Wow about that price! I’ve only had a couple of personal experiences while on the road and have been pretty pleased.

I have read that Thailand has both lower prices and higher quality for reassignment surgery.

We’ve been sick enough on the road a couple of times to seek medical help (not many, fortunately). Donny’s experience was in Bangkok, where the hospital was the nicest one we’d been in anywhere. He was issued a photo ID as a walk-in patient, and the exam, diagnosis and prescriptions were quick and easy. My case was in Cambodia. Conditions in the small town we happened to be in were very basic, and I ended up taking an IV bag back to the hotel, but my whole assessment, treatment and shots only came out to about $25 USD.

Sometimes there just doesn’t seem any rhyme or reason to things. Good grief you sure have yourself a big challenge there!

Heck, I should open a whole section on my blog actually, as (with the exception of Myanmar), I visited every single hospital in every country. It is pretty obvious that I am the luckiest girl alive when I travel!

But back to the subject, I usually need to buy some medications that require prescription from time to time during my travels, and compared to your experience, for me it’s been quite the opposite: A nightmare.

I suffer from panic attacks since age 16, and when I travel by myself I want to make sure that I always have my benzodiazepines with me. Unfortunately in most Asian countries they are restricted or even illegal. If I ran out, I need to go to the emergency room, show my Italian prescription with an additional note from my doctor (in English) stating that I NEED to take them for my condition and I can’t stop them abruptly, (without this special paper I’d risk jail for life in Thailand).

That said, it even gets worst. I need to find the right doctor for the prescription. It has to be a doctor with a special license. So I always go a few days before I’m running out, to know when/if the doctor will be there.

Still not over yet. In Thailand they only give you a 10 day supply. No matter how many times you explain that it’s a chronic problem. In theory you should go there every 10 days.

Alternatively, I could go to a private doctor, pay a lot of money to get the prescription and still get a 10, max 15 day supply at the pharmacy (In Indonesia for example).

It’s a real struggle to travel with anxiety and panic attacks, people don’t get it. When I ask for my benzos, people look at me like i’m a junkie. Some people in Asia don’t really know what a panic attack is. Well, i’m very happy for them, but I need that medicine.

There are actually some “easy” ways to get them in some countries, but I’m thinking about writing a whole article about the subject, as it’s a very delicate one and I don’t want to give sensitive information to people who are not really suffering from anxiety and just take the pills to “have some fun”.

Well, this is part of my experience (I will write a big article about it), and I’m glad that I found this. As I said, there are not many bloggers out there talking about medical conditions and how to deal with them on the road, so the information is even more valuable.