Do you take pleasure in the prosaic aspects of everyday life? Do you get just as much of a kick out of the commonplace and the ordinariness of your surroundings as you do the exotic and atmospheric? Alain de Botton writes in The Art of Travel about the travelling mind-set and its main characteristic: receptivity. He says what really defines us as travellers is our receptiveness, how we approach new places: "We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is or is not interesting. We irritate locals because we stand in traffic islands and narrow streets and admire what they take to be unremarkable small details. We risk getting run over because we are intrigued by the roof of a government building or an inscription on a wall. We find a supermarket or a hairdresser's shop unusually fascinating. We dwell at length on the layout of a menu or the clothes of the presenters on the evening news. We are alive to the layers of history beneath the present and take notes and photographs." Is that you? That's me all over. This, for instance, is a pic I took in Brussels of some abandoned furniture and trash with this amazing mural as a backdrop. I love it and all that it tells me. I remember my husband and I spending ages taking our snaps and the locals looking at us curiously as they passed by. Why is that?

For those of you who don't like hanging around airports, who don't take some weird pleasure in the tediousness of travel, and who can't simply enjoy those moments of travel anticipation over a glass of bubbly in an airport lounge - we know who are you: you just want to get there - Daily Candy has some advice. Check out Bored Until Boarding for tips on how to occupy your time, from meditating and downloading podcasts to listen to in the taxi on the way to the airport, to tackling to-do lists and playing travel scrabble to escape terminal boredom. And what about: deleting messages on your cell phone (or even calling friends?); deleting emails in your in-box (or just sending a few?); writing a to-do list for when you arrive (mine always begins with: buy a local SIM card); doing some duty-free shopping (something for the hotel fridge?); reading about your destination if you're travelling for pleasure (or even for work); or simply talking to your travelling companion (or - crazy as it sounds - the person you're sitting next to!) Any other ideas?

If waiting for your luggage to come off the carousel excites you - you can't wait to get outside the terminal and see what's out there, right? - or one of your favorite film scenes is the one in Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express where the couple fool around with the model airplane in bed, then you're probably an air travel junkie like me. There are some inspirational blogs out there about air travel, airports, airlines, and the aviation industry: Airline Confidential by Richard Havers and Christopher Tiffney, authors of the book of the same name, is an engaging read about the fun of flying, the glamour of air travel, "the crazy wacky world of airlines", and people behaving badly and bizarrely; Another Passport Stamp is a blog about a London-based, American flight attendant's travels, layovers and quests for yet another passport stamp, sprinkled with some delicious eavesdropping and gossip; while Yu Hu Stewardess is the cheeky blog of a 'fly girl' who claims her stories are true but the details have been changed because "nobody wants to get fired or sued" - she hasn't written in a while so let's hope she wasn't fired, but there's some scintillating stuff in her archives! The Wings Stayed On is a commercial pilot's behind-the-scenes blog with some revealing 'day in the life' descriptions while Flight Blogger, sub-titled "if you fly fast enough, the sun never sets", covers the nuts and bolts of the aviation industry - literally - as he takes a look at where production is at on new aircraft (this one's only for the obsessives perhaps). The Airline Blog covers news and rumors in the industry; Thirty Thousand Feet is a blog about all things aviation with a portal with links to more blogs and sites about airlines, airports, and airplanes; while Aircrew Buzz is an aviation news blog with commentary on current events and issues. On a more practical note, In Flight HQ has a tech bent, offering up "tools, tips and techniques for being productive at 30,000 feet"; while One Bag blogs about "the art and science of travelling light", something as a travel writer I find impossible to master with a bag full of technology, books, press kits, and research materials to cart around.

"Up up and away, with TAA, the friendly, friendly waaaaaay". That was the jingle for long gone Australian airline TAA. My precocious little sister Felicia, aged three, upon seeing the airline logo on the side of the plane, once sang the song at the top of her lungs from the top of the stairs as we boarded a TAA flight in Sydney. We were flying alone and the name cards the air ‘hostess’ had pinned to our chests identified us as junior jetsetters. While the adult passengers and airline staff around us giggled at my cute sister's capricious song, I, taking my jetsetter status a little too seriously for an eleven year old, was terribly embarrassed at the time. Now that moment is one of my fondest childhood travelling memories. My love of air travel, airlines, airplanes and airports was also cemented on that trip.

Although I love everything and anything to do with flying, as I declared in yesterday's blog, I’m not a fan of take-off or landing. I agree with Alain de Botton in The Art of Travel that "few seconds in life are more releasing than those in which a plane ascends to the sky" and I appreciate the "psychological pleasure" of flying he writes so eloquently about, but I think I equally enjoy hanging out at airports and the sense of anticipation that builds as we wait for a flight. I like to read while I wait to board, and naturally I love reading anything to do with airports, airplanes and airlines. A few favorites: Airports: A Century of Architecture, Hugh Pearman's historical and pictorial celebration of the "most exciting places on earth"; Marc Auge’s wonderfully intelligent meditation on airports (and shopping malls, motorways, etc) in Non Places: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Supermodernity; and Alastair Gordon’s compelling Naked Airport: a Cultural History of the World’s Most Revolutionary Structure.

The sleek airport interior architecture pictured is Bangkok’s new Suvarnabhumi International Airport. I wonder what the young couple pictured are reading.

I actually enjoy air travel, especially long haul. I'm not a fan of take off and landing, but when I'm up there I still love looking out the window at the incredible cloud formations. Especially at sunset or sunrise. I like to savor that first glass of wine and salty crackers, to discuss the menu with my husband and decide what to eat, and when I'm flying Emirates, I enjoy flicking through their impressive entertainment program and deciding on the films, tv programs and radio shows we're going to kick back to. Which is why I relate to travel writer Pico Iyer who celebrates air travel in 'The Golden Age of Travel' over on Jetlagged: Navigating the Unfriendly Skies, the New York Times' new travel blog. Iyer argues that air travel has never been as comfortable, easy or as affordable as it is now. My husband and I get on and off planes like most commuters do buses and trains - you don't want to know how many flights we took last year - so, aside from the increasingly bad airline food we've experienced of late, I have to agree with Iyer. Criticizing those who complain about airport security and lost luggage, Iyer wonders whether it isn't "the democracy of travel that many of us are objecting to these days when we speak of more crowded planes and long lines at the airport". And I think he has a point. I like the fact that in the UAE, for instance, most of the passengers using the excellent low-cost airline Air Arabia are labourers, construction workers and truck drivers travelling between Dubai and their homes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, and so on. Their check-in luggage includes, alongside gifts for their families (boxes of dates, toys for the kids), rolled-up foam mattresses, blankets, and enormous containers of clean water - the necessities most of us take for granted. The cheap flights mean that rather than flying home once every year or two, these guys can now fly home more frequently. And take back with them goods their families might otherwise miss out on. We rarely see any white well-off travellers on these Air Arabia's flights, and that's a shame. Or is it?

How is this for an appetizing image? This delectable little morsel of spicy deep fried chicken, served with sweet Thai chilli sauce, was delivered to the door of our room (more like an apartment) at the sublime Aleenta by three of the resort's restaurant chefs. In full chef's kit, they brandished big trays of tiny shot glasses holding these tasty teasers. And with enormous smiles they handed me a couple of the aromatic tidbits with some crisp white napkins and silver cutlery. "A taster of our food in restaurant tonight," one chef smiled. What a an idea! Not only was this another display of that terrific hospitality the Thais are so famous for, but it whetted our appetite and give us a hint of what was to come that night. It also came at a perfect time - sunset - and made me immediately want to crack open a bottle of white.

What's so special about the welcome drink? What does it really mean? I recently wrote about welcome drinks on Grantourismo: "Immediately after your arrival at a hotel in Thailand – after you’ve been greeted with a “sawadee-kaa” from all the hotel staff accompanied by the traditional ‘wai’ gesture (hands shaped as if ready for prayer) – you’re ushered to a comfy seat and offered an icy cold face towel, usually scented with aromatic lemongrass, along with a welcome drink. While the icy face towels are particularly welcomed in Thailand’s sultry heat, it’s the welcome drinks we really enjoyed. We love the variety, from the Four Season Koh Samui’s frothy pink cocktail of guava, mango juice and sparkling ginger ale, to the Muang Kulaypan’s whole coconut filled with fresh sweet coconut juice (pictured)..." So what is it really about welcome drinks that we love? Apart from how refreshing they might be? Do we really place that much importance on them? Would we really care if we weren't offered one? And what do they mean? They're a gesture of hospitality, it goes without saying. And hotels are in the business of 'tourism and hospitality' so it's a gesture we should expect. Then why are we so delighted to be handed a glass of water and damp face cloth? Is it because someone has shown us that they care? Some cultures place more emphasis on these gestures of goodwill than others. We've lived in the Middle East for ten years and everything that's said about Arab hospitality is true. You can't enter a carpet shop in Dubai, Cairo, Damascus, or Marrakesh without being offered tea. Water is brought automatically without asking. It goes without saying you can expect the same in most shops and businesses, in banks even, and, naturally, in people's (even stranger's) homes. Is it that in 'the West' we appreciate the hotel welcome drink so much more because these gestures of hospitality are missing from our everyday life?