The tap water in much of the developing world is not safe to drink, and river water can be contaminated with animal fecal matter and other waste. As a cycle tourist, I can drink anywhere from 3-8 liters of water per day, so I need to find ways to get clean H2O to get me through the day. I guess I could just stop at 7/11 every time I needed a refill, but that would add up to three or more plastic bottles per day, 90 per month, or OMG 1080 per year (yikes!), making me an extremely environmentally unfriendly cyclist. So how to get clean water without producing huge amounts of waste? This is how I roll.
Use your Sawyer squeeze filter to purify water from some raging rapids. This thing is super handy because it filters out all the particulate matter like silt and stuff too. Takes about 2 minutes to filter a liter of water.
Use your steri-pen. UV radiation kills all the bad stuff, so as long as your dirty water isn't filled with chemicals and heavy metals, you're good to go.
Way #4:
Use your Sawyer squeeze filter to purify water from some raging rapids. This thing is super handy because it filters out all the particulate matter like silt and stuff too. Takes about 2 minutes to filter a liter of water.
Way #3:
Use your steri-pen. UV radiation kills all the bad stuff, so as long as your dirty water isn't filled with chemicals and heavy metals, you're good to go.
Way #2:
In Myanmar, they keep potable water in these big clay urns just about everywhere. On the side of the road, at restaurants, in front of temples, attached to trees. You can never get dehydrated in Burma!
Way #1:
The water machine. Pay 1 baht, or about 3 cents, at one of these fancy streetside machines and get a liter (or two) of clean, potable water to fill your belly and hydrate those hard-working cells in your body.
Boom, bottle full.
