Check Your Passport Expiration Date — For Certain Countries, It May Be Sooner Than You Think

this is a public service reminder.

update: for those seeking closure, my brother talked to someone at the US Consulate in Hong Kong on Friday (i’m writing this Tuesday morning after all this) who told him to come back Monday morning to get a new passport. He had to pay the regular fee (not sure if expedited fee as well) but got a brand-spanking-new temporary passport. It’s only got a handful of pages and is good for one year, but he also got some paperwork entitling him to a new full passport for free since he paid for it already. He joined us in Penang last night. For those who know my brother, this situation might sound eerily similar to when he got his passport stolen in Spain (along with everything else) 10 years ago and had to get a new one in Barcelona. My brother, everyone!

Yes, that’s me in high school. Note the floppy hair that was popular in the mid-’90s.

this year, our family vacation* is to Malaysia and Hong Kong. at least for some of us it will be.

(*yes, we still do family vacations with my parents even though my brother and i are in our 30s — who better to enjoy traveling with than the people who brought travel into our lives?)

my brother and his wife left today for Hong Kong (where he will be for a couple days before we all are supposed to meet up in Malaysia; everyone is converging via separate itineraries) and he called from SFO in a semi-panic because his passport expires in less than three months and he found out that Malaysia is one of those countries that requires validity of 6 months from date of entry.

which means he will likely not be allowed to board in Hong Kong, or even worse, be turned around when he gets to Penang.

so yeah, he might just have a couple extra days in Hong Kong…(that’s my default assumption, sadly, but if he manages to get in to Malaysia, i’ll update this post!)

as a reminder, please check your destinations’ specific policies regarding passport validity especially as you near its expiration date. travel.state.gov is a great resource. i found a summary of worldwide requirements, but i cannot vouch for its correctness.