Countries Where Tap Water Is Not Safe to Drink

Countries where tap water is Not Safe or Conditional

The countries below currently carry a Not Safe or Conditional rating in our country guides. Not Safe means the public supply is not recommended for drinking under normal circumstances, even though it may be fine for showering or brushing teeth. Conditional means the honest answer is "it depends" — the capital might be treated and reliable while a resort town or rural region relies on tankers, wells, or ageing pipes that undo the treatment before it reaches the tap.

Neither rating is permanent or absolute. Infrastructure improves, advisories get lifted, and a single well-run hotel can be fine even in a Not Safe country. The links below open the full country guide, where those exceptions are explained city by city.

South and Southeast Asia carry some of the most consistent Not Safe ratings

India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and the Philippines are all rated Not Safe. In practice this means boiling, filtering, or sticking to bottled and commercially made ice — a routine most travellers to the region are already used to, and one that established hotels are set up to support.

Thailand is a useful example of how nuanced this gets: the country carries a Conditional rating, and cities like Bangkok have reliable commercial ice and bottled water everywhere, while smaller towns and informal venues need more care.

China's tap water is treated, but the pipes let it down

China is Not Safe nationwide, including in Beijing and Shanghai. This isn't really a treatment-plant problem — municipal water in major Chinese cities generally meets national standards when it leaves the plant. The issue is what happens between the plant and the tap: decades-old distribution pipes and rooftop storage tanks can reintroduce rust, sediment and bacteria. Boiling is the standard local practice, and it's what almost every hotel kettle in the country is there for.

Central Asia and the Caucasus region

Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are both Not Safe, for a similar reason to China: source water from mountain rivers and reservoirs is treated reasonably well, but ageing Soviet-era pipes recontaminate it on the way to the tap. In Almaty and Bishkek, boiling or bottled water is the standard visitor precaution, and most hotels catering to international travellers provide both.

Turkey and the Balkans show how one rating can hide a lot of variation

Turkey is Conditional — tap water in Antalya starts out as clean mountain-spring water filtered through limestone, but rooftop storage tanks and older building pipes mean bottled water remains the practical default for visitors. North Macedonia follows a similar pattern: Skopje and Ohrid both treat their water to a reasonable standard, but distribution infrastructure is the weak link, and bottled water is the recommended choice in both cities.

Egypt, Morocco and East Africa

Egypt and Morocco are both Not Safe for travellers, alongside Tanzania, Nigeria and Ethiopia. Bottled water is cheap and universally available across all five, and it's worth extending the same caution to ice at informal venues and fresh produce washed in tap water.

Central and South America

Mexico and Peru are consistently Not Safe, and Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic follow the same pattern. Further south, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador carry Conditional ratings, which is where the country picture gets more interesting. Medellín is treated by EPM, one of the region's best-funded utilities, and tap water is officially potable in newer buildings, while older parts of the city need more caution. São Paulo's water meets Brazilian safety standards but is filtered by most locals anyway, largely for taste rather than genuine risk.

Russia and Mongolia

Russia and Mongolia are both Not Safe, with old Soviet-era infrastructure being the common thread across much of the former USSR and its neighbours — the same pattern seen in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan above.

Islands and resort destinations with a Conditional rating

Islands are where a single country rating breaks down fastest. Grenada is Conditional: NAWASA-treated water is genuinely safe in St. George's and the Grand Anse resort strip, but the outer islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique rely entirely on untreated harvested rainwater. Rhodes in Greece shows the same split at a smaller scale — safe and treated in Rhodes Town and the main resorts, more variable in remote villages further from the coast.

What a Not Safe or Conditional rating means for your trip

A Not Safe rating doesn't mean the country is dangerous to visit — hundreds of millions of tourists travel to these destinations every year without incident. It means the default plan should be bottled or treated water for drinking, brushing teeth, and ice at anywhere other than a reputable venue, rather than assuming the tap is fine.

A Conditional rating asks for one extra step: check the specific city or destination guide rather than stopping at the country level, since the difference between the capital and a rural town, or between a modern hotel and an older building, can be the difference between safe and not.

Start with the country guide, then check the relevant destination guide for exactly where you're staying. If in doubt, our guide on how to purify tap water while travelling covers boiling, filters, UV and tablets for every one of these destinations.