I agree. My 1st passport has visa & arrival/departure stamps that are works of art. Maybe we should chase down the officials each time and ask for it.

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I completely agree! My version differs however. I have NEVER been overseas before but am going to Vietnam over Christmas. I was devistated when I found out I wouldn’t get a stamp for my passport, after all the years of seeing everyone around me get stamps. I don’t think a hand drawn one will pass unfortunately. I’ll have to buy some cheap suveniers instead. I bet that’s what this is all about.

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I agree with you! The whole passport stamped with seals. It kind of serves as a little welcome souvenir. Though I haven’t traveled to Europe yet, but no stamps on the book? Gives that feeling like you missed something.

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How many passports are actually checked when arriving at a destination? Not many, they just briefly look at them.

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OMG Darren I am not kidding but I was thinking exactly the same thing only the other day!

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I just travelled for the first time on my brand new passport (instead of my lovely old one) and to the states for the first time. I thought it would be nice to get my first stamp from a new place. NO Luck! They want to see our passports but aren’t stamping. it’s a big ripoff.

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Yes I agree! Just because we are in a European Union it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t at least stamp your passport.

Get a petition going Daz!!!!!!

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I have an Australian passport so I’m glad to still get some European stamps. One time though I went to Switzerland and I didn’t get a stamp. I asked for one and the man said “Sorry, the ink costs too much”. Who said the Swiss don’t have a sense of humour.

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I have had to get a new passport this year, and I miss the old one. It was great to look through during all the queuing you do at the airport, the stamps just reminded you so many adventures.

One page was full of Argentinean stamps , where we had crossed the border many times while travelling through Patagonia.

Another page showed I have officially travelled back in time, crossing the date line meant I landed the day before I took off. Not something many of us Brits get to do!

The new passport is just not the same, and it has one of those dodgy RFID chips in it!

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I’ll be contrary.

My last 48 page passport lasted just 3 years even with only a handful of full page visas. (Note only some countries allow pages to be added to your passport – mine isn’t one of them.) The more countries that don’t stamp (or require full page visas) the better.

Unfortunately my hectic schedule means my current passport, just a few months old, will likely be more than half full in under a year. Getting visas is also a headache in the limited time in between trips.

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See: http://travel.state.gov/travel/cbpmc/cbpmc_2223.html#compliant_document where the answer seems to be yes, no or maybe. I read it to mean that this will not take effect until a date, in summer 2008, to be announced. Meanwhile, looks like a valid photo ID such as driver’s license will suffice. If you are an American citizen, with any plans to travel outside the USA, I suggest you waste no time in getting in your passport application. I just got mine. The wait time was @ 6 weeks, but that may have been expedited by my including my old passport with the application.

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I disagree. For a business traveller six weeks is disastrously long. How many business meetings have that much notice?

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Sure you know when passport is due to expire. But many business travellers cannot do without their passport for 6 weeks (you have to send in your old passport when you apply for a new one).

Personally, it has been many years since I went six weeks without one or more international trip. Indeed my current passport I had to pay for expedited 3-day service and even then it was touch and go if it arrived in time – due to the very limited time I had available between trips.

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My earlier comment referred to the fact that Canadians now require a passport to enter the US, but that they are not stamped. Likewise the Americans (now? soon? 0 need passports to come here. They will soon need one to go home as well. They already need them to fly, but driving is on its way too.

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I think the convenience of the open border policy in Europe far outweighs a few extra stamps in your passport, who looks at your passport besides immigration officials anyhow? As an American who lives and travels frequently in Asia, it’s a real pain to have to apply for extra pages in your passport and having to renew more frequently because you no longer have any blank pages left. Too many stamps are a pain in the…….

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All I had to do was ask for a stamp and the countries I visited were more than willing to stamp my passport

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Globus misses the old stamps – but not the old stampers. As Euro stamps became phased out, one time at Dover, aggrieved at receiving no stamp as I passed through customs, I requested an official if I could have one, to which he agreed. Helpless I watched as said official duly stamped my passport – then wrote the mortifying words ‘By request’ next to it.

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I am on my 3rd passport. My first two have many treasured stamps; my current one is almost bare. When you land in Europe, you are stamped upon arrival, but not as you move from country to country. I miss the “stamp collecting”. I asked a French border inspector to stamp my passport when traveling between London and Paris. He did so, but with a snort and a look of utter contempt for me !!

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We are traveling to Singapore – if we go to Malaysia for lunch will there be a place where we can request a stamp? Also, we are changing planes in Tokyo. I wonder if there is somewhere at the airport where we can request a stamp (my 4-year old has an amazing amount of stamps and I’m on a mission

One thing we did start doing was collecting sand at all of the different countries we’ve visited. We have them in many different types of bottles on our fireplace, with tags indicating where the sand is from and when we traveled. It’s a great conversation starter and they can’t take it away from you!

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can anyone help me. my current passport is full and I intend travelling to Brazil. There are however, pages where there are only a few stamps on it. There is still space for more. Will they allow me to travel on it even though all pages have stamps on it.

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I have two passports, a British one and a Spanish one. Non EU travel I use my UK one and have many stamps in it. EU travel I use my spanish one and it has no stamps.

To renew my UK passport will cost about £90 and take three weeks. My Spanish one costs £11.50 and only takes 4 days to come back, that includes going to the embassy and it being posted back to me once it has been printed in Spain!!! Also when it is full you can send it back and they will replace it for free but the expiry date is the the same as the old one – all for £11.50 not bad eh?

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Steve, surely it would save you money if you used you Spanish passport for non-EU travel?

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Both are valid at the moment. However, when my UK one expires I really don’t think that I will renew it. I may as well use it up until then, seeing that paid for it

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I agree too, I love passport stamps, they have such a unique nostalgic value… I really miss being able to look through my old passports. Luckily most asian countries still stamp UK passports.

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i am a malaysian who is going to europe in the coming october, if i take trains to travel all the countries will they stamp a passport stamp in every country i visited? and where is the place thats i could find an official to stamp it.

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Hi hold a U.K. passport and very recently went to USA and France. In total I have been to America twice and I have been stamped both times with a single entry stamp. As I am an EU citizen border control are not obligated to stamp my passport in EU countries, but when I visited Paris via the Eurostar, when I was at border control and handed over my passport I just asked the officer if I could have a stamp and he did no problems asked. You can get stamps in EU countries; there’s nothing to say you definitely can’t, but it may also be down to the disgression of the border officers. On my return journey from Paris I was even cheeky enough to ask the uk border controls for a stamp, this was more difficult, but I gave the reason that my boss needs proof of my visit and she gladly stamped my passport and wrote just above the stamp, “on request” so for a trip to Paris via Eurostar I managed to get a French stamp and a UK stamp. I hope this helps.

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