You’re on a bus into the Amazonian jungle of Bolivia, South America. The woman at the bus terminal told you your journey along Death Road would take somewhere between 18 and 36 hours, and you’re beginning to realise why.

The road is so narrow that the bus only fits onto it with inches to spare. On one side is a cliff face that sometimes scrapes along the side of the bus, on the other side is a sheer drop of more than 3000 feet.

As soon as you’re used to that, a semi-trailer veers around the corner and the bus has to reverse back to the nearest point where the road widens slightly. Then it gets dark and it transpires the bus only has one headlight. Someone takes the role of holding a yardstick out the window to determine where the edge of the road is.

In broken Spanish, the Bolivian man next to you informs you with a chuckle that eight tourists died here yesterday. This could be it, you reckon. This could be the end of your life. You take a big sip of water, wishing it was whisky.

Traveling through South America, I ended up in Rurrenabaque, a town in the north-west of Bolivia’s Amazonian region. I set off into the jungle with five other ‘gringos’ (the local slang meaning tourists) for two weeks.

The jungle was dense. We slept on the bare earth, wrapping mosquito nets tightly around ourselves to protect from the swarm of insects and mosquitos. The sound of monkeys, wild boars, frogs and other creatures filled the night air.

After a few days of solid walking, we arrived at a small tribal community deep in the jungle. The tour guide told us they would provide food and water, so long as we carried it with us. Needless to say, we stocked up. However, the Amazonian jungle is humid and hot and the constant walking made us thirsty.

By the time we arrived at the community we had already finished all the water we had carried, and nearly all of the food. Not having much food was okay, because we could hunt animals and gather fruits. Pachamama (Mother Earth) would look after us. However, even in the jungle the water in Bolivia is dirty and unfit for drinking.

We filled our empty bottles with murky water from a river nearby, and used a thin leaf to try and filter out some of the muck. I wished I’d brought some water purification tablets or a water purification bottle. The locals thought it was strange we couldn’t handle the water, and laughed at the big fuss we made trying to filter out the dirt. Eventually, we got it to a slightly lighter shade of brown.

We spent days fossicking around the community, swimming in the river, hunting, picking fruits and exchanging stories. Many of the local people had never left the jungle their whole lives, and had no need for money or jobs. Pachamama looked after them, they said. Indeed, the jungle seemed to have a plant for everything. There were plants for fertility and abortion, to heal wounds and to give luck. There were plants you could eat to ward off mosquitos. ‘Todo necesitamos esta en la selva’, they told us, meaning ‘everything we need is in the jungle’. 

Maybe we just hadn’t found it, because when we returned to Rurrenabaque after two weeks in the jungle, our bodies were covered in bites and scratches, our clothes were ragged and we were all sick from the river water. However, we all agreed we were dirtier and happier than we had been our whole lives.

Planning to travel to the jungle? What you’ll need:

A good water purification bottle, and probably a portable water purification straw too.

A long-sleeved shirt and long pants, both made from durable material

Mosquito repellent with at least 15% deet

A flashlight

Sunscreen, SPF30 minimum

Thick socks and durable shoes

Swimmers

Camera

Toilet paper

Basic first-aid kit with iodine, steri strips, bandages, paracetamol, band-aids and anti-histamine tablets

Malaria tablets, depending on where you’re planning to go. Check out: http://www.malariasite.com/malaria/samerica.htm to see whether you need them.

If you've ever spoken to someone who has travelled much, you have probably heard many stories of people getting an upset stomach while traveling. You may even have heard a story or two about how someone's honeymoon or other special trip was completely ruined when they got such an upset stomach that they couldn't leave the hotel room the entire time. If you are considering traveling to Thailand, you should be careful to avoid this fate by being very cautious about what water you drink.

If you've ever watched the news following a major natural disaster, you may have noticed that the initial disaster itself is often followed by a series of outbreaks of sickness among the population in the area. It may seem strange that this would happen. An earthquake, for example, shouldn't be something that would make a person sick. Yet the people of Haiti suffered through their first outbreaks of cholera in many years after the large earthquake there. The reason that this kind of incident happens is that natural disasters often disrupt the ability of the public to access clean and filtered water and water is a major carrier of the type of bacteria that can make you sick.

Now that you understand why drinking water without being careful is a problem, you should be ready to make preparations for your trip to Thailand. You should be careful even with water that is supposed to be clean, because sometimes a pathogen that has no effect on people who drink that water every day can make someone from another country very sick. Though boiling water and using chlorine tablets is an option, this can be complicated and unpleasant. Your best option for safe drinking water while traveling to Thailand is to carry a filtering product with you such as those that are produced by SureAqua.

Every year there are people who spend thousands of dollars on setting up a trip that they end up being unable to enjoy because they get sick from the local water supply. An inexpensive filtration product from SureAqua can ensure that you get to enjoy your trip to Thailand instead of just telling everyone stories about how you never got out of your hotel room. 

Let me tell you about a little secret!

This amazing health device will amaze you.  This amazing product invention is now available to the market.  It is truly remarkable and a must have product for anyone who is travelling.

Do you want to AVIOD MORE GUT WRENCHING stomach and bowel problems on holidays? 

It is a personal  portable water filter that actually works.  It is small and ultra-lite weight, enough to fit in your pocket, backpack or handbag.  No bigger than 4 standard drinking straws place together.

Why did I not hear about this before?  

It has only just been released after a number of years of exhaustive testing and obtaining approvals by a large number of international government agencies and accredited laboratories, from the US to Australia, Europe and Asia.   It’s a product that has been accept by the United Nations , exceeds CDC guidelines by a number of factors.  A number of government agencies around the world have already started using the products as part of their Aid and Disaster Preparedness kits.

The concept is simple, the device works by having an extremely fine filter to remove nasty microbiology that can make you sick. The membrane acts as a size exclusion barrier, trapping the nasties in the body of the SureAqua products as you drink through them, nasty microbiology trapped – clean water passing through.  The trick is to make it easy enough for an average person to suck through without having lungs of a superhero.

You may be thinking there are already portable water filter products in the market place that does this already.  Well make sure you read the fine print details in the specification, you will find that it doesn’t take out bacteria, or all bacteria and more than likely takes only some of the taste using some kind of activated carbon or resin.  It does serve its purpose though if you want to take out the bad bacteria and protozoa’s forget about it!

As you are already thinking how what a great idea? Why hasn’t this been thought of before? It’s all in the construction and usability.   This is what took so long to develop and manufacturable to make cost effective for the consumer.

Being a seasoned traveller, I take extreme precaution in what I eat and what I drink whilst you are traveling, backing or hiking.  No matter where I go, from Australia to Asia, the South America to Europe and even in the USA.  It’s nothing worse than losing days off my holidays because of a tummy bug.  Particularly  when it’s avoidable!

Here is an interesting little fact.  The number one illness whilst travelling is gastroenteritis, diarrhoea, dysentery.   What would you think the statistic for having diarrhoea? 

In a number of internationally conducted studies the percentage is in the region of 28% to {as high as|a staggering/alarming}  28%.    About 50% of those people it severely disrupts at least 1 full day of their break and not to say the recovery period of 2 to 3 days.  About 0.5% of people are actually hospitalised, with a number of people bringing illness home with them and then having this impacting their return to work.  You may think it is generally the elderly, this is the furthest from the truth, it’s the 20-34 age group. 

As I found out it is all too easy to get diarrhoea, from drinking water to brushing your teeth to eating a salad.   Just a couple small tips about how to avoid water borne bacteria

o   Eat only fruit that can be peeled

o   Avoid any salads

o   Always  drink filtered water, effectively filtered water

o   Remember to keep your mouth shut in the shower

o   Use filtered water when you brush your teeth

o   Be careful of bottled water as it in many areas the water comes straight from the tap

o   Don’t trust the tap water from even 5 or 6 star hotels

o   Don’t have ice in your drink, bacteria can live for some time in ice

o   If boiling water, only drink water that has been boiled for at least 5 minutes

o   Don’t be fooled by thinking iodine or chlorine will kill protozoa’s and hard shell cysts effectively, they will not

This travel gadget is really inexpensive/cost effective/great value! 

Just consider, this product can be reused, over and over again on any vacation up to a staggering 6 months, has the ability to filter to 500 litres/ 164 gallons making the cost of water per litre 0.4 cents a litre.  Remind me what the cost of bottled water is – and you do you actually know that it is free of the nasties that will make you sick?  What was the cost of your holiday?  You can’t go past it, the SureAqua products are an amazingly inexpensive while EASY to use insurance policy.

You take out travel insurance, hey, spring for a SureAqua portable water filter and protect yourself in an easy practical way – you suck, it filters, it’s that easy.

Do yourself a favour and check it out at SureAqua   Be early as these are going off like hot cakes.

Not only is a must on your next holiday, they sort of look cool.

When you do your research, be really careful of other products in the market place. 

1.       Always check that it filter to at least  1 micron, the SureAqua products have a minimum filtration of 0.2 micron

2.       That it stops working when it is ineffective there, carbon and media filters lets the water flow even after they stop working. 

3.       Find out how long you can store the products, chemical purification has a limited shelf life.

4.       Check out the disclaimers and warranties – some actually really highlight that the company isn’t standing behind their products or claims.

Let everyone know about my little find.