With my recently obtaining my permanent residency, I have been having thoughts about home, homeland and passport country. Anyone with a Malaysian passport will know how difficult it is to move around on a whim. Malaysia as a homeland is fabulous. Would never change that. Malaysia as a passport country can be tedious. Visas are required almost everywhere and the process can be a nightmare...except Turkey. Funnily enough, among the family I would have the easiest time entering Turkey as I can get my visa from the immigration counter, for free, while the rest of the Unit will have to pay a fee and obtain the visa from a seperate counter at the arrivals hall. Back to my point. I had initially planned to stay in KL while Doug goes off to Sydney for data collection purposes from Mid-Nov to mid-December. We were getting great rates from an airlines that goes through Abu Dhabi. Did the research. Airlines not great if we encounter a problem, but not so bad if flights go smoothly. Only hitch was the apparently "disgrace" of an airport in Abu Dhabi. K, our trusty travel agent reassured us that we would get a hotel for the 19 hour transit. So it was all systems go. Until we discovered that the transit hotel was fully booked. And although we could get another hotel, I would need a transit visa. And to get a transit visa, I would need to have an invitation letter issued by someone in Abu Dhabi. Funnily enough, I dont happen to have any friends in Abu Dhabi. I thought of just staying in the secured area while D took the kids to the hotel. He then reminded me how painful the 14 hour transit in Changi was, and that is consistently voted the best airport in the world. He was not about to leave me in an airport reviewed as "hellish" for 19 hours and take a baby and a toddler into an unknown city. As he says, if it is as disorganised as Delhi, "I would rather not go to Sydney". So we looked at other options since Abu Dhabi was definitely out of the question. Flights significantly more expensive on other airlines so we thought of looking at all of us going to Sydney. Lo and behold, it is much cheaper for us to fly directly to Sydney via San Francisco than to fly to KL. So now plans have changed. We are all going to Sydney and we will fly back to KL mid Dec for a break hopefully using airmiles. Now all I need is a US transit visa. At least I know loads of Americans. I am now seriously thinking of changing my passport country.