I was once told by someone that by international law your passport should never leave your sight while it is being handled by the border agent. Having crossed 50 borders, and some multiple times, I can tell you that whether or not this is true, you must often take a leap of faith when it comes to handing your passport to someone.

Just recently, I crossed the land border from Peru to Chile. I’d taken a 10 hour bus ride to reach the crossing before dark as I knew Chile was two time zones ahead, in itself and odd experience: to lose 2 hours at a border crossing. With reservations in the northernmost town of Chile, I wanted to arrive before reception closed for the evening.

There are three options for crossing the border at this location. The one I desired most was a train ride from … to Arica. Precise information on this train schedule was scarce and online sources even called into doubt whether the train was still in operation. Another encumbrance to going by train was that the train station is located far from the bus terminal where I’d be arriving.

The most affordable option is the bus, but another more unusual option exists, which saves you waiting at the border while 50 people are processed through customs. You can hire a shared car. Imagine an Uber driver who does nothing more than drives groups of people back and forth across the border all day long.

At the western entrance to the International bus terminal, you stand in line while someone calls cars forward to pick up their fares. Every seat is filled in any random vehicle that has a permit to enter the bus station terminal. The driver then grabs all of the passenger passports and disappears for 5-10 minutes.

I have no idea where the driver went, but eventually he returned and we made our way for the border. Adding to the peculiarity of the experience, we still had to wait in line as we crossed through both Peruvian and Chilean customs. The process took about 30 minutes for the five of us so I can’t imagine what the wait would have been like if we had to wait for an entire busload to be processed.

At least three times before, I’ve had my passport taken from my sight so I was fairly relaxed despite not knowing what the driver had originally done with it. The first time, and certainly the most disconcerting was when I crossed the border from Croatia to Montenegro.

As we pulled into the Croatian customs, the bus conductor collected everyone’s passport. He then stepped off the bus, presumably to get us stamped out of Croatia, but then the bus began to move. Immediately you could sense everyone’s dread as the bus became eerily quiet. Eventually people began to whisper their concerns about our passports.

Five minutes later, we arrived at Montenegro customs, and after 15 minutes the bus proceeded again, and this time panic really began to sink in. That was until the conductor appeared at the front of the bus and began to hand us back our passports which had been stamped out of Croatia and into Montenegro.

Because there was a door between the front of the bus and the passenger section, what we hadn’t been able to see during our journey through customs was that the conductor had gotten back on the bus after each customs point. The experience prepared me somewhat for an even more disconcerting abduction of my passport.

The border between Malaysia and Thailand can be traversed via a ferry between two islands, each belonging to these respective countries. Before boarding the ferry, you hand your passport to the customs official in Malaysia. You then board the ferry and concern sets in as you depart the terminal having last seen your passport on the island. Upon arrival, you must wait on the beach at Thai customs, and just as in the case with Montenegro, an official eventually comes out to call your name to pick up your passport. What makes this somewhat challenging, is you must be able to discern your name as spoken with a Thai accent. Fortunately, they call out the country first so at least you know when to be listening.

In addition to my legal border crossings, I have at least one illegal border crossing in my history and one experience going over Trump’s wall. While it may be convention to not let your passport out of sight, there are many times when there is no other way to cross the border than to take a leap of faith and respect the process of the country in which you want to be a guest.

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