I love gazing at maps. This map of the world’s 25 largest island nations and territories hooked me in. Seeing the actual sizes to scale makes you realise how big some island groupings are.
Take Indonesia, for example. It is eight times bigger than New Zealand! The difference in size between the UK, home to 65 million and NZ, home to 4.5million, is not that much different. That tiny smudge on the north of most maps is Greenland, and yet it is about one-third the size of Australia!
I have been to 12 of the top 25. How many have you visited?
My ranking of the 12 I have visited in order of my preference:
- Iceland
- New Zealand
- Australia
- Taiwan
- UK
- Sri Lanka
- Ireland
- Indonesia
- Fiji
- Bahamas
- New Caledonia
- Philippines
How many island nations have you been to, and how would you rank them?
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Australia is an island? I thought it is a continent….
the headline is slightly misleading cuz one is Top 25 “islands” but the content is Top 25 “island nations” …. then you get into grey areas like whether Greenland is a “country” or a dependency of Kingdom of Denmark … ditto for Svalbard
To answer your other question, I’ve been to 10 with the 11th one (Cuba) upcoming.
I was surprised most by the small size of Papua New Guinea, which I have always pictured as very large
It is both.