I agree with Carol that cold and dry weather is a killer to our throat. The weather has been very cold and dry in Hong Kong these days and my voice becomes very hoarse. Sometimes I have difficulty talking in the lessons. Drinking water doesn't help much and yesterday morning, when there was rain, I felt so much better talking with people. Perhaps a humidifier is what I need. Air in the plane is exceptionally dry and the only thing one can do is to sip more water throughout the journey. Be careful with the air pressure too when the plane is descending. I have never had so much discomfort as I was in the plane about to land when I returned from a 1 hour flight from China during Christmas. My ears were in such pain that I thought the ear drums were about to burst. I didn't experience that when I travelled to Singapore in July. The flight took more than 3 hours. So sometimes you don't really know what to or what not to expect.Even the same person experiencs something different on similar occasions.

Karen.