One Final Trip with a Loyal Travel Companion

I had a great year in 2014 for various reasons related to travel and even more in my personal life. I plan to write a more complete summary of my year in travel in another post.

One somewhat melancholy note has to due with the fact that I recently took one final trip with my most loyal travel companion. I knew this day was coming, but now that it is finally here, I have to admit some mixed feelings.

This friend was with me on my first international trip way back in 2005, and on many more trips all over the world. We were together when I started traveling frequently for work. Soon after that I caught the travel bug, got involved with points and miles, and got to see the world flying in wide seats and staying in fancy hotels that typically sell for prices far beyond my budget. We’ve traveled together to Europe, North and South America, Asia, Australia and Africa.

Recently I had to say goodbye to this travel partner. I guess one could say I upgraded to a newer model since the old model was getting too old to use anymore.

I’m of course talking about my soon to expire passport.

Some memorable stamps in my old passport

I definitely have a ‘thing’ for passport stamps, and I’ve talked about some past trips and the stamps I got. As we are nearing the end of the year, it frequently is a time of much reminiscing. I’ll do the same by way of some of my more memorable passport stamps.

I had one particularly notable day on my trip around the Golden Triangle with visits to Myanmar, Laos and Thailand.

departing and entering 3 countries in one day is my record

I also discussed my first trip to Africa for a friends wedding, and the process for how I got my visa for Ghana.

Ghana Visa

Some other fun stamps include landing in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day this year:

Landing on the Emerald Isle means a green passport stamp.

Stamps from some of my earliest trips:

Various old stamps including my trip to Europe, when I landed at Schiphol in 2005.

I generally travel with my passport in a travel wallet where I have my elite cards and drink chits. It’s almost always have with me even on domestic trips. I got the United tulip branded wallet as a gift at events around a flight with Captain Denny Flanagan.

There is really have need to travel with my old passport anymore since most of the visas have expired, except for my Turkey E-visa. I only have a few more months of validity with that, and I have no current plans to visit again in that time frame.