Baby it's hot (and really smoky) outside...

As March continued to march forward, all of a sudden I could smell smoke creeping into my air conditioned room for the first time one night. Now I just smell like I have been living in a camp fire the past two weeks. This is the season of burning fields and forest hillsides throughout much of Asia - especially here in Thailand - even though it is supposedly illegal. If you look at any sort of map showing what parts of the world are literally on fire at the moment or check in on the air quality index, you will see that Thailand is mostly shimmering red at the moment. A hazy, hot, horrendous, smoky month of March is usually to be expected - but on a recent Saturday I woke up, thinking I would go for a usual morning walk/run and I realized it was worse than usual. I checked online to see what the AQI was and was quite surprised to see 549! The week before I had seen a news report that Maehongson and Chiangmai had the worst air in the world and it was only in the 240 range - but 549!? Needless to say, the run didn't happen that morning or for several weeks as the numbers just continued to rise

One night I went to a meeting at church and all the hills around us were on fire. I knew the next day would be bad - and it was. Often the temple on top of the hill - even the hill isn't visible in the morning.