What's the coolest stamp in your passport?

My coolest stamp is a full-page, holographic visa from Indonesia. It’s quite colorful and the background consists of holograms for each island in the country. Of course they had to stamp “USED” across the entire page. I suppose that adds to the splendor of a cool visa.

I have a series of stamps in my passport that bring back some exciting and lovely memories of when I visited 4 countries in 4 days earlier this summer. Slovenia -> Croatia -> Serbia -> Romania. Perhaps “visited” is not the best word since we were basically riding straight through, but it was a great adventure nontheless. I just wish I had asked the boarder guards to stamp on the same page so all the consecutive dates would line up nicely. Oh well, better luck next time.

They still use them, although not quite so many it seems. I went to Egypt a couple of years ago, and the visa fee paid for a couple of postage stamp-type things that you stick in the passport and get rubber-stamped. It’s right on the first page of my passport, and caused a couple of raised eyebrows and questions when I entered the USA. (“Arabic writing? What country is this? When were you there? How long for? Why? Did you join any terrorist groups while you were there?” :rolleyes: )

I have a stamp from a Russian research base in Antarctica. I think that’s pretty damned cool.

I like my Serbia stamp, both because it’s in Cyrillic and because of the memories.

I like the old stamp I have from Japan, it is a two tone blue and green number.

Also, there was something weird that happened in South America, I seem to have a missing day while crossing from Chile to Argentina, or the other way around.

I seem to recall the one I got in Russia being pretty cool… Two-headed griffen state seal, cyrillic, etc. Sweden’s was pretty boring design-wise, but they used swirly multicolored ink pads. Those are the only ones that stand out in memory.

But it isn’t stamped.

I’ve been to France twice and they didnt’ stamp it either time. :frowning:
My dad’s old passport is pretty cool. I like the French Morrocco stamp.

They’ll usually stamp it if you ask.

I have stamps from all over Europe, including the USSR, Soviet Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, etc. Also stamps from Egypt, South Africa, Tanzania. But the coolest has to be…

Timbuktu!

The coolest one is in my old passport. It’s a student visa for Germany from 1991-2. Pretty colors and stuff.

Funny story: Earlier this year I was returning to the states from Germany. I was feeling proud of myself for speaking German so well while I was there, and so when I went through customs, I asked “Daff ich eine Stempel haben?” The guy looked up at me quickly, gave me kind of a funny look, and then slyly set his stamp in front of me as if he were giving it to me. Apparently I had asked him for the entire stamp! Of course I immediately realized what I’d done, and turned BEET RED. I’m still not sure what I should have said but we both had a good laugh, and I was gracefully but utterly humiliated. Got my stamp though, dammit!

They offered me the option of having one or not. I asked why and they said that if I wanted to go to an Arabic country in the future the stamp would pretty much keep me out. I felt sort of insulted by that so I took one.

My favorite stamp was Nepal - at the time it was very ornate and complex. Burma was cool too - As I remember it had about three misspellings.

That’s what they get for trying to put part of it in English.

TV

That wins my vote for coolest passport stamp.

Timbuktou is a hell whole, but they do have an int’l airport. Two places that fit the image of Timbuktou are Djenne and Goundam… which for my money should be the new Timbuktou since it is waaaaaaay out there.

I work overseas for the past 20 years so I have lots of stamps. My favorite is an administrative notice from the mayor of a small village in Southern Sudan from 1974. I was staying with a family and there weren’t any tourists around. It’s typed on an old typewriter plus it is a carbon copy was well. Very officious.
“Please be aware that there are lions walking in the village at night. Please be aware that you must stay in your house at night to avoid the lions. Please be aware not to walk in the village at night because you might meet the lions…” Now that is a client oriented govt message.

On the contrary, Timbuktu is not a hell-hole, but rather a shithole. I agree on Djenne. We drove there on one long, hellish occasion, but the place is striking. I also liked Bandjiagara.

Bon Bini
Aruba

I want to go back!

I have several China stamps, pretty nice looking.

How about when they stamp it but don’t bother putting ink on the stamp? That pisses me off.

The only foreign stamp that is actually visible on my passport is Germany, and that’s only because I got confused and wandered out of the secure area while I had a layover there. Most of the European countries don’t even look at your passport on arrival.

I have 46 pages of stamps in my passport. Best ones are Macau, Nepal, Thailand, Dubai, India, Vietnam, China. Not necessarily in that order.

I too have a couple of those. What’s more impressive though is the laminated photo ID card (with fingerprint and all!) one gets in lieu of a stamped extension. Those of us who’ve dealt with Spanish immigration are sure to understand how difficult is to obtain one of these.

However, the one that blows my mind every time I see it is the two page student visa for Ireland. The actual stamp is far from impressive, rather bland actually, but the date of entry, Sept. 11, 2001 speaks volumes. And the kicker, I flew out of Boston. Talk about dodging a bullet.

[QUOTE=Fretful Porpentine]
The one that gives me the best bragging rights is probably Bosnia-Herzegovina, QUOTE]

You got one? How recently? I went in overland via Croatia as an election monitor in '98 & they didn’t stamp any of us. Have the Croatian one through.

Cambodia’s a full page visa with multiple stamps, as are Nepal & Vietnam. All are pretty cool. They better be, for what a visa costs!

Signed into Estonia, stamped out.

Multiple-page Qatar work visas, almost all in Arabic.

Tunisia looks cool, although small. Same for UAE.

Guatemala’s stamp has a cool quetzal.

Most of the rest are mundane-looking.

Got an East German stamp in Berlin for 1 mark as a gag in '96. German border guard on exit was NOT amused…

  • Crandolph

I have a couple Egyptian stamps, one entering, one leaving. I just like 'em cause Arabic is pretty to look at.