up in the sky

When I woke up for the first time in Bangkok, I saw something I hadn't seen in at least a year: smog. The blue sky turned into a grey strip just above the cityscape.
There is no such thing as smog in New Zealand, and I didn't notice any in Australia. Driving past the Wellington airport with a friend one time, we watched a jet take off and noticed something we hadn't seen before in the States. The jet's exhaust left two distinct black tracks in the sky, long after it had gone. The air was clear enough to see blemishes that just blend in elsewhere.

The clear skies of New Zealand changed things even at night. More stars in the sky than I'll bet you'll find in any other developed country.
Even in the cities, the night sky offered as many dots as you'll see in most US rural areas. In NZ's rural areas, there might have been more than even my boyhood home in the middle of Montana.
But the most impressive night sky I've seen was from the deck of a sailboat in Australia's Whitsunday Islands during a new moon. The Southern Cross was nearly obscured by all the other points of light suddenly present in and among the cross.