In the spirit of living an informed life, I wanted to share a helpful tip as a fellow citizen of the world that I unpleasantly learned on a recent trip to Sydney, Australia: check and protect your spine (not just your back, let me explain).
With the advent of electronic passports and the variances in vendors for such specialised paper products, one can forget that the most frequently handled pages of a passport are the cover and the pages adjacent to it. Unfortunately for frequent travellers, this also means that wear and tear increases the probability of severe damage (in my case, the cover and pages decided to divorce during my trip). To cut a long story short and to save yourself from an unexpected fiasco in transit, remember to check and protect the spine of your passport. And from now on, I know exactly what part of my doc to take care of - and now, so do you.