'Don't drink the spirits': Laos backpackers avoid shots after suspected poisonings

As the sun slowly dips behind the jagged peaks of Mount Nam Xay, a group of brightly coloured hot air balloons drift across the Vang Vieng valley.

In the river below, young tourists laugh and splash each other from their kayaks.

It’s not hard to see what draws so many travellers here to this little town in central Laos. The scenery is stunning, the fun cheap and plentiful.

But the town has found itself at the centre of an international scandal after six tourists died last week following suspected methanol poisoning.

It is believed their alcoholic drinks may have contained methanol, an industrial chemical often used in bootleg alcohol.

For the throngs of young western travellers on South East Asia’s backpacker trail, Vang Vieng has become famous for what is called “tubing.” One described it to me as a water borne pub crawl.

Groups of friends in swimsuits and bikinis clamber aboard huge inner tubes that would normally be used on trucks and drift downstream, pulling in from time to time at river side bars where vodka shots are liberally administered, before plunging back into the water.

By the time they reach Vang Vieng everyone is fairly merry.

“I think we’re going to give the tubing a miss” two 27-year-old women from Hertfordshire in the UK tell me (they didn’t want to give their names).

“The vodka shots are part of the package, but no one wants to drink the local vodka right now.”

The pair arrived here from Vietnam, just as news of the deaths from methanol poisoning was spreading across the world.

“In Vietnam we got free drinks, particularly when you’re playing games in the evening,” one of them tells me. “And we just never thought about it, you just presume what they are giving you is safe. We’ve drunk buckets before, but we are not going to take the risk again, and a lot of people here feel the same.”

“Buckets” are exactly what they sound like - small plastic buckets filled with cheap vodka and other liquor. Groups of friends share the mixture through long plastic straws.

“Now this has happened it really makes you think about it,” the woman's friend says. “You wonder why are the drinks free? At the hostel associated with the deaths we heard they were giving free vodka and whisky shots for an hour each evening. I think if that happened in the UK you would definitely think it was dodgy.”

Both women said they are now sticking to drinking bottled or canned beer.

The deaths of six tourists has sent shock waves through the backpacker scene. Young female travellers feel most vulnerable. The dead include Briton Simone White, 28, two young Australians, Holly Bowles and her best friend Bianca Jones, and two young Danish women, Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman and Freja Vennervald Sorensen.

Only one of the dead, a 57-year-old American, James Louis Hutson, was male. On the travellers’ chat-groups many have been questioning whether only women’s drinks had been spiked with methanol. The truth is, it’s still a mystery.

What we do know is all the victims stayed at the same place, The Nana Backpackers hostel. It’s now been confirmed the American victim was found dead in his bedroom there on 13 November. On the same morning the two Danish victims were found unconscious in their rooms and rushed to the local hospital.

Today, the Nana hostel is closed, the swimming pool that until a few days ago was hosting pool parties, is empty. A short walk away beside the river a bar called “JaiDees” has also been raided. The owners of both have forcefully denied serving any illegal or homemade alcohol.

Out on the river there is little sign that the poisonings are stopping people coming to Vang Vieng. Late November is peak tourist season. The rainy season is over, the skies are clear and the temperature is a relatively cool 28C (82F).

Along the main drag hostel owners told me they are fully booked. The young travellers from Europe and Australia are actually the minority. By far the largest groups are from neighbouring Thailand and China, the latter shuttling south on the newly finished Chinese-built Laos high-speed rail line.

Vang Vieng is still a dusty rural town. But it’s booming. Local business owners glide past in big black land cruisers and range rovers. As I walked back to my hotel on Saturday night, I was taken aback by the loud bark from the exhaust pipes of a Lamborghini cruising along Vang Vieng’s single main street.

Twenty years ago this was a sleepy little town surrounded by rice fields. Now it is being transformed by Thai and Chinese money. Fancy new hotels are springing up with riverside cocktail bars and infinity pools.

But the young western backpackers are not here for the five-star experience, they come for the friendly anything-goes atmosphere.

At a local motorbike rental I meet two fresh graduates from Sussex University.

Ned from Somerset says he has no intention of cancelling plans because of what happened. “People are scared for sure," he says, “but I don’t get the impression anyone is leaving. Everyone is still here having a good time."

He adds: "But everyone is also saying the same thing, don’t drink the spirits, so people are being careful, there’s definitely that feeling in the air, but I think it’s actually quite safe now because all the bars are on edge, no-one wants to go to jail”.

His friend Jack is equally unflustered. “We’ve come here to meet up with some friends and have some fun, and we’re still going to do that," he says. “I’ve been here a week now and I can tell you the people here are absolutely lovely. They are some of the nicest people we’ve met in all of South East Asia. So whatever happened, I don’t think there’s anything malicious about it.”

Malicious or not, six people are dead, five of them young women.

The shock waves from what happened here has rippled out around the world to suburban homes from London to Melbourne, where worried parents with children on the backpacker trail are frantically messaging, checking where they are, and trying to persuade them not to go to Vang Vieng.