This probably sounds weird to you because you view countries in a very different way. I’m part of the hardcore traveling community, and in this community, counting the amount of countries is something that is very central and important if you want to compare yourself to other travelers. That’s why we need to have some kind of standard, or otherwise two people with identical country lists would have wildly different numbers. That’s why the widely agreed standard when counting the amount of countries in the world is the UN list of countries, which includes 193 member states and two non-members. I, for example, have visited 55 countries when going by this standard. If I counted them the way you do, however, the number would be around 65. And that distorts it and keeps it harder to track how many places I’ve been to.