Our long awaited visit to the Thai Travel Clinic to receive our vaccinations was the outing for our first full day in Bangkok. It is a special clinic of the Bangkok Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Faculty of Tropical Medicine at the Mahidol University.  Some people were surprised to hear we were having our vaccinations in Thailand however visiting medical or optical specialists in Asia is not new to me. Buying antibiotics over the counter, getting eye tests and subsequent new glasses or contact lenses is something that I have done whenever I visited in the past.  We also read about other families doing the same which gave us more confidence to continue with down this path with the children. I did the rough sums of getting our vaccinations at home and came close to $2500 for everything we would have needed. Given the first 4 months of travel is through Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and India we did our research at home and also emailed the clinic with a list of all our  vaccination’s and children’s immunisations’ to date to get their recommendations and settled on the following:

Japanese Encephalitis for all.

Rabies for all.  Rabies is a series of three needles given on day 0, 7 and 28 so travel plans were made around this.

Just for David and Sally: Typhoid and Tdap + IPV (booster for tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and polio.  We also had a blood test to check for immunity to Hep A/B. (The results came through the next day and the clinic emailed us with the results. David was immune to both, Sally only to Hep B necessitating a Hep A needle along with the 2^nd needle for our rabies on our next visit a week later.

Our appointment was at 1pm. The first stop was the clinic on the 2^nd floor where we met with the nurse, completed our registration, had blood pressure and weight checked, went through the email of suggested vaccinations.  We then had to wait approximately an hour for the Doctor to stop by to go through the information again and to write out the prescriptions for the vaccinations.   Down to the first floor where we took a queue number from the machine, attached it to the prescription and put it into the basket to be filled at window number 1.  Once our number flashed up we first had to go to the cashier’s window to pay for the ‘goods’ before heading back to Window number 2 to collect them.  Then down the corridor to the OPD (Out Patients Department) where we met our nurse again who administered the vaccinations.  Tdap+ IPV, Typhoid, Japanese Encephalitis, and Rabies plus a blood test each to David and Sally.  Japanese Enc and Rabies for the girls.  Phoebe was rather squeamish and went quite pale so had to lie down for the enforced half hour wait (with a few nurses fussing over her) until we were free to go just before 5pm.  The damage? Including our Registration fees, Medications fee, Hospital service fee, Doctor fee, Injection fee, Vaccines and Blood examinations our first of three visits came to 8162Baht or $246.

Seven days later we were back for round two. The second Rabies needle for everyone and Sally had the Hep A.  It was also decided that Cholera (given as oral Dukoral vaccine), was in order too.

The second visit came to 4951Baht or $149.

The third and last visit will be on August 28 when we will get our last rabies needle and another Dukoral drink!