A vacation is supposed to help you escape from the stress and chaos of your everyday life. It should be all long walks on the beach and lingering over candle-lit dinners or exploring colorful bazaars and hiking nature trails. It should not be having an IV drip inserted into your arm or hanging around a police station for two days straight. Unfortunately, Murphy’s Law dictates that it’s when you’re relaxing poolside with piña colada in hand that disaster will strike.
Whether your travel is for business or pleasure, navigating the intricacies of a foreign bureaucracy or medical system can be a nightmare, particularly if all you want to do is get home. But a little bit of knowledge and planning goes a long way—hopefully as far as you’re going.
Before you go.
Review the country-specific travel information at the U.S. State Department’s Web site. Not just for passport applications, you can also use the site to sign up for travel alerts, get safety and health tips, learn about student and teacher discounts, and register with an embassy. If you’re an American citizen and going somewhere dangerous or staying longer than a month, it’s a good idea to register with the embassy or consulate where you’re traveling. If you’re traveling to a country where your own does not have diplomatic relations (for example, the U.S. and Bhutan or North Korea), register in an adjacent country and find out what third party represents your government’s (and your) interests there.
Travel with a list of emergency contacts at home and abroad, including that of the local embassy or consulate and the U.S. State Department’s Overseas Citizen Services (1-888-407-4747 in the U.S., or 1-202-501-4444 from overseas). Also, leave photocopies of your identification, passport, itinerary, and contact information while traveling with a friend or family member at home.
Find out your health insurance provider’s travel coverage. (Medicare, for one, does not cover any medical care outside of the U.S.) You might want to get additional travel insurance. To be super safe, bring copies of your medical records with you.
If your passport magically disappears.
These things seem to have a way of walking off all on their own. Leave a post-it note with your local address while traveling in your passport, so if it really has been lost, and not stolen, a Good Samaritan can return it. Stash photocopies of your passport’s information page and any visas in your hotel safe or money belt. As soon as you realize your passport is missing, report it to the authorities; a police report may not be necessary to obtain a new one, but it will certainly expedite things. At the very least, you’ll need an affidavit detailing the circumstances under which the passport went missing. Often you can do this at the embassy.
