Bali belly and the runs are biggest tourist fears

Forget air crashes, crocodiles and muggers. Being laid low by Bali belly or contracting a dose of the runs are the two biggest fears for Aussies heading overseas.

That's according to a contest to find Australia's best holiday nightmare story with a happy ending.

Asked to tell their story and also nominate their biggest travel fear, almost half (48 percent) the entrants in the Save My Holiday contest are nominating diarrhoea. Some 30 percent are citing food poisoning.

That's no surprise to competition spokesman and Australian adventure novelist, Tony Park, who says relatively simple problems are often the things that bring an overseas holiday undone

"Eating and drinking well are at the front of most tourists' minds, so it pays to stick to bottled water and avoid food from street stalls," said Tony.

"I spend a lot of time in Africa and South East Asia researching for my books and work on the basis that prevention is better than cure."

Park's most hair-raising story from a recent trip to Africa involved him and his wife being chased in their Land Rover by a black rhino for 5 km along perilous bush tracks in a Zimbabwe national park.

"Black rhinos are rare, endangered and hard to spot. In this case, we were the endangered ones," Park said.

Sponsored by healthcare company Nycomed, the Save My Holiday contest aims to raise awareness of Travellers' Diarrhoea (TD), which affects up to half of all people from industrialised countries travelling to less developed destinations.+

Around 2.7m people annually depart Australia for high-risk destinations in Asia alone* and TD is estimated to affect 1.1m Australians each year.

Nycomed markets Travelan, a clinically-proven, natural product that's approved in Australia for the prevention of TD. It was developed by Melbourne biotechnology company Immuron Limited and is available from pharmacies.

The Save My Holiday contest runs until August 31.