Water treatment

[mick]

I'm off on a 6 month trip around Southeast Asia soon. I'm considering bringing some sort of water treatment system, although I've heard that bottled water is safe and readily available most of the time. Pumps don't seem to be worth the expense, hassle of carrying them around, pumping, moving parts maybe breaking, cleaning, etc. At the very least I'll be bringing a bunch of Katadyn Micropur tablets which I have used before with good results:
Pros: Easy to use, small and light, tastes good
Cons: Expensive, probably can't buy them over there when I run out

Any suggestions for other treatment options? Anyone have experience with the UV treatment options like the SteriPEN?

Is there anything in Southeast Asia that wouldn't be killed by Katadyn tabs / SteriPEN?

[patzer]

Hey, we should talk! I probably wouldn't bother with tablets at all if you are just concerned about water from the drinking systems. Bottled water is available everywhere, and it seemed safe, just watch for broken seals, etc. In most countries I visited, it would less than $1/litre for cold bottled water on the street. You could do better if you found grocery stores, or were just in Thailand (5B for a smaller bottle there / $1 CAD -> 35B) Whether or not ice is safe depended on the country I think. If you are planning to go off the map, you have a lot of other problems that get expensive to account for too, like malaria and dengue fever and land mines...

[jeremy benjamin]

I have used the Pristine ClO2 drops before. They are cheap, easy to use, and I did not find they had a bad taste. People complain about the bottles leaking, so you may want to put them in something to avoid them being damaged and getting bleach in your bag. The wait time was 20-30 min. which seems long, but I don't know how it compares to other chemical treatment periods.



http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_deta ... 4302696751

[Leehammer]

There's bottled water everywhere as others have mentioned.

You do need to watch out for anything that might contain ice that you buy, for example something like a smoothy or anything like that. These are often made with ice that is not as clean as the bottled water. I was pretty sick in Cambodia as a result of this and I didn't realize it until later.

Hope you have a great time,
Liam

[patzer]

I don't really want to argue, and I'm not sure how recently you were in Cambodia but as I understood it, most ice was safe there now because it is provided by large factories with good sanitation. In remote parts, everything gets less reliable of course. But fruits and salads were more likely to have been in contact with contaminated water and thus greater risks than the ice was. This applies to street vendors as well. So I would be skeptical that it was actually the ice that made you sick!

[Leehammer]

Could have been fruit. I can't be sure. I was there in 2005. I did meet lots of other travelers along the way who had similar stories, but who knows...