hand-baggage - Chinese medicine

trailingspouse

Does anyone know where I stand with this? I am taking a course of Chinese herbal medicines. They come in the form of a giant teabag with what looks like pot pourri inside. I boil them and then drink the 'tea', and need to do this twice a day for 3 months.

I will be flying with Ryanair from the UK to Italy this coming weekend, with hand baggage only, and obviously need to take them with me if I can. I've looked on the directgov website and there's no mention of this type of thing (although other medications are detailed), and I've just spoken to Ryanair themselves. The woman I spoke to was not English, and the line was very bad - she said it was OK, but seemed to think I was asking if I could take Chinese teabags with me!!

I would like to take them with me - don't want to stop the course now, just as it's starting to work. But I don't want to take them and have them confiscated (they're quite expensive) - if there's a risk of that happening, then I'd rather just leave them at home.

Voyager2002

Giant teabags: would they fit in the gauge that Ryanair use to measure the size of hand baggage? If not you would be allowed to take them, but they would have to go in the hold.

And you would not be allowed to boil them while in the aeroplane. In fact, I don't think that Ryanair provide personal kettles to passengers. Nor could you bring any water with you through the security check.

malkie76

Chinese medicine ? I'd save yourself the money and buy some tetley teabags instead. They are every bit as effective as chinese medicine.

You won't have any issue taking them on the plane, providing they are in some sort of official looking packaging. They might want to do a drugs test on them going through security, but they'd do the same sort of thing for anything which looks a bit dodgy, or might be hiding something.

trailingspouse

Thanks - they come with a week's supply in a sealed bag, so will take that.
Yes, I was sceptical too - but the NHS has run out of ideas for my particular problem, and I thought it was worth a try. They told me they would take 2-4 weeks to have an effect, and lo and behold, after exactly 13 days, things improved noticeably. I don't want to run the risk of things getting worse again if I stop, even for a few days.

malkie76

Good stuff if it's working for you - thats always good to hear.