The air quality here is truly dire, I read that further North around Chiang Rai it is even worse, some sounds bites to help others understand how serious things are:

- 3M's filtrette is a mainstay for many, wrap it around your aircon or fan air intake and it will trap all <PM2.5 - there is no filtrette to be had anywhere in the North, HomePro tells us the Bangkok supplier is out of stock and awaiting overseas shipments.

- Central has run out of stock of air purifiers, the Health Pro 250 jumped THB 10k to THB 68,000 but there's no stock. Don't ask how much the filters cost.

- face masks of a reasonable quality that are rated at <PM2.5, think hens teeth and if you find any, expensive hens teeth - every store we visited yesterday had sold out of anything other than expensive Chinese knock offs, THB250 for three.

- driving from Mae Rim to Chiang Mai yesterday, visibility is around 200 mteres.

- My black Vigo has a white roof from ash that settles overnight.

I just had a peek at the NASA fire maps and am stunned at the number of fires burning just West of me in Myanmar, they say a picture is worth a thousand words:

firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#z:4;c:106.4,8.8;d:2019-04-03..2019-04-04;l:countries,firms_viirs,firms_modis_a,firms_modis_t

The wind maps confirm the source:

www.windfinder.com/#8/18.7711/98.8412

Was in CM proper yesterday and saw the fire trucks spraying water into the air around the moat, our Thai guest remarked how pleased she was to see that the authorities were being proactive in cleaning the air for tourists. What followed was a stunningly inane conversation about whether rain actually cleaned the air versus dampening the ground to prevent further fires being lit....there are days when I just don't want to live here or interact with the native population because it does my head in.

Just to be clear regarding my previous post: the inane discussion I had was more about the benefits of pseudo rain in isolated areas, aka fire trucks at the moat, versus widespread rain on areas that are burning/to be burned. Rainfall can indeed help clean the air providing it is sufficiently widespread and droplet sizes are small but for it to be effective it needs to cover a very wide area and even then it is sustainable. There is no substitute however for soggy waterlogged ground if you want to halt airborne pollution.