If there's one comparison I make the most often between the Congo and Thailand it's the garbage. More specifically, it's the smell of burning garbage that hangs in the air, morning noon and night. I've been told this is a common smell for many developing countries with no means of garbage removal - what else can you do but burn it? And so, thick in the air hangs this smoke that varies from a leafy bad-cigarette smell to a nauseating toxic plastics smell, depending on the day. And what a way to wake up in the morning to that dense smog made up of this and the result of eight million people living and driving in a city with no regulations whatsoever on vehicular emissions (just imagine what it's like to get stuck in a six-block long traffic jam behing a five-ton diesel truck with no muffler and an oil leak in the engine -- mmm, I think one just drove by my window). I've decided that were it not for the cost of cigarettes in Canada I might as well start smoking when I get home, just to balance out my daily intake of toxins in Kinshasa. And Hey, maybe I should start smoking here -- at least I'd get my poisons through a filter!