19 passport stamps and the stories they tell about my travels

I love my passports. I love to flip through their pages and look at the various passport stamps and visas over and over again, and I always keep my expired passports as very precious souvenirs.

In the earlier years of my blog I had a series of very short posts about different pages from my passport: now here all my favourite passport stamps from that series with the stories they remind me of.

1. Moving to teach English in Japan

When I decided quite a few years ago to pack up my house and job and leave Australia for a while, I realised I’d lost my passport.

Some might see that as a bad omen, but I just saw it as evidence that my messy desk can, sometimes, cause problems. In fact, the passport showed up when I was at the final packing stages, carefully hidden in the zipped pocket of a handbag I rarely used, but not before I’d forked out the dollars for a new passport. But it was kind of nice. My new passport and my new start in life went hand in hand.

That’s why this page of my passport is one of my favourites. There are all the stamps necessary for my first year of a working visa in Japan as a “Specialist in Humanities/International Services”, which sounds so much cooler than “English teacher”. There’s also an Australian immigration stamp showing that I didn’t even return home for a visit until more than two years after I’d left.

I can admit now that I was pretty terrified when these stamps found their way into my passport. I knew I wanted to have a change from life in Australia, but actually doing it was pretty daunting. With the benefit of hindsight (and I guess I had enough foresight to know this then too), it was the best thing I ever did.

2. First time in Russia, on the Trans-Siberian

I don’t remember when I first heard that it was possible to ride a train right the way across Russia, but for many, many years I dreamt of riding the Trans-Siberian. Paul Theroux certainly inspired me with his mentions of the train in his great book The Great Railway Bazaar and I’d long had a fascination with great train journeys.

In any case, moving from a teaching job in Japan to another one in Slovakia led me to the obvious conclusion that the best way to get there would be overland, and that meant taking the Trans-Siberian from Vladivostok to Moscow, with stops at Irkutsk/Lake Baikal and Yekaterinburg along the way. Getting the Russian visa that would allow us to do this wasn’t the simplest thing in the world and involved several trips to a part of Osaka I’d never seen and a bit of a shock that the Russians inside the consulate weren’t quite as friendly as the Japanese people outside it – although to be fair, I think they let us come back after closing time with the required photographs.

Landing in Vladivostok – on an Air Vladivostok flight from Osaka – turned out to be much less problematic than I’d expected. We got waved through with barely a glance, and the agent who organised our homestay registered our passports the next day. Easy. And then the real adventures began.

3. Two weeks in Tunisia

I went to Tunisia a little by chance. Suddenly realising that our Bratislavan jobs would give us a two-week (unpaid but compulsory) vacation over Christmas, I ran to the travel agent to book a flight to somewhere warmer. Most places were sold out but a friendly guy told me a flight to Tunis was the way to go. I went home and googled it, and agreed.

When we arrived in Tunis, it didn’t start too well. We had to get a visa on arrival – fair enough – but we had to pay for it in the local currency (dinar). To get the local currency, we had to pass through immigration.

The stalemate didn’t last too long – immigration simply held me hostage (and our belongings) while my then boyfriend wandered out into the Tunis airport to change some money. Somehow they trusted that he would return. In the meantime, a woman with three small children was noisily having a major panic attack on the bench next to me. Her husband was, I guessed, trying to tell her to snap out of it, but she could barely breathe and eventually the immigration officials got her a wheelchair and a doctor.

But for a trip that started a bit oddly (we did get released through immigration eventually, along with the pretty stamps above), it turned into one of my all-time favourite trips. If you want to retrace my footsteps you can see my two-week Tunisian itinerary for inspiration.

4. Almost getting stuck in Egypt

Just after starting work in Germany, I had the chance to escape to Egypt for a week. It was my one and only real “resort holiday”, borne out of the necessity of a last-minute booking summer peak and the simple desire to go somewhere warmer than what the Germans were calling summer.

As far as resort holidays go, it seemed quite OK (not that I had anything to compare it to), and I did get the chance to visit Luxor and some of those amazing Egyptian sights that we’d studied back in ancient history classes.

The interesting part about these passport stamps is that I nearly didn’t get the “leaving Hurghada” one. After a mix-up at the resort over the promised airport transfer, I ended up being apprehended in the departures lounge by my irate (unpaid) taxi driver and his friend, a police officer, who maintained that he had the power to stop me from leaving Egypt if I didn’t pay the taxi fare the driver thought I owed (I thought the resort owed it to him, not me). I cried poor and emptied my pockets to reveal about 9 Euros in coins, and said that was all I had left after my holiday, and eventually they accepted this and let me depart. Not a very cool way to leave a country, but I blame myself for ever signing up to a resort-style vacation.

5. Loving South Korea

Like every South Korean I’ve met since (and teaching English back here in Australia, I met several hundred of ’em), the immigration officials at Incheon Airport near Seoul were friendly and polite. Unfortunately that didn’t stop them making a mistake and initially stamping my passport to say that I had to leave Korea the same day that I’d arrived – but fortunately they realised, voided the stamp and gave me another pretty one, allowing me to stay 90 days. Unfortunately I only had about 6 days, because I was on holidays from my teaching job in Japan, but I’d love to go back again.

In fact, I think South Korea is a bit like Taiwan – in the sense that there’s so much great stuff to see, that it’s easy to get around and that the people are helpful, and that it’s not too far away from anywhere, yet not that many tourists get there. I know plenty of Australians who go to Japan for a sightseeing trip, but not South Korea. I guess they just need a better publicity machine – perhaps I need to write about them some more!

6. Waiting for a Polish visa

Back when I did my longest stint of travelling throughout Eastern Europe, it was just before any of the countries joined the European Union, and thus it was still while Australians required visas to enter many countries – Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic among them.

When I first left Russia for Estonia, with just a vague plan of having to be in Bratislava in time for a new job, I wasn’t even sure I’d travel through Poland – mainly because of the visa need. But apart from flying over it, there weren’t many options, because everywhere east of Poland demanded a visa from me too. So, I stayed in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius for a few days, took the tram trip out to their Polish embassy twice, and ended up with this pretty visa stamp in my passport.

Looking back, I’m surprised at how restrictive it was. Just a 14-day stay was permitted on this regular visa, and fortunately my job start date didn’t give me more than that anyway, but usually a good backpacker would want to spend a lot more time in Poland. It’s a pretty large country, and has interesting bits in every corner. From the beautiful Tatra mountains in the south, moving up to the gorgeous town of Krakow and the nearby distressing-but-must-visit Auschwitz and Birkenau, and up to the bustling capital of Warsaw, and beyond to the far north – I’d love to go back and explore it all in more depth. And next time, the great thing is that I won’t need a visa.

7. Baltic state hopping

When I was a kid in school, nobody mentioned Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania in geography classes – they were simply a part of the Soviet Union then, and it never really occurred to me that there were such distinct countries tied up in it. But when I backpacked through eastern Europe a few years ago, I took to reciting them – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – listing them from north to south so I could remember the order I would be travelling through them in.

As you can see, even the passport control staff stamped my passport with the stamps in north to south order, and very neatly too. I had a great time visiting these countries, with the highlights being the whole of Estonia, Latvia’s capital Riga and Lithuania’s Curonian Spit.

As far as my passport goes, I just had a minor hitch before entering Lithuania. Back then, it would have still been reasonably rare for an Australian to enter Lithuania from Latvia, and the woman wasn’t quite sure where I was from. She had to get a colleague to check whether I was from Austria or Australia, and whether I could enter the country freely. Luckily I could, did, and lived happily ever after.

8. Taiwan without a visa

I don’t believe I’ve ever been to China, but my passport says I have.

Yep, I spent six days in Taiwan and of course, the passport stamps say R.O.C. – Republic of China, the official Chinese name for Taiwan. I’ve been mentioning the Taiwan/China thing for a few years now – right back to when China was confiscating guide books which mentioned Taiwan as a separate entity – but nothing seems to have changed.

But anyway, my Australian passport got me into Taiwan without a visa – that couldn’t happen in mainland China, so there’s another difference – and I thoroughly enjoyed my stay. Thanks, Taiwan!

9. Nearly missing Vietnam

When I took a holiday in Vietnam while living in Japan, getting my visa was a close shave. As if figuring out how to use the Vietnamese consulate in Osaka wasn’t tricky enough, they then didn’t work with the same efficiency I’d become accustomed to while living in Japan. My visa was issued not, as this sticker might suggest, a full week or more before my trip – as I recall, I got my passport back the day before I had to fly out.

As it transpired, I then got stuck in Bangkok airport (the old one) for about 12 hours. I remember being annoyed that the airline didn’t estimate up front it would take that long, but rather just kept extending the departure time by one or two hours – if I’d known I’d be there for 12 hours, I could have hopped on a bus and toured Bangkok, rather than only seeing the airport. All I remember about the airport is that I wasn’t surprised when I heard they were replacing it with a new one!

But enough gripes: in the end, I got to Vietnam, and had one of my best trips ever.

10. The Czech and Slovak visa

This page of my passport reminds me of a year-long saga that was a tad frustrating at the time. When I ended up living in Bratislava, I had actually been offered a job in Prague, and it was only at the last minute that the school told me they had over-hired in Prague, and would I mind going to live in the Slovak capital instead. I didn’t mind, but I’d only taken care of getting a Czech visa on a short trip back home, and Slovakia had strict rules at the time – pre-EU – stating that I could only apply for a working visa from either my home country (very far away by this time) or from the Czech Republic, if I was legally living and working there.

As a result – and I’m certain that in European Union times this has all disappeared – my school decided they would send me, and a bunch of similarly-troubled teachers, off to Prague with documentation suggesting we worked at the Prague branch, and lived there too, so that we could apply for our Slovak working visa. This required a Czech working visa to start with, but all I had was this tourist visa. Oh, what a saga. Unbelievably, at the end of the year I still had nothing to show for my troubles (apart from several long stints waiting at the Czech embassy in Bratislava) and I spent much of the year nervous every time I re-entered Slovakia from a trip. Thankfully passport control never seemed to care that I was obviously not a tourist there, and I moved on without ever being accused of breaching any rules. Phew.

11. A return to Estonia

Oh, Estonia. How I adore you! My favourite Baltic state and my saviour after nearly overdosing on Russia on the Trans-Siberian. I sneakily managed another quick visit to Estonia when I took my mother to Moscow and St Petersburg. We had to return to Germany and by far the cheapest way was to take the bus from St Petersburg to Tallinn and then take a budget airline flight to Berlin.

That’s why on this passport page you can see me arriving yet again in the Russian border town of Narva, and this time exiting from Estonia’s funky capital, Tallinn. I remember very clearly arriving at Narva, because I knew from my previous trip that the border guards would be very careful about searching the bags of Russians for anything they might be smuggling in. I suspected that as English-speaking Westerners, we wouldn’t be under too much suspicion. Probably without needing to, I reminded my mother that it would be better if we only spoke English when the guards came to us (my mother could speak some Russian, and had been for the previous week or so). But my plan backfired, putting the idea of speaking Russian in her head and she answered the guard in Russian. Fortunately she must have had enough of an accent, and I quickly spoke in loud English, too, and they waved us through.

Pretty much the rest of the bus had their baggage thoroughly searched! Given that we were travelling just with daypacks and they were pretty much stuffed to the brim, I’m glad we didn’t have to go through the process of repacking before we could head off into Estonia proper, on the bus through the countryside to Tallinn. Thanks friendly border guards!

12. A hairy landing in Vladivostok

I actually didn’t plan to go to Vladivostok – as much as I wanted to, since I’d always loved the city’s name and could remember singing about it in the Skyhooks song Jukebox in Siberia – if you haven’t had the pleasure (and can ignore the fact that Vladivostok isn’t actually in Siberia), the chorus goes like this:

Jukebox in Siberia
Pounding out hysteria
Get down get down Vladivostok
Drop a rouble in the slot of that
Jukebox in Siberia

But I’d actually planned to head up through China to join the railway across Russia in (actual) Siberia instead. However, thanks to the SARS outbreak of 2003, my flight from Perth to Hong Kong was cancelled and I rearranged my plans to fly from Osaka to Vladivostok. With Air Vladivostok. Not a good move.

And so it is, that at the moment this passport stamp was punched down in my passport, that I was shaking just a little. My Air Vladivostok flight had not gone well, and after a wobbly landing, the pilot had actually warned us to stand up just a row at a time so we didn’t overbalance the plane. I hope something had gone wrong in the translation, but whatever the case I sure was glad to step foot on the ground at Vladivostok. The surly Russian passport controller examined me way too carefully – I had glasses on, whereas in my passport photo I was wearing contacts, and I think he didn’t like that – but he did give me this stamp, and my first Russian adventure began.

13. Oh Canada, let me get to you …

I’ve only had the pleasure of visiting Canada once, when I took a trip to the west coast while I was living in Japan. I’m dying to go back to see more, because my ten-day exploration of Vancouver and Vancouver Island certainly convinced me that Canada has heaps to offer, and that was really just scratching the surface of a tiny corner of it!

What I do remember, however, about getting to Canada, was the – apologies to all American friends and family – the incredibly unhelpful passport control officers in the United States. I flew from Osaka to Los Angeles, where I had about an hour to transfer to my flight to Vancouver. I wasn’t staying in the US, obviously, and in fact was in rather a hurry to get to my next flight. But the officer insisted that I fill in an address on the US immigration card. I tried to argue my case, but he really insisted, and although he obviously knew it was a big lie, he only let me through when I wrote down “Los Angeles Hilton” on my card. Fortunately, this annoying start didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for my great Canadian holiday though!

14. Storks in Marchegg, Austria

During my wonderful year spent living in Bratislava, Slovakia, I hopped across the border to Austria numerous times. This was pretty easy to do given that I could see the border to Austria from my living room window, and train fares from Bratislava to Vienna were just a few dollars.

There were several different border crossings I used, and one of them was Marchegg. What a great place – home to a stork sanctuary, and a boardwalk to meander around and see storks nesting high up in the trees. The first few times I passed through, it was just a name on a passport stamp, but fortunately someone gave me a good tip and I got to see the storks. I wonder how many of them are still there these days?

15. Working in Germany

One of my most hard-won visas is this “Auftenthaltstitel” for Germany. Having learnt German as a kid at primary school, and gone on with it through high school and university, I was desperate to live in a German-speaking country to have half a chance of getting a second language up to scratch (and I’d long since given up on the idea of perfecting Japanese – the reading and writing’s so hard – or Slovak – the whole language is so hard!).

So while I lived in Slovakia, I tried desperately to get a position teaching English in Germany. Not so easy for someone without an EU passport. Eventually, though, after my prospective employer had to advertise long and wide to prove “nobody else could do the job” (a Canadian ice hockey player who already had German residency tried to apply, but fortunately the German administration realised I was better qualified), I got this lovely pink sticker, and I was allowed to live and work in Heilbronn, Germany. Yay!

16. Re-entering Japan

A lot of the finer points of travel escape your memory when you’re looking back on the great times you had, and it wasn’t until I was browsing my passport again that I remembered how complicated it was when I wanted to take an overseas holiday away from Japan, during the two years I lived there.

Getting the visa to live in Japan was relatively straightforward, because I worked for an enormous English language school that organised the visas for us, more or less. But to leave Japan on holidays and return required a re-entry permit. They weren’t cheap, and you could get a multiple re-entry permit which was cheaper if you knew you’d be leaving the country a couple of times or more within the life of your visa (mine was renewed annually), but all of this meant I had several long stints down at an immigration office standing in line to get stamps in my passport. So some of the mess of these two passport pages below is all about that – the simple act of going on a short overseas holiday.

What would I have done without the help of my more experienced ex-pat colleagues? Filling out forms covered in Japanese characters was way beyond my beginner’s ability. Even finding the immigration office was a challenge. But of course, the reward for successfully negotiating this passport paperwork was that I got to travel – to South Korea, to Taiwan, to Canada, among others. Well worth a bit of hassle, I have to say!

17. Feeling criminal in Heathrow Airport

Landing, for once, in an English-speaking country, I really didn’t expect to have any problems at passport control. Two British airport employees who seemed to be watching the queue (I’m not sure of their real function!) were quite literally having a cup of tea and I felt like all was right with the world.

But then it was my turn at the immigration counter. All of a sudden, I was being quizzed. More than you’d expect. Why? It turned out that my new passport was the problem. I’d run out of pages in my previous passport and applied for a new one via the Australian embassy in Berlin, since I was living in Germany at the time. What I hadn’t realised (and wouldn’t have worried about if I had) was that for some reason, the Berlin embassy had then shipped my application over to London and my new Australian passport actually stated that it had been issued in London. What the British immigration officers didn’t understand was how I could have a new passport issued in London if I hadn’t actually been to London in the last few years. Fair point.

It took some explaining, and some random computer checking on their part, to explain my way out of this one. They let me in. And they let me keep my record of unpleasant experiences at Heathrow intact.

18. Lots of Slovak stamps

I have completely lost track of the number of times I have exited and re-entered Slovakia over the years, but of course particularly during the year that I lived there. I had to look up Bratislava on a map after accepting a job there (some might argue these steps should have been reversed, but I was young and easily pleased back then), but I soon discovered that it was in a really great location.

I’ve seen tourist advertising (and heard from locals themselves) which claim Slovakia is the centre of Europe. A quick glance at Wikipedia’s entry on the geographical midpoint of Europe tells you there are long-running disputes about where this might be, but sadly Slovakia doesn’t quite feature – but just the same, it is certainly in a very central location, and the capital of Bratislava is fantastic because it is less than an hour by train to Vienna (which makes them, disputes notwithstanding, the two closest capital cities in the world). From my balcony in Slovakia, I could see across the borders to both Austria and Hungary. How cool is that?

The central location of Slovakia made it the ideal base for a year of travels and that’s what helped fill up my passport pages with Slovak stamps like the ones above. Most commonly, I would hop on a train and take a day trip to Vienna, but I also drove up to the Czech Republic a few times and down to Hungary a couple of times too, all the while collecting Slovak stamps. Sadly now that all these countries have joined the EU, the days of filling up your passport with these stamps are over, so I’m quite pleased to have them all as a souvenir of my travels.

19. A scenic arrival in Slovenia

I love a good road trip, and road trips in Europe are an entirely different beast to an Australian road trip. Driving across Australia takes days and is all in one country (and while some might find the desert a bit boring, I find it quite refreshing). Driving across Europe means you can constantly encounter an entirely new country. And driving into Slovenia on a summer road trip while I lived in Germany was another one of those moments where I felt that thrill of being about to discover something new.

The first impressions were good. We approached Slovenia through a tunnel, had our passports stamped and then drove down a road lined by enormous fir trees, the mountains towering around us. This was in the middle of summer so I can imagine in winter it would be a snowy scene instead. In essence, this first impression of Slovenia – green and clean – was the right one for my experiences there. Slovenia is quite a special little country, one that was tucked away behind the Iron Curtain yet didn’t suffer quite as badly as most of the others, and has long had help from its close neighbour Italy to keep it modern; it’s one of the richest countries from the former eastern bloc. And it’s lovely. Don’t leave it off your list when you’re exploring Europe!