At the age of 30, Dustin Pfundheller believes he will soon become the youngest American to travel to all 193 U.N. member states, all while working a full-time job.
After graduating from UF in 2013 with a doctoral degree in dentistry, Pfundheller packed his bags and moved to Singapore. His plan was to stay for six months, but he ended up traveling for more than three years. Now, he believes he is close to the world record, one he says is well known among world travelers, although the Alligator could not independently verify his claim.
His travels will end this weekend when he visits Israel and Palestine, although Palestine is not recognized as a member of the U.N.
After an ended relationship, Pfundheller said he soon realized he was happiest when he was on the road.
“The world was so different from what I had learned in textbooks or learned in a classroom,” he said.
Pfundheller works in Singapore as a dentist for 10- to 12-hour shifts for about a week, giving him a full week for adventures. He saves money by couch surfing and eating at local shops.
When in other countries, Pfundheller does dental work if he can. In Tuvalu, a small Polynesian island with no dental surgeons, he performed surgery on a man who wouldn’t have had access to it otherwise.
Though people told Pfundheller he could wait to travel until he was older, he wanted to go on adventures before he settled down.
“Your twenties is your turning point of how your life is going to be, and I wanted to see it in other cultures,” Pfundheller said.
Once he moved to Singapore, Pfundheller’s passion grew. Flights out of the country were inexpensive, so visiting places like Uzbekistan and Indonesia was easy, he said.
Pfundheller said he didn’t set out to beat a record, but once he visited the Middle East in April, he realized if he could travel there, he could travel anywhere.
Syria was the hardest to get to, he said. Pfundheller only got a visa after he arranged to speak at a dental conference in the city of Damascus.
“It was completely different from anything I saw,” Pfundheller said.
Pfundheller said he is always in contact with his family and visits them more often now than when he was in dental school. He buys a new SIM card for his phone for each country he visits so his parents are only a call away.
One time his mother, Raina Pfundheller, didn’t hear from him for a few days because he had been exploring Vietnam.
“I learned not to think so much about the fear,” Raina Pfundheller said. “Think more about the adventure.”
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Dustin Pfundheller, a 30-year-old UF doctoral graduate, poses in front of the Great Wall of China during his travels. Pfundheller believes he will soon be the youngest person to travel to 230 countries.
