Quote:
Originally Posted by fishingman
almost all the time is they have other agenda when they detain sm1 in their station witout a passprt during spotchek. The police already knew those tourist 99% nvr bring passport out before going for them. It is in their written law that tourist MUST able to present a valid original passport upon police spotchek.
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As far as I know, in all civilized countries the law prescribes that a foreigner
must have the passport with him at all times, to be ready to demonstrate he is a legitimate visitor in case of police check.
Try to come to Europe or USA, do something wrong or just be stopped by police for a random check in the street. Do not expect that a smile and "I am Singaporean" without your passport would be enough to leave. Most likely, you would be suspected to be an illegal immigrant, from China, India, somewhere in SEA.
HOWEVER, unless police has a special agenda or reasons to suspect that something is wrong, such rule is never tightly enforced till the consequence to detain someone until he provides the passport (again, I speak about "civilized countries", and I include Indonesia).
MY ADVICE is:
1) When you travel abroad,
never bring the passport with you, when you go out from your hotel. The worst thing that could happen to you is to lose your passport or have it stolen, much worse than having the wallet stolen with all cards and other documents.
It happened to me many years ago in the USA and it was REALLY A NIGHTMARE: you need to go to police, contact the nearest Consulate or Embassy (hope it is in the same town where you are, but most likely it will be not), wait they prepare a replacement document, wait they mail it to you, pay the expenses, and ONLY THEN you can leave the country. You might even waste your flight return ticket, since all this may take several days.
2) At all times, keep with you
your national picture ID and a
paper photo-copy of your passport. It has no legal value, but it will be enough in case of police check (again, unless police has a special agenda or reasons to suspect that something is wrong).
3) As additional measure of safety, make a scan of your passport and put it online (not public on your Facebook, I mean on some URL link which is accessible by anyone who knows the link but not if you don't know it). This will be useful for example if you lose the paper photocopy and need to print another one.
I am used to travel in all continents and I never had a problem following the procedure above. I have been stopped for checks by police in many countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, of course Batam, as well as various countries in South and Central America (countless times in Colombia) or even in Africa.
Sometimes I had to pay a "tip", when the goal of police was the tip and not ensuring the safety of their country, but nobody ever questioned my paper photo-copy of the passport. They know that keeping the real passport with you when you go out is not a good idea.