Carrying a copy of your passport is an excellent idea. Carrying your actual passport around is a great way to lose it and spend the rest of your vacation in an immigration office dealing with paperwork.

Ya I carried a laminated two-sided copy of the info and signature page of my passport scaled down to the size of a credit card/driver's license. Worked throughout Western Europe and Latin America for authorizing credit card purchases in person and entry into venues. Cost me $2 to make at FedEx Office/Kinkos and an employee did it all for me, since I came at an off-peak hour. Of course at official border crossings, you need the real passport.

+ driving license as valid ID.

Driver licenses are useless as IDs abroad.

I live outside of the US for most of the year and can say that my driver's license is not at all useless as an ID.

In fact, I have been at police checkpoints in two countries where they refused to see my passport and specifically requested that I present my driver's license - but these were both when I was driving, of course.

An Australian one is fine in the UK, you can even drive using one.

That's pretty amazing how Australians can use a driver's license to drive a car.

They will actually sometimes accept them here in Vietnam for various things but Vietnam is still kind of the wild west legally. Certainly not a good idea to count on it.

They are useless in China, but mine expired 8 years ago.

At least in Germany driving licenses aren't valid ID.

I was just fine with drivers license for random check.

It depends on why they're checking you and what mood they're in. Often times they'll accept it just to make everybody's life easier, but they don't have to.

No such requirement in the UK, although it can be helpful in that if you are stopped by the police and they don't believe you are who you say you are, then they _may_ detain you until your identity can be confirmed.

No such requirement in Germany either. We have a national ID that you're required to have somewhere but you're not required to have it on you. Same as above, though: in case you're involved in some fracas, they may detain you until your identity can be checked.

Papers please!

Some would argue what carrying your passport at all times is riskier than facing a small fine.

I would advise you to at least keep a copy of it. In France that I know best, they could book you up to four hours to find your identity without any suspicion of wrongdoing. But if you carry a copy of it, everything changes, because now they have to either accept it as true or make a case for falsification of papers ID.

Same in Thailand. The copy is not legally valid, but helps a lot when asked for your ID. If you show enough respect to the officer then it might be sufficient.

Side note I lived in Thailand for several years and was never asked for an ID.

It's not a legal requirement in Thailand. Whomever is telling them this is wrong.

Yes, but it's a super good idea if you're getting out of major cities. I've been stopped on trains a few times and asked for my passport. If you can't produce it, you get 24-48 hours to produce at a police station, which is a ballache

> AFAIK, having a legal identification document at all times is a legal requirement even for citizens in the EU, or at least in Slovenia.

Nowhere in EU countries there a requirement for their citizens to _carry_ a legal ID. Some may require you to _possess_ at least a valid one (at home maybe) and all of them require that you are _able to be identified_ by police officers (this means you accept to go to a police station to check your identity).

Did you do a web search before you wrote that?

The first hit when I did:

http://www.iamsterdam.com/en-GB/living/official-matters/comp...

"In 2005 the Dutch government introduced a law to improve public safety stating that everyone must be able to produce valid identification when requested by the police or supervisory officials. Those who fail to produce vailid identification risk being fined. Read on to learn more about valid identification, and to whom the law is applicable."

That's correct. Everybody needs to be able to produce an ID when asked for it by the police. Note however that it is not common for police to ask you for your ID, so not everybody carries it at all times. You get a fine if you don't have it on you or the police can take you to their station.

link (in dutch) http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/paspoort-en-identifi...

> Nowhere in EU countries there a requirement for their citizens to _carry_ a legal ID.

To all the downvoters: please PROVIDE A SOURCE (bill, act, legal review, any language is OK) that states that a citizen of a EU country must _carry_ a legal ID while staying in that country.

Please note I wrote in the original comment and in this comment _carry_, not _provide_.

As I wrote, there are states that require you to _provide_ an ID to police officers. But that doesn't mean that you have to _carry_ it with you all the time, just that you can go back home to take it or go to a police station and be identified there.

Please do not post authoritative-sounding advise when you obviously don't know anything about the issue. There are several EU countries where carrying legal ID at all times is law.

I'm fairly certain it's a requirement in France.

Not that I know of. At least, for French citizens, within the scope of identity checks ("contrôle d'identité"), you need to be able to prove your identity but there is no required list of established means to do so (and some are not even documents, e.g., appeal to a witness): http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/particuliers/F1036.xhtml#...

The relevant article of the penal procedure code ("Code de procédure pénale"), 78-2, is especially broad: "by any mean" ("par tout moyen").

To my knowledge, the French state does not even require that a French citizen even requests or obtains an identity card or a passport (although having some ID document may be useful in practice).

From living in France, I always had the impression it was mandatory. All of my French friends thought it was bizarre that I would go out without my UK passport on me as they always kept their ID card with them at all times. My girlfriend's (whose French) parents never drive anywhere without ID on them (in addition to their driving license) and used to have a go at me for not doing the same.

All anecdotal though and maybe you're right that the letter of the law does not require it. The UK certainly doesn't.

I never had an encounter with the gendarmes in the 5 years I lived there so I never found out first hand.

Edit: looks like you're right. This article does a nice job of breaking it down: http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/2011/12/26/fouilles-controles-did...

What I said applies to French citizens, not foreigners. For foreigners the situation is less clear, in some cases you need to be able to show your passport and visa http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/particuliers/F31208.xhtml -- if you are within the scope of a visa exemption I would imagine that you would need to justify it by producing a passport of the correct nationality and supporting documents if any.

(Personally, I always keep my passport with me when travelling abroad.)

In France I always have my ID with me but I know friends who don't (e.g., did not bother replacing a lost ID). Having lived 24 years in France I have never been asked to produce ID by the police or gendarmes. (That said, I am white, not often involved in demonstrations and such, etc.; other people's experiences may vary. :-/)

generally It's not required for nationals, but mandatory for foreigners.

It is in Germany.

It's not a requirement in the UK.

it is not a legal requirement in the UK, which is in the EU.