I lived in Africa for three years. While there are cases of people who seem immune to parasites (the explorer Percy Fawcett comes to mind), the vast majority, including local residents, are all too susceptible to, and suffer from, them. Guinea worm is something you might want to look up (OP, that is). When we lived there, we had in-home purifiers that ranged from 2-stage cartridge filtration to a big distiller that took up a lot of counter space.
The rules for those who valued their intestinal health were:
Never drink anything outside of your home that doesn’t come in a bottle and that you haven’t opened yourself (no bottled water brought to the table opened for your “convenience”). Also no ice in your drink - ever.
ALL meats, fruits and vegetables that come into your home get a bath in water that’s been laced with bleach.
Never consume raw vegetables or fruits outside of your home.
Don’t swim in the local rivers or lakes.
These rules kept us free from harm for three years except for a brief bout with some sort of bug that my wife had.
Pay attention to this one…
I’ve had friends who have suffered Montezuma’s Revenge from eating lettuce washed in Mexican water. I’d strongly suggest you accept the hassle involved in consuming treated water.
They probably have an in-house purification system, but will provide bottled water, as well, because thats what people are used to and expect. In some countries (China) an electric tea kettle is standard hotel room equipment and people are accustom to drinking hot boiled water. Short of that, Chinese hotels will sometimes have thermoses of hot boiled water in the rooms.
Private purification systems are available to people who can pay for them. Some countries (like China) do the whole office-style water cooler thing at home- although the quality on those can be suspect and most people drink boiled water anyway. Others just have their servants (often affordable to even lower-middle class families) boil their drinking water or use filters. In China, I had a home water distiller, since boiling won’t remove heavy metals, in Africa I just had a high quality ceramic filter.
WAGing, but they probably boiled and filtered water, providing it in pitchers for the room. That, and you learn to like drinking lots of tea.
Just another personal experience story with little meaning or relavance.
I spent a year in Vietnam as a grunt Marine. At no time when I was in the bush, which was about 80% of the time, did I use halizon tablets. I drank right out of the various rivers, creeks, and wells as opportunity arose. It wasn’t at all uncommon to be fording a river and just take my helmet off and scoop up a load of water to drink as I walked along. Once I drank out of water standing in a bomb crater. It was actually crawling with vermin and filth. I just filled my canteen and folded my t-shirt over 3-4 times and drank away. I’d been wearing that shirt for probably a couple of weeks straight but it did manage to keep out the bigger globs. I my defense it was extremely hot and we’d been out of water for a bit.
Spent one week in the hospital with leptospirosis and a couple or three months later and a couple of days of the trots.
On the other hand a couple of guys I knew got really sick.
Bottled water is cheap and ubiquitous in Thailand. You don’t have to be wealthy to partake. They say Bangkok’s tap water is not too bad, but we boil ours anyway; upcountry will vary.
Ice is safe here too, produced and distributed widely.
Did get turista on a trip to Mexico in the 70s. Ended up being confined to my hot little hotel room, in a tiny fishing village (with a mariachi band playng La Cucaracha under my window for 48 hours straight).
It was worth it. The unprotected food and drink were great.
Just got back from Puerto Vallarta, where we drank the water. No problems. Found out later the city has a good filtration system, and the hotels also filter their tap water.
If you’re talking about tourists, most either got sick or boiled their water. Indigenous people, particularly in rural areas, did and still do drink contaminated water, and did and still do get sick and die of many water-borne illnesses.
Many cultures come up with traditions that mitigate the problem. Usually this involves simply not drinking straight water. Instead, you may drink tea if you are in Asia, or beer in Europe. Many culture do not have the habit of eating un-peeled fruits or fresh veggies. A nice green salad is as odd in China as raw fish is in the US.
In other areas, they lived in settlements that were spread out enough that water contamination was not a problem. If your village is the only on on a stretch of river for ten miles, you are probably not going to have problems.
And of course, sometimes people just got sick a lot.
In the DVD extras for the Deadwood series, it was pointed out that part of the reason so much whiskey was consumed back then was it was a water substitute, considered safer.
Which is another example of why you should not base knowledge upon shit learned from t.v. Whisky, as 40% or more alcohol, is a diuretic, and will dehydrate you. Unlike beer, mead, or wine, it contains no significant nutrients. The reason men (and Jane Cannary) drank whiskey was to cope with the misery of living in the shithole that was the barely civilized American West.
Well, I did say “part of the reason.” The creator of the series, whose name escapes me at the moment, is apparently a huge history buff knowledgeable about the period. The whiskey claim is his. I doubt the locals drinking the stuff were up on substances like diuretics.
Really? Food that you buy in a supermarket (or a restaurant) in South Africa will have been produced by industrial-scale agriculture that follows much the same standards of cleanliness as Europe or the US. The piped water is fine, too, except in certain rural areas that have problems with their infrastructure (and in those areas the problems are well-known and publicized).
