I would say it definitely needs 6 months. 4 years ago my wife and I were going from Hong Kong to Bali, and I had 5months and 29 days left to run on my passport, but was told I would need to get a new passport. It was a real pain in the Bum, but we got to the Embassy and got a new passport. I find it ridiculous, when you have a 10 year passport, that's only valid for 9 and a half years ! Utter madness, the only good thing was, it took about 45 minutes to walk out with my new passport !! Good luck on your travels.