Never Put a Novelty Souvenir Stamp on Your Real Passport
If you travel often, then one day you may be faced with an offer to purchase a souvenir stamp for your passport. Antarctica offers a stamp at some of its science stations, Machu Picchu offers a stamp at the entrance to Inca ruins , and the city of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in Wales offers a special stamp that you can put on your passport at one of its shops. Except you shouldn’t. At least not on your real passport.
On the fifth page of your US passport, you will find a note stating that “Change or damage to a passport” is prohibited and that “only authorized officials of the United States or foreign countries may stamp, mark, or supplement this passport.” This week, Travel + Leisure published the story of a British woman, Tina Sibley, who did not heed a similar warning in her British passport and added one of those Machu Pichu stamps, effectively invalidating her passport.
Sibley discovered the problem when two different airlines refused to allow her to board the airport. The stamp ultimately cost her a few extra days where she was, and travel to the embassy to get documents in case of an emergency.
Read: huge headache. Everything for the brand is new. You can read her personal account of the incident in the Facebook post here .
While new passport stamps that look like the real ones are obviously problematic, the advice goes with anything you might think of adding to your passport. The only thing that should be included is the stamps added by the official border guard.
If you really want to collect novelty stamps on your travels (they are cool), save them for your travel diary. Or, if you really need it to be part of your real passport, consider placing a stamped sheet of paper and placing it in your passport or passport holder in a way that can be easily removed when it comes time for an assessment. border. patrol