Traveling to adopt your child will be the experience of a lifetime. With a few precautions, you can help to ensure that your time spent in country will be a pleasant and healthy one. It’s easy to forget to take care of ourselves as parents while we focus our energy and attention on our children, but we won’t be much use to our kids if we’re down for the count. Here are some ways that you can stay healthy while in Viet Nam:

• 
  Protect yourself from mosquito bites. This is especially important during the summer months, but can be just as important all year long. Wear clothing that covers as much skin as possible, closed toe shoes and bug spray whenever you are outside and it’s possible. You can purchase clothing at outdoors stores here in the US that has insect repellant in the fibers of the clothing. Check out my post about Dengue Fever here to read about why it is so important to avoid being bitten by mosquitos.



SPONSOR




• 
  Don’t drink the water. Bottled water can be found everywhere, so you have no need to worry about finding potable water. The main brand is La Vie and when in a restaurant, simply order a small or large La Vie and a bottle will arrive. Be sure that the bottles are sealed before drinking them. We even went so far as to brush our teeth with the bottled water and were careful about ingesting any in the shower. Better safe than sorry!
• 
  
  
  Avoid fresh fruits and vegetables unless you peel it or cook it yourself or if you are in a restaurant or hotel that caters to tourists. Your agency should know which places are “safe” as in, you can safely order a salad.
• 
  
  
  Bring the prescription medication that your agency recommends with you. You never know what you might need, and it’s better to have taken too much precaution than too little. We brought a ton of prescriptions, used one and left the unopened, unused ones for Ella’s baby center.
• 
  
  
  Consider travel vaccinations. Your agency will recommend which vaccinations they feel are necessary and then you can decide from there. Check out these two sites: Centers for Disease Control’s health information regarding international adoption and Dr. Jane Aronson’s Vaccine’s for Parents vaccination guide.

photo credit

Related Reading:
View of Viet Nam - La Vie Bottled Water