at LHR a couple or times since, but used credit cards for purchases.)

A few years ago we did a trip with friends who were on a budget and flew SU in business class JFK - SVO - PRG. We had an overnight layover at SVO and the lounge closed about 11PM. We debated trying to get a taxi or other vehicle to go downtown for a few hours and just be driven around to see the sights. We got as far as the sidewalk outside he terminal and decided that it probably wasn't a good idea so we spent 6 hous wandering around inside the terminal where nothing was open. It didn't seem that we were followed but probably on security cameras and no one ever stopped s for taking pictures. Since the restriction was not of our making, I count Russia as a country visited. YMMV.

Last year, jrl767 flew SEA - CDG on TN (Air Tahiti). The flight originated at PPT (Papeete) and made a stop at SEA. Upon arrival at CDG, French citizens who had boarded at PPT took the Domestic Arrival path while everyone else had to take the Intefnational Arrival route. So, while the French treat it as part of France, I'd count it as a country.

I'm almost ready to count secessionist areas as separate countries. Quebec and Catalonia are at the top of my list. My father was born in Quebec and I still have a large group of family living there, although not of French descent. If you live and work in Quebec, you speak, read and write "French".
In BCN, just about everyone uses Catalan.

Why stop there? Go to VLC (even ALC) where Valencian is used, the locals at PMI speak Mallorquín, and good luck in telling those languages apart from Catalan.

You’ve actually made a stronger case for the Basque region which has Euskara, truly a language apart. Galicia has gallego, a language that sides with Portuguese.

Perhaps there is a case for arguing that you’ve never truly visited Murcia unless you’ve attempted to communicate with someone who still uses Panocho.

presumably you would put Ceuta (autonomous Spanish city on the northern tip of Morocco) into a similar category

China knows it now!

funny because I’ve been to Scotland and would have loved to keep it as a separate nation than Great Britain. Sigh.

Ooh I went to Ceuta and Morocco for a few hours in July 1986. Morocco just for the passport stamp. Then hours in Ceuta which had some apparently poor people especially children. Very sad. We shared our food with them.

I’ve been to Ceuta a couple of times and haven’t included it in my own tally. YMMV.

I went to hong Kong in 1988. Is it considered to be its own country despite being part of uk at that time and now it’s part of China. I used to mail samples to vendors there and of course Hong Kong was always the valid country name.

I don't buy the idea of considering language as a determining factor. The world is full of countries that have more than one official language. If we count languages, I've been to three countries that call themselves "Switzerland," and there are two that call themselves "Belgium."

We’re agreed. That was the same point I was making.

Last time I was in Belgium, it was actually 3!

I yield to those better informed than I. I've actually never been to Belgium, though I have changed planes at BRU.

We get a whole lot more countries with multiple languages when we consider dependencies that are counted with their mother country, For example, the main language in Aruba is Pspiamento. In neighboring Bonaire and Curacao, it's the closely related Papiamentu. Whether you count those as two languages or as two dialects of one language, it's at least one more language for the Netherlands. Additional examples abound.

Including official languages would mean my trip to South Africa would count as 11. If you went there today it would count as 12 because since my last trip they added sign language to the list.

https://htxt.co.za/2023/07/south-afr...ial-languages/