Simple Reminders About Your Passport

Before your next trip, be sure to check when your passport will expire. Most countries require a validity date of 6 months beyond your last date of travel (this is to discourage you from remaining beyond the legal allowable visit…or yes, the possibility that you could defect). You will also want to make sure that you have several blank pages to allow for visas and additional entry/exit stamps. It only takes about a week to send your passport away for insertion of additional pages.

When traveling with friends/family, be sure (be VERY VERY SURE!) to actually look at your passport when you take it out of the safe of your hotel room or ship’s stateroom….and make sure you are putting your own passport into your possession. If you and your traveling companions should happen to separate when going through the customs/immigration lines, imagine your embarassment (and subsequent inconvenience) of showing the wrong passport. Worse yet, imagine the horror of discovering such a mistake when your travel partners are still hanging out at The Parthenon, the Great Barrier Reef, or at the Great Wall while you are headed home…only to discover an hour before your flight that you grabbed the wrong passport. It sounds like a simple mistake, but take it from one tour leader who has experienced this disaster on more than one occasion with his travelers; the ramifications of such a minor whoops can be rather discomforting.

And finally, while your passport can survive round the world travels…it has its limitations at home. Be sure to store it in a safe & secure place, but in a place where you’ll remember to bring it along. Never pack it with the luggage you’re going to check; rather keep it as secure on your person as your cash and credit cards. And contrary to this tour leader’s absent-mindedness….a clean passport isn’t necessarily a worthy passport. The back pocket of one’s jeans is not a good place to store the passport after clearing customs upon returning home….because forgetting to check one’s pockets before laundering said jeans can make for a damp and frayed travel document that, thank goodness, wasn’t quite ruined. This time.