or: the air will kill you

Being on such a slow schedule means I only have to do one touristy thing a day, if that. I will eventually do a post with all the touristy things I recommend, hawker markets, malls, events, etc.

One of the things I ‘need’ to do is the Petronas Towers. During my research, people talked about the fantastic views. Now, it’s been pretty hazy since I arrived, so much so that I haven’t actually seen the sky yet. How good can the view be when I can barely see the buildings five streets over?

I thought I’d have a little google and see if the haze is going to ease up. Which is when I discovered that the air quality is currently so bad, I shouldn’t even be going outside.

Currently THIRTEEN POINT NINE TIMES the WHO guideline!!!

Blimey.

I don’t know why I thought this was just kind of normal. The haze, I mean. I’ve lived in Asia before. I’ve seen the sky in Asia before.

My taxi driver on the way in from the airport told me that the haze is due to agricultural fires in Indonesia. I guess I hadn’t really processed that, either. And then this morning, in a newsletter from Geographical Magazine, I read this:

Emissions from vast wildfires burning in Indonesia’s forests and peatlands are currently the highest in the world.

So yeah, IT’S DAMN HAZY!

The good news is it should start to clear in the coming days, so hopefully I’ll get to those Towers next week sometime. Not that I’m in any hurry. It’s go slow around here, and I’m starting to enjoy it. Almost. Almost.