While visiting hot and humid countries around the world, you can have the best experiences ruined by mosquitoes and the diseases they carry. When we travelled to Vietnam, although there wasn’t the risk of the deadly malaria at that time and at the locations visited, we could have still got Dengue Fever and Japanese Encephalitis.
Unlike Malaria, which is common in more rural areas, Dengue Fever, transmitted by mosquitoes, can be spread in urban areas all over South East Asia. At present, there is no injection you can take to prevent this and symptoms can be awful such as severe headaches, high fever, muscle pain and even death.
Japanese Encephalitis is viral, another that is contracted by mosquito bites. This is most common within more rural areas during the rainy season in July and August, although can occur any time during the year. The symptoms are similar to Dengue Fever with the addition of nausea, upset stomach and confusion. Although there is an injection you can have in the UK, which is high in cost, this vaccination is not 100% effective.
As well as travelling around Hanoi city, we stayed in the Sapa Mountains, trekking past lots of amazing rice fields – mosquito heaven! Therefore, it was so important to avoid being bitten as much as possible and we wanted to ensure we were extremely prepared before and during our trip, as these insects would have completely ruined it and could have cut it short.
At each home-stay in Sapa, we luckily slept with mosquito nets each night. We obviously also used some very effective Deet insect repellent on any bare skin each day as further protection from the mozzies. Although hot, even the locals were aware of the issue and covered their legs and arms with material to prevent being bitten.
It was imperative that we were protected from mosquito bites by all means possible so alongside the methods described above, we decided to wear protective travel clothing too. This belt and braces aproach was due to our multi-day walk through the rice field terraces of Sapa. Rice fields are the perfect habitat for mosquitoes as they are large areas of shallow, stationary stagnant water. This is exactly the sort of area where mosquitoes flourish.
Craghoppers have created the first and only permanent insect protective clothing range in the world. NosiLife. Not only do they protect from biting insects, they look great too. Check out our reviews of the Craghoppers’ men’s shirts and women’s dresses, skirts and shorts to see these garments in more detail. Within the material used to create each of the NosiLife clothing items, Craghoppers have woven their insect repellent into the fabric. This really does create round-the-clock protection from the bites of mosquitoes and other insects, which gave us so much piece of mind when wearing the clothes.
NosiLife clothing is just fantastic for travelling. Not only does it protect from bites, the material is great at wicking away sweat in hot and humid locations. This feature was perfect for Vietnam, especially when trekking; the clothing kept us both cool and comfortable all the time. The antibacterial effect of the insect repellent within the material is also great for combating odour.
All of the NosiLife items are both robust and lightweight, plus quick to wash and dry, basically brilliant when on the go. We would hand wash the clothes during the evening, hang it over the nearest banister or railing and it would all be dry the next morning. All of our items were comfortable to wear and looked and felt great quality too.
I am so impressed with all of our NosiLife clothing. During the evenings in homestays people would be sat around comparing their mosquito bites. A lot of these people had been using mosquito repellent too! One evening when we were sat eating dinner a man opposite me slammed his hand down onto a mosquito and it was literally full of blood. These little pests were biting everyone that they could. Vicky and I, however, didn’t get even one bite! Not during the whole two week trip to Vietnam and in particular not over the three days of walking through rice fields!
I cannot rave about NosiLife enough. It really was a fantastic, reliable and effective addition to our trip, which just made our time in Vietnam even more relaxing without the worry of diseases and illness. I wouldn’t go anywhere near a rice field, bamboo jungle or mosquito area without wearing NosiLife clothing.
