Executive director of the Australian Federation of AIDS

Executive director of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, Don Baxter, says the virus has a strong hold in most Asian cities with prevalence rates in gay and bisexual men just about doubling every two years.

"This is an extremely rapid rise. In Bangkok for instance, 30 per cent of gay men are infected. In Beijing it's doubled in last two years. In Vientiane in Laos, a country with hardly any HIV, nearly 6 per cent of the gay men are infected.

"So, Australian gay tourists travelling to Asian cities need to be aware that there are epidemics happening there now - like what happened in Sydney and Melbourne ... in the early 1980s, before we even knew it was happening."

But it seems they are not being made aware of the risks. Mark Proffit is the commercial director of the gay-focussed online travel agency Rainbow Tourism.

"We generally try to talk about medication, drugs, any legal issues; so in some Asian countries gay sex isn't legal, so we try to warn them about that. The other one is sometimes under-age issues," he said.

But they do not talk about sexually transmitted diseases and Dr Russell says it is time they did.

"Tourism and people movements are huge now. You look at the number of backpackers and tourists that come into Australia, and a lot of those backpackers have sex with the locals," he said.

"You look at young Aussie guys and girls who head off overseas. And most of them are going to end up having sex with people abroad, whether it's in Asia or Europe, or North America or wherever.

"And then they come back home again. So, we travel and these bugs, these viruses and bacteria travel as well. We can do a lot more, I think, about educating travellers and educating young people, educating the fly-in, fly-out miners.

"All these groups, we need to get the message out there that just because he or she looks well, and it's a conducive environment to sex, it doesn't mean you can't use condoms. You really need to use them, and you need to check-ups as well."

Mr Proffit says most of his customers are already aware of the risks of HIV, but from now on he says he will consider giving each traveller a pack of condoms, with every flight they book.