This Minor Passport Error Could End Your Vacation

[TBoneTX 49,195]

The recommendation to order your U.S. Passport book with the extra pages (at no extra charge) is highly sensible.
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This Minor Passport Error Could End Your Vacation

 

When it comes to international travel, remembering to pack your passport can feel like half the battle.  But the reality is that there are plenty of ways your passport can trip you up abroad — and one of the most common is usually learned the hard way.

I'm talking about blank pages.  Or, more accurately, not having enough of them.

Just as many destinations require at least six months of validity beyond your return date, they also mandate a minimum number of blank pages for entry stamps and visas.  According to [...]

 

continues:

https://www.insidehook.com/travel/minor-overlooked-passport-error

[.yana 651]

I actually miss having stamps in my passport as majority of countries don't even bother stamping anymore  

[milimelo 5,011]

We've always asked for large booklets (52 pages). One time they did regular (26 pages) for my child even though I marked 52 so they ended up adding pages to the passport - was weird to see it but that was back in the day when you could add pages to the passport - no longer possible. 

[mam521 2,940]

As @.yana said, not many countries stamp em anymore.  Lots of facial recognition and e-gates these days.  More participants in GE, too.  

 

The US is the most reckless when it comes to stamps.  CBP seem to open to a random page and stamp. My old, old CAD passport has 7 CBP stamps on 5 different pages in that passport, one of which is the signature page that I don't think they're even supposed to stamp.  Some of the stamps are poor and barely legible, too.  I can't check the latest passport - sent it Monday for renewal, but I'm positive it has some special repeats like that in it, too.  

 

Most other places seem to keep the stamps together.  When we went to the UK & EU in 2023, the UK was e-gates at Heathrow, but we did get stamps for exit/entry into the EU when we took the chunnel and then when we flew back to the UK.  Everything was on the same page, differentiated by the little train or plane symbol, and were stamped on the same page as a previous trip to Germany via Frankfurt.  

 

Japan has neatly placed, fancy stickers with QR codes that they stick in and invalidate with a stamp upon exit.  Malaysia and Argentina seemed to stamp neatly, too.  The entrance and exit stamps are always carefully placed.  UAE was more random like the US.  

[TBoneTX 49,195]

7 hours ago, .yana said:

I actually miss having stamps in my passport as majority of countries don't even bother stamping anymore  

Agree 100%.

5 hours ago, mam521 said:

The US is the most reckless when it comes to stamps.  CBP seem to open to a random page and stamp.

Well, we can add Ecuador, at least sometimes.  Ecu is one of the few countries that stamps you both in and out.  Some Ecu agents look for their entry stamp (insertion of a page into a computer that prints entry information) and put their computerized exit stamp on the contiguous or flip page.  Other agents do it randomly, often pages apart,

 

I remember a trip to northern Peru through a very rural and staggeringly beautiful southern-Ecu crossing called La Balsa.  Ecus (including Mrs. T-B.) could enter Peru without passport stamps, but gringos had to be stamped in and out.  A young and very bored Peruano border agent was assigned to this post.  He was going to give me trouble, but our Ecu driver talked with him privately, and he let me through.  The border was a gigantic bamboo-tree trunk stretched across the road.  The guard and a buddy lifted the trunk so we could pass.  On the other side was a small strip of stores.  We went into one, followed closely by a mama hen and her chicks, who soon left through another exit.

 

The next morning, we wanted to exit rather early, but the guard was nowhere to be found.  Our driver asked in one of the stores, and they pointed us to a rundown apartment building across a muddy, poop-laden cow pasture.  We slip-slopped our way there, and somebody rousted the guard (obviously hung over) from bed.  He was not in a good mood.  He dismissively exit-stamped my passport with use of a completely dried-up ink pad.  At the end of my Ecu trip, the exit agent squinted at my passport and said, "La Balsa?"  I nodded and pretended to squint at the passport.  I laughed, and she laughed.  That was a fun trip.