On my way ...

Standing on the pavement outside my house waiting for the shared taxi to pick me up, I was greeted by the first foggy autumnal day of the year.

The fog played havoc with the rush hour traffic, and the taxi arrived 40 minutes late at the airport. Fortunately, I'd allowed plenty of time so even after clearing passport control I had an hour to spare and decided to go and see the Dutch cows. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has a small annex - a room suspended in space with access by a staircase - at Schiphol (Amsterdam airport). The two longer walls each have space for about 8 paintings. There are paintings from the Gouden Eeuw - the 'Golden Century' (17th century) - along one wall, and facing them at the moment are the Dutch cows:

The rather ghost-like reflection is Willem III wearing a dress - although to be fair to him, he was rather young at the time.

I've known about the art gallery for some time but was surprised to find that it has a new neighbour:

The notice for visitors says:

"Welcome to the Airport library at Schiphol. We invite you to watch, read, listen to, download and enjoy Dutch culture.

Please leave the books in the library area so other visitors can also enjoy them.

Feel free to sit and relax here. On the upper floor is a sleeping area for your convenience."

I didn't have time to try out the sleeping facilities as my plane was waiting:

Twelve hours later we were disgorged into Kuala Lumpur airport, rather empty at the early hour. At first sight, it could easily be mistaken for somewhere in the west:

However, at the hub of the four radiating piers, there's a massive structure of glass and girders. The wooden balcony gives an idea of scale, as you can easily walk underneath it. The inside of this structure turns out to contain ...

... a tropical rain forest, that you can walk around in:

The forest is open to the sky above, so it contains whatever beasts have voted with their feet or wings. I saw a butterfly flit past fleetingly, and a young man and I had a pleasant conversation about a largish bright yellow bird, with a black face mask, and a beak that would look quite scary if your were an insect; even a large one. We decided that it was probably some kind of oriole. I can't think why he should have chosen me to talk to about it - unless it was because I was stood looking upwards through bionculars. Unlike the birds, the trees have presumably been brought in already partly grown. All the same, they have reached quite an impressive height.

It's difficult to rank Schiphol and Kuala Lumpur airports because the distractions they provide to break the tedium of modern air travel are very different, but they're certainly both worth a visit if you're ever passing through with a little time to spare.