"I was in Singapore during those fires set in Sumatra, quite an experience."
It still seems hard to believe the descriptions. An entire geographical region rendered unbreathable from smoke for weeks on end.
In Singapore it wasn't quite to the point of "unbreathable" but there was a constant fog-like haze, the smell of something burning in the air (like a distant campfire), and eventually it did kind of irritate your throat a little.