Loosing Passport and/or Credit/ATM Cards when travelling

Faltermyer

Im going to be tavelling alone through mainland europe in July/August, well alone for a good bit of the time anyway. Im starting in Faro/Lisbon Portugal and finishing in Budapest, Hungary.

Ive heard the idea of emailing yourself all the vital info- Scan of Passport, Credit Card details and cancellation phone number, etc.


Passport -What can an Irish Embassy actually do for you? If your passport gets nicked/lost, can they arrange an emergency one??
Or is it simply a matter of having to return home immediately?
Im wondering from the point of view that id be changing town/city/country every 2-3days. If I were to loose my passport does that mean I have to either spend the rest of my time in the country i loose it in or go home straight away??

And what if there is no Irish Embassy in the country you are in?

Credit/ATM Cards - This is how ive handled money when travelling last year and the year before(though they were shorter trips). To be honest I never really bothered to look into what would happen if I lost them/they got stolen(probably cos I wasnt travelling alone then)??
Obviously its fairly straight forward to have them cancelled.
But where do you go from there if youre in the middle of your trip?

Anyone know any more about this or had experience of it??

LegacyUser

Good questions man. Would love to know these myself.

BC

The most important thing is not to carry everything in the same location (eg. in the same pocket), to reduce the risk of loosing everything. I always leave a photocopy of my passport and my account details with someone at home so i can phone if i need them.

If you loose your passport you need to contact the nearest embassy/consulate. i don't know of any country that doesn't have at least an Irish consulate. If you just need to go home they issue an emergency travel document, if you are continuing travel they issue you with a temporary passport, not sure how long it takes but yes you would have to wait for it, i'd say it just takes a matter of hours rather than days. You also need to report the loss to the police, you can't get the emergency passport without the police report.

If you loose your credit card the most important thing is to cancel it ASAP. They can send you a new emergency one but obviously you need to remain in a particular location to recieve it. If you haven't lost your passport/drivers licence, only your CC, as far as i know most CC companies will arrange a money transfer for you (Western Union type) so that you can get your hands on some cash. You need the passport/drivers licence for ID to recieve it though. Although to be honest when that happened to my friend, it was quicker to get a mate to send the money via western union than it was to get the CC company to do it.

In emergency situations the Irish consulate will do a money transfer for you too.

Faltermyer

Bugger!
And theres me expecting an answer when I saw an update to my thread!

EDIT - posted before BC!

Faltermyer

BC wrote:

if you are continuing travel they issue you with a temporary passport,

you would have to wait for it, i'd say it just takes a matter of hours rather than days.

They can send you a new emergency one but obviously you need to remain in a particular location to recieve it.

Ah, well im not that deluded!
Having to wait somewhere for a few days would be grand If I know everything was getting sorted.

I was more worried that I could be 2weeks into a 6week trip and have to go home/stay the other month in whereever I was.

Think ill ring the Credit Card company in the next week or so to check it out.

And possibly give the Dept of Foreign Affairs(???) a buzz to confirm on the emergency passport stuff...

I take it your friend lost Passport and CC then yeah?

rugbug86

i always photocopy my tickets and passport and travel insurance before i travel. that way if anything goes wrong you have details for the embassy. they will issue you with a temporary passport to get you home then you'll apply for a new one here.
credit cards im not sure, you definately have to cancel them. i think then you use western union (or similar) to get cash transferred.

BC

Thankfully there were two of them, and while they lost 2 sets of credit cards, they only lost 1 passport so a western union money transfer was the way to go. It took less than an hour to get money to them (although western union practically ask for the colour of your knickers before they do anything!!!!!).

Faltermyer

Was the Temporary passport definitely ok to continue travelling on though??

Tuesday_Girl

Faltermyer wrote:

Was the Temporary passport definitely ok to continue travelling on though??

I lost my passport a few months ago in San Francisco, I got an emergency one within minutes of arriving at the Embassy (I had called ahead with the details they needed, then brought the required paperwork with me). It's like a regular passport, except it's only valid for a limited period, so no problems travelling on it.