Free shots and buckets of beer in the party town

For Australian friends Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles, it was their first big trip, setting out to explore the world.

Like so many 19-year-olds, they were drawn to the romance of backpacking around Southeast Asia – where the food is amazing, the people are friendly and the scenery is breathtaking.

They had “saved up enough money after school and university to have their overseas trip, like so many of our kids do,” said their football team coach Nick Heath. “And they left.”

They ended up on November 12 in the river city of Vang Vieng in central Laos.

The two checked into the popular Nana Backpacker Hostel – where guests often get a free shot on arrival. Days later, both were on life support in hospitals in Thailand.

Jones’ death was announced on November 21, and Bowles’ a day later. The death of a British woman, 28-year-old Simone White, was also announced on Thursday.

They are among six foreign tourists who have died in what is believed to be a mass incident of methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng.

Two Danish women aged 19 and 20 died last week, while an American man also died. They have not been identified.

It is unclear how many others have fallen ill, but a transnational police investigation is now underway into the deaths.

A large part of the investigation has fallen on the hostel where some of the victims allegedly stayed. The girls had taken free shots there before heading out for the night.

The hostel’s manager has denied blame and said the same drinks had been served to at least 100 other guests that night who reported no problems. The manager was taken in by the police for questioning on Thursday.

Mr. Heath, speaking to the media on behalf of Ms Bowle’s family, said they knew it was methanol that made the girls sick. But “no one really knows how and where it got into their system”.

To understand what happened, the BBC spoke to backpackers and a diplomat about the area.

Our reporting showed that the city where travelers fell ill remains a party spot despite previous efforts, with some success, to clean up its image, and that while the risk of methanol poisoning is known among consulates and tourism operators, travelers largely ignorant.

Vang Vieng – a small town on the Nam Song River surrounded by limestone mountains and rice paddies – is known for its scenery.

It is also known as a party city – a reputation Laos officials have tried to shed over the past decade.

A four-hour bus ride from the capital, Vientiane, it has long been the stopping point on the Banana Pancake Trail backpacking route between Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before heading north to the ancient temples of Luang Prabang.

In Vang Vieng, hostel bunks are advertised for less than €10 (£8) per person. night, while a bucket of beer can cost half that. Drugs such as marijuana and mushrooms are readily available, openly advertised in cafes and eateries.

In the early 2000s and 2010s, the city was famous for hardcore parties and river snakes. But after several tourists were injured or died, efforts were made to raise safety standards.

“To combat the deaths in the river tubes, they demolished a bunch of the riverside bars that were selling buckets of vodka to people floating by,” a Western diplomat in the region told the BBC.

Lao officials aimed to refocus the city as a place for ecotourism rather than just a hub for the young and drunk.

“And it worked,” they say. “It’s actually changed quite a lot in the last decade, they’ve cleaned it up, it’s a lot more modern than it used to be.”

But because of that: “I think it can be very easy for young travelers to miss the fact that this is still a very poor country with lax regulations and safety standards.”

The diplomat said methanol poisoning – where alcoholic beverages are contaminated with a toxic compound – is well known among consulates and tourism operators.

Consulates quite regularly have to deal with cases of tourists who have fallen ill from dodgy drinks, the diplomat noted.

Southeast Asia is documented as the worst region for methanol poisoning. Local producers making cheap alcohol often fail to properly reduce the toxic level of methanol produced in the process.

Thousands of deaths are recorded each year in the region, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

But for tourists, awareness of toxic alcohol is low.

British backpacker Sarisha told the BBC’s Newsbeat program that she had never considered the risk of free drinks when she recently stayed at Nana Backpacker.

Like most other hostels, happy hours were a daily staple at the venue, as well as complimentary shots of local vodka as a courtesy, she said.

“It’s a very party town,” she said.

Tourists still in the city are now taking extra precautions following the shocking deaths.

On Friday, Miika, 19, a Finnish backpacker who lives in a hostel just 10 minutes’ walk from Nana Backpacker, told the BBC that he and his friends had arrived in the city two days ago. They now only ordered bottled beer and rethought river snakes because shots were included.

“Now, knowing about this, we didn’t really want to go there,” he said.

British woman Natasha Moore, 22, told the BBC she canceled her booking with Nana Backpacker after hearing about the deaths.

“It’s just so scary, I feel so overwhelmed… it feels like I’ve escaped death, almost survivor’s guilt,” she said in a TikTok video warning other travelers.

Her group arrived in the city two days after the poisoning, when “it was still a bit quiet, nobody knew too much about what was going on”.

She knew many travelers decided to skip town and said there were signs at the hostel warning to be careful with drinks.

She said she “can’t even count how many free drinks” she had on her travels, but over five nights in Vang Vieng, she and her friends had no free drinks or spirits, only bottled alcohol.

“I feel so, so sad and sorry for all the friends and family and the people who are still in the hospital. It’s just so unfair, we were just trying to have a good time,” she said.

“We’ve been working hard to save up to travel, like it’s such a brave thing to do, and then something like this can happen.”

Additional reporting by Gavin Butler, Amy Walker and Jack Gray