BootsnAll Travel Community

Hi, I am going to be travelling for about 4 months and I'm wondering if I should take the malaria pills for the entire time. I will be in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. I know I would feel safer taking them starting in Cambodia, but not sure if I want to take them in the beginning. Does anyone know if Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand are high-risk. I will be starting my trip mid-Jan, so the rainy season will be starting and the mozzies will be rampant I am guessing. Anyone have any advice? Thanks!

by the way, I will be taking doxy probably. anyone know the long term use of that?

You'll probably have to take it the whole time because you start doxy a couple of days before you enter a malaria zone and keep taking it for 4 weeks after you leave.

Did you check out the websites suggested in the last malaria thread? The UK site has a nice color coded map of malaria risk by country. But, going from memory of my research (I'm doing this same trip in January): Bali is supposedly OK but Lombok has malaria. I'm not sure about the rest of Indonesia but I plan to take something throughout all of the country, except Bali. Peninsular Malaysia has some risk in the parks and Borneo has a (high?) risk outside of the main cities. No risk in Thailand except at the borders with Burma, Laos & Cambodia. Ko Chang near Cambodia is malarial.

And I think we talked about the general side-effects of doxy in the last thread too but long term, if I were taking it, my main worries would be: 1) yeast infections, and 2) my own non-compliance: if you don't take it every day at the same time of the day, you aren't protected. And it's an antibiotic so you may have stomach upset and all that other stuff that happens when it kills off your body's good bacteria.

I think most people who take anti-malarials for their RTW trip take doxy so it can't be too bad long term.