Turkey, Thailand and Bali Aren’t the Only Options: How to Actually Compare Overseas Surgery Destinations

Ask ten Australians where you go for cheaper cosmetic surgery and you'll get three answers: Turkey, Thailand, Bali.

That list didn't come from clinical evidence. It came from flight routes, package pricing and years of marketing budget pointed squarely at Australians. Those are commercial facts. They tell you where the industry has built a sales funnel into this country. They tell you almost nothing about where you personally should have surgery, or whether you should travel at all.

I started Pirk because I went through this process myself and found it nearly impossible to compare anything honestly. That problem gets a lot harder the moment you add a border.

So this isn't a ranking. It's the framework I'd use.

What we actually know about Australians going overseas

Honestly, not as much as you'd think. The most-cited estimates, published by the Victorian Government's Better Health Channel, are that around 15,000 Australians travel overseas for healthcare each year and about A$300 million a year is spent on cosmetic surgery tourism alone. Those figures are generally credited to researchers on the Sun, Sea, Sand and Silicone project, and they're around a decade old. Nobody collects proper data on outbound medical travellers, so you'll see much higher numbers quoted elsewhere. Treat all of them as estimates.

Appetite is broad. In a 2024 survey of 1,006 Australians commissioned by Insure&Go, 57% said they would consider overseas medical treatment, and cost was the leading reason at 37%.

We also have a partial picture of what happens when it goes wrong. A 2026 study in the ANZ Journal of Surgery reviewed patients who presented to Westmead Hospital in NSW with complications from cosmetic surgery performed overseas. Across two study periods, 24 patients met the criteria. Turkey was the country of surgery in more than half of those cases, followed by Thailand and Lebanon. Abdominoplasty (tummy tuck) was the most common procedure, then liposuction and breast augmentation. More than half had several procedures at once. Half were active smokers. One patient developed a DVT/PE, a blood clot that travelled to the lungs.

Be careful how you read that study, because plenty of people online won't be. It counts complications at one hospital and has no denominator. It can't tell you what proportion of Australians who travel have problems, and it doesn't capture everyone who came home fine. What it does show is the pattern in the cases that land back here: several procedures in one sitting, risk factors like smoking, and long flights soon after major surgery.

The Better Health Channel notes that both the Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons warn against medical tourism because of the risks. I'm not going to pretend otherwise, and any service telling you the risks are overblown isn't being straight with you.

The usual three are a marketing artefact

Here's a pair of numbers that reframes the whole conversation.

Brazil performs more surgical cosmetic procedures than any other country, around 2.3 million in 2024, according to the ISAPS Global Survey 2024. Yet in the same survey, the countries with the highest proportion of foreign patients were Tunisia, the UAE, Colombia and Türkiye. Brazil isn't on that list.

Read those two facts together and you learn something useful. Türkiye's cosmetic sector includes a large export industry built for international patients. Brazil's volume is overwhelmingly domestic. Brazilians operating on Brazilians.

Neither is good or bad. But they are different products.

An export-oriented market is built around you: English-speaking coordinators, airport transfers, hotel packages, and a booking process designed to turn an international enquiry into a booking quickly. A domestic market isn't built around foreign patients at all. That means more friction and less polish, and it also means the surgeon's reputation rests on local patients who can walk back into the clinic next month.

So when you compare destinations, you aren't only comparing clinical standards. You're comparing what each market has been designed to do.

The five questions that actually separate destinations

Price is the easiest thing to compare and the least informative. These five are harder, and they matter far more.

1. Who is legally allowed to operate on you there?

Australia only recently closed its own version of this gap. Until the title reforms that began in September 2023, a doctor with no accredited surgical training could still call themselves a "cosmetic surgeon". We've written about what changed and why it mattered. Most countries have some version of that gap, in a different shape. Find out what theirs is before you compare anything else.

2. Can you verify the surgeon yourself, before you pay anything?

Not "does the clinic say they're board certified". Can you take a registration number to a public register and confirm it yourself, today, without the clinic's help? If the answer is no, everything after that is a matter of faith rather than fact.

3. Is your surgery happening in a hospital, or a room?

An accredited hospital, a licensed day-surgery facility and a treatment room above a shopfront are three very different risk environments. Ask for the name of the facility, whether a qualified anaesthetist is present for the whole procedure, and what happens if you need intensive care. Nuviya's Australian site sets out what a proper escalation plan looks like for surgery in Brazil, and it's a reasonable template for the questions to put to any destination.

4. Does the flight time fit the recovery window?

This one cuts against several destinations, including Brazil. Long-haul flying and major surgery both raise the risk of blood clots, and the Westmead cohort included a patient who developed a DVT/PE. The question isn't "how long is the flight". It's "how many nights does my surgeon need me to stay before I'm cleared to fly, and can I actually afford that many nights?" A package that has you flying home unusually early is solving a cost problem, not a clinical one.

5. What's the plan if something goes wrong?

Complications, revisions, and the six weeks after you land. Medicare doesn't cover surgery performed overseas. Travel insurance very commonly excludes complications from elective cosmetic procedures, so read the product disclosure statement yourself rather than taking a clinic's word for it. Then get three answers in writing: who reviews me once I'm home, what the revision policy is and who pays for it, and whether any insurance is actually attached to this at all.

How the destinations look against those five

Turkey. One of the largest markets built around international patients, and the country that appeared most often in the Westmead complication data. That isn't a contradiction. It's a high-volume market with a very wide spread in quality. There are well-qualified surgeons there, and there are operators competing purely on price. Verification matters more here than anywhere.

Thailand. A long-established medical tourism sector, including hospitals with international accreditation, and historically one of the destinations Australians have used most. The shorter flight suits recovery better than most options on this list. The same spread in quality applies.

Bali and Indonesia. The closest and cheapest to reach, and the weakest fit for major surgery. Facility standards vary enormously, and the regulatory picture is the hardest of these to verify from Australia.

South Korea. A very high-volume market, particularly for facial procedures, at prices often closer to Australian levels than people expect. Much of the sector is clinic-based, so the hospital-or-room question is especially worth asking.

Brazil. The largest market for surgical cosmetic procedures by volume, overwhelmingly domestic, with a specialist registration system you can check yourself. It's also the longest flight on this list, which makes the recovery-window question non-negotiable. There's very little established Australian-facing infrastructure, which cuts both ways: less of a factory, and less of a well-trodden path.

Australia. Still the right answer for a lot of people. If your procedure is at the lower-cost end, if you have a complex medical history, if you smoke, if you can't take several weeks away, or if the thought of a complication on the other side of the world would keep you awake, stay here. What we see most often is people assuming the overseas option is dramatically cheaper without ever pricing the Australian one properly first. Our honest cost comparison and Australian cost guide are a good place to start.

One perspective worth reading

One piece I'd point you to comes from someone with skin in the game. Ash Frenken is an Australian who moved to Brazil and co-founded the medical tourism platform Nuviya. He's written an honest guide for Australians considering surgery overseas that opens by disclosing his commercial interest in your decision, then spends most of its length on the risks that are real and the people who shouldn't travel.

I should be upfront with you here. As well as running Pirk, I work with Nuviya as their Director of Medical Tourism, and Pirk has a commercial partnership with them. Nobody paid for these links. Judge the guide on whether it's any good, not on my say-so.

The bottom line

All surgery carries risk, including infection, bleeding, scarring, complications of anaesthesia, results that don't meet your expectations, and the possibility of further surgery. Travelling for it adds more risk on top of that, and no amount of good planning removes it.

But "Turkey, Thailand or Bali?" is the wrong question. The right one is whether your procedure, your health and your tolerance for something going wrong make travelling sensible at all. And if they do, which market can answer those five questions for you in writing, before you pay a deposit.

That's a research problem. It's the one we work on all day.

Common questions

Which country is best for cosmetic surgery for Australians?

There isn't a single best country, and anyone who names one is usually selling it. The better question is whether your procedure and your health make travel sensible at all. If they do, look for the destination where you can verify the surgeon, confirm the facility, stay long enough before flying and plan for complications, all in writing before you pay. For a lot of people, the answer is still Australia.

Is cosmetic surgery in Turkey safe for Australians?

Turkey has a very wide spread in quality. There are well-qualified surgeons and accredited hospitals, and there are operators competing mainly on price. Turkey was also the most frequent country of surgery among patients treated for overseas cosmetic surgery complications at Westmead Hospital in a 2026 study. If you're considering it, check the surgeon's registration and specialist qualification yourself, confirm the named facility, and ask to see the clinic's International Health Tourism Authorisation Certificate.

Does Medicare or travel insurance cover cosmetic surgery overseas?

Medicare doesn't cover surgery performed overseas, and most travel insurance policies exclude complications from elective cosmetic procedures. Read the product disclosure statement carefully. If you need follow-up or corrective surgery once you're home, don't assume it will be covered, so check with your GP and insurer before you go.

Not sure whether travelling is right for you?

A Pirk concierge will go through your procedure, your circumstances and your options with you, including staying in Australia. And we'll tell you honestly if we think the answer is no.

Book a call with Pirk or call 1800 577 017.

Sources

• Better Health Channel, Victorian Department of Health, "Medical tourism and insurance". Around 15,000 Australians travelling each year, about A$300 million on cosmetic surgery tourism, and the AMA and RACS warnings.
• Sun, Sea, Sand and Silicone: Mapping Cosmetic Surgery Tourism. University of Leeds-led research project with the University of Technology Sydney, final report 2014. Generally credited as the source of the 15,000 and A$300 million estimates.
• Insure&Go consumer survey, 2024, 1,006 Australians.
• Res A, He B, Karunaratne YG, Cheung M, Hsieh F. "The Impact of Overseas Cosmetic Tourism on the Australian Public Hospital System." ANZ Journal of Surgery. 2026;96(3):607–613. doi:10.1111/ans.70513
• ISAPS Global Survey 2024, published June 2025.
• Smartraveller, "Medical tourism".
• Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons, "Cosmetic tourism".