Passport Stamps - Simply your pass to explore or your badge of honour?

February 2014, Perth Australia and the end of a long journey from Manchester, UK via London & Kuala Lumpur. Not the first time that we’d been to Oz but I’m still in awe at going to the other side of the world, going down under. For me, I love to have that official record of being somewhere, I love my passport stamp.

Only this time, in a jet lagged daze and not thinking, we headed straight for the passport e-gates. A sight at many airports, these machines can speed up the immigration process but it often means you don’t get the good old fashioned stamp.

I was really disappointed (read pissed off) that I hadn’t got my AUSTRALIA-PERTH AIRPORT stamp in my passport. That stamp well and truly says… ‘i’ve been there’. Sure, photographs of me by Perth’s Bell Tower, having a beer at the Lucky Shag or stood on the Quay Side in Fremantle are hard to contest but having that stamp just makes it official.

Ivan on the other hand didn’t care a bit. To him, a stamp is just a means to an end. It get’s you in the country, it gets him on his holidays.

Call me sad but I do still occasionally enjoy flicking through my passport and remembering all the countries I’ve visited. The United States, Vietnam, Japan, Australia etc etc.

Am I the only one?