It's not just Sept, the haze starts around June. And the fires are in Sumatra as well as Kalimantan, which means peninsula Malaysia and Spore get the effects from Sumatra.

This year has been particularly bad.

> they had assured that this will be the last year Singapore and Malaysia will experience haze.

And pigs might fly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's been ongoing for 20 years now, getting worse and worse.

Sheila

Hi Grecos,

We have spoken to our agents out in Borneo and Malaysia, and they have replied with the following:

"Open fire activities areas are in Kalimantan Indonesia and normally in September of every year. I must admit the wind does blow the haze to Borneo and Peninsula Malaysia. The latest news we hear from Indonesia government are in the midst of curbing this open hire activities and they had assured that this will be the last year Singapore and Malaysia will experience haze.

We hope for a throughout clear sky from next year onwards."

From what I can gather this will not have a major effect, if any, on our tour. I hope this helps.

Kindest regards,

Monty

It certainly seemed to have been a problem in Singapore this year. Everyone there blamed Indonesea, but no-one mentioned Kalimantan, so it is presumably a widespread practice.

I was there for a week in the middle of October and, on one particular day, my smog-covered photos of the Singapore skyline bore an uncanny resemblance to similar pictures taken in Beijing on a very bad day.

It wasn't ever bad enough to stop me getting around, and some areas appeared to be affected more badly than others (generally where the sun wasn't shining - or perhaps couldn't penetrate), but I did notice many warning signs about the haze which were attached to tourist and other facilities and which stated that these would be closed on safety grounds if the haze exceeded a certain level.

Let us hope that it really is the last year.

Jim

Many thanks, this info is very helpful and I hope it is correct! Nothing is ever simple or straightforward is it??

Best wishes,

Bob[/b]

We have spoken to our agents out in Borneo and Malaysia, and they have replied with the following:

"Open fire activities areas are in Kalimantan Indonesia and normally in September of every year. I must admit the wind does blow the haze to Borneo and Peninsula Malaysia. The latest news we hear from Indonesia government are in the midst of curbing this open hire activities and they had assured that this will be the last year Singapore and Malaysia will experience haze.

We hope for a throughout clear sky from next year onwards."

From what I can gather this will not have a major effect, if any, on our tour. I hope this helps.

Kindest regards,

Monty

Jaya

All the best,

Bob

and paper pulp companies, to clear forests to make way for plantations. This is an annual thing. But this year

the haze was worse than ever. You may have seen on BBC world news tv that an orang utan sanctuary in

Kalimantan was affected.

I live in Malaysia much of the year so have first hand experience of the haze!

This has been passed on to the agents overseas so I will let you know the impacts as soon as we hear back from them.

Kindest regards,

Monty