62strat said:

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HollywoodBQ said:

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barbacoa taco said:

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Also I'm guessing OP already looked into this but is there not a passport agency in Austin? You'd think there would be.

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Why would they put a US Passport office in a city populated by college students, government leeches and homeless?

Versus say, Houston where lot of people have to travel overseas for work.

True story, I'm sitting at the bar at Chili's in the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, eavesdropping on some good old boy oilfield worker telling a colorful story which involved his wife going up I-45 in "Youston" to get to Intercontinental.

I've never heard anybody overseas tell colorful stories about back home where back home meant Austin.

It's not like Robert Mueller Airport was a massive international travel hub.

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all of that logic and your story is great and dandy, but there's a passport agency in hot springs AK, Stamford CT, and Portsmouth NH.
The CT and NH location being a fraction of the distance respectively to NYC and Boston than houston and Dallas are.

Then a town in AK with 40k people??

Any logic fails to explain those.

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AK == Alaska
AR == Arkansas

Stamford, CT is the part of Connecticut where the rich people live, or did live anyway. I think this gets covered in Mad Men, when Pete Campbell moves out to Cos Cob, CT and starts taking the train to work in The City. Looks like the Connecticut Passport Agency was opened in 1978.

As far as Hot Springs, AR having a passport office, let me check the list for comparison.
There are 25 passport centers where you can make an appointment and go in.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/get-fast/passport-agencies.html

All of them are in a city that has either an NFL team or an MLB team except for 6. - VT, NH, Tucson, El Paso, CT and AR.

Since VT, NH, AZ and El Paso are on the border, Hot Springs, AR is definitely an outlier.

Looks like the Arkansas Passport Center opened in 2007 and expanded in 2010.
My guess... Clintons pork barrelling. Hillary was Secretary of State after all.

But, it's also only 75 miles from Mena, AR so could be CIA. j/k
https://www.aila.org/infonet/dos-expanded-passport-facility-in-hot-springs

Anyway, no chance Austin is getting a Passport office ahead of say - Tampa, Jacksonville, Charlotte, etc.

In California, there are 3 - San Francisco, LA, San Diego. They'd open one in Las Vegas or Salt Lake before they'd open a new one in Sacramento.

barbacoa taco said:

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I figured they would have passport offices in most major American cities. But according to this map they are pretty few and far between. I've never had to use one, I just get my photo taken and send off all my materials and get my passport. So I guess this makes sense.

But it's also not 20 years ago. Bergstrom is a much busier airport and there are a considerable amount of international flights from there now, though it still pales in comparison to IAH/DFW.

Also, why in the world are you eating at a Chili's in Malaysia?

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Looks like the Houston Passport Agency opened in 1978 so you have to think about Austin v Houston in 1978, never mind my snide comment about the nature of business in the two cities.
https://1997-2001.state.gov/briefings/statements/2000/ps000414a.html

For a quick comparison, the Houston MSA in 1978 had about 2.9M people.
https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/population#!/msa/Houston-The_Woodlands-Sugar_Land%2C_TX
Austin, RR, Georgetown at that time was about 536k.
https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/population#!/msa/Austin-Round_Rock-Georgetown%2C_TX

Those charts show that in 2021, you're looking at 7.2M MSA population for Houston versus 2.3M for Austin.

And if you want to talk about how busy Bergstrom is... Where can you go internationally from Bergstrom nonstop?
Mexico, Central America, DR, Jamaica plus 3 hub airports in Europe - LHR, AMS, FRA.
https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-austin-aus

Houston Bush Intercontinental is a five continent airport. I've personally flown from Houston to Japan, South Korea, Australia, and The Netherlands. I've never been to South America but you can fly there from IAH. It doesn't look like it's available today but in the past, they had nonstops to Nigeria too.


Now for the fun part, why would I go to a Chili's in Malaysia?

When you live overseas, you start to develop cravings for food from home. No matter how hard the Australians tried (and it wasn't very hard), they just couldn't make a hamburger to save their lives. Didn't matter if it was the local white cheddar cheese, the beetroot, the rocket, or "The Lot", their burgers sucked.

Since Australia is English, pretty much everything they eat is bland. The only cuisine item I miss from Australia is the meat pie. Here's a review of my local pie shop. The Mexican Pie they talk about after the 6 minute mark was my go to. And when the bloke talks about "tomato sauce", that's ketchup to us.


I love a Malaysian Rendang Curry but, you can't always find it when you're attending a business conference and they cater in the food. One night we were free to go on our own for dinner and I looked up what kind of International Chains they had - i.e. Hard Rock Cafe, Chili's, Popeye's, etc. About 6 blocks away from my hotel was the Petronas Towers and, they had a Chili's. Done deal.

I've also been to the Chili's in Bangalore where they don't serve Beef burgers but they do serve Buffalo.

Words….

Jackal99 said:

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Words….

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I know... reading is overrated. Comprehension even more so.
I'm on vacation for two weeks and type 60 wpm with a regular keyboard so ... fair warning.

I leave for Puerto Rico on Wednesday so my TexAgs production will drop off sharply.

KFC in Malaysia is made the way they used to make it here, and is very tasty.

Also in the late 90s, WalMart expanded to China - 10 years to finagle a passport office isn't surprising.

This is when you don't listen to Texags. They will let you in day of showing up. Anyway, have fun!

My youngest kid's passport expires in June. Glad we got this month's trip to Australia in before then. The less stress while traveling with family, the better.