Smoke season has already started causing us some bad respiratory symptoms, its only going to get worse. Where can we pick up some masks effective at filtering out the cancer particles?

3M shop on wualai road chiang mai gate

Home Pro usually has them in stock in several varieties, all made by 3M.

3M shop on wualai road chiang mai gate

i could be wrong but i think it's called Schneider Electric now.

Breathing through those things is seriously annoying; you haven't really done this before right, just ranting a bit?

And it's also unnecessary as levels really aren't worrying from a health perspective. There's a bit of a cold going around, if you're coughing, chances are that's it.

It does come and go a bit during the dry season, yesterday wasn't as good as today, tomorrow may be a bit worse again, etc. Overall though it's not a health threat when you get some light->moderate haze. We're in landlocked Asia, not the North Atlantic coast with the gulf stream in our hair.

But even if you want to do something other than leave, (and this advice is really for when it actually gets bad) then the usual approach is staying indoors at times when levels are higher, and run an air filter. Central, Siam TV and Chi Chang all have them. I can recommend Toshiba, also because ordering new filters (from their Bangkok inventory) is quite easy and affordable. Also putting 3M filters on air conditioners is a good thing to do, when it actually gets bad in a month or so.

Anyway, reality check:

Compared to the much hyped awesome beach breezy place of Phuket:

Or Bangkok:

And, relative to where we are in the world, some really bad places to be in Asia: