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Read the travel blog for carol 
Visiting the Travel Clinic
I made an appointment with my usual doctor to hear her recommendations for vaccinations and on the offchance that my insurance would cover them. Not surprisingly, she had her nurse go to the CDC website to look at what vaccinations I needed and then recommended that I go to the local Public Health Department since they had all the required shots there and for cheaper. Insurance does not cover any of my travel-related vaccinations and only cover routine immunizations. So during a lunch break from work, I drove to the Public Health Department and had to put my name down on a waiting list. I waited about 40 minutes before a nurse specializing in travel medicine could see me. I had filled out paperwork regarding which countries I was visiting and what shots I was interested in. The nurse focused primarily on warning me about malaria and showed me a map of each country with the areas of high malaria infection displayed in orange. Of course, a majority of the SEA countries were covered in these so called high malaria infection areas; the worst of them being Cambodia and Laos which was almost each entirely covered in orange except for their capitals. She suggested malaria prevention pills for the duration of my trip but I've been told that they are not healthy for your body and expensive for such a long period of time. Other options to protect myself include deet mosquito lotion/spray, soaking my clothing in a mosquito repellant and sleeping in mosquito nets. The nurse successfully scared me with all her talk about how it only takes one bite to contract malaria and she even showed me a video from Animal Planet titled "Monsters Inside Me" about how malaria can stay in the body for up to seven years. This nurse was a little off the rocker; she had poster size pictures of mosquitos and a stuffed animal mosquito decorating her office and she even referred to these malaria carrying mosquitos as "girls" since only the females can infect. It was definitely a very valuable experience and from that appointment I've taken away with me the need to be very aware of my surroundings in SEA. Malaria is a problem there as well as Dengue fever, also spread by the mosquito bite. As a traveler, you need to be aware of what environment you are sleeping in, what clothing you are wearing (dark colors attract mosquitos and covering as much of your body as possible is recommended), during the day the dengue fever mosquitos are prevalent and at night its the malaria mosquito. In addition, she told me that I should be very vary of water in these countries and that I should only eat food that has come hot off the stove due to contamination since their facilities in SEA are less sanitary. At outdoor markets, i should be stay away from caged birds (chickens, etc) due to avian flu. I should not pet animals since they are not required to get their rabies shots. All this information was overwhelming but I feel so much more prepared. At the end of the day, it was the best $30 I have spent so far. I also got Hepatitis A and Typhoid fever vaccinations for $175 for both. Expensive but necessary I suppose as it is always better to be safe than sorry.
