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As the solar slowly dips behind the jagged peaks of Mount Nam Xay, a gaggle of brightly colored sizzling air balloons drift throughout the Vang Vieng valley.
In the river beneath, younger vacationers snort and splash one another from their kayaks.
It’s not arduous to see what attracts so many travellers right here to this little city in central Laos. The surroundings is beautiful, the enjoyable low-cost and plentiful.
But the city has discovered itself on the centre of a global scandal after six vacationers died final week following suspected methanol poisoning.
It is believed their alcoholic drinks might have contained methanol, an industrial chemical often used in bootleg alcohol.
For the throngs of younger western travellers on South East Asia’s backpacker path, Vang Vieng has change into well-known for what known as “tubing.” One described it to me as a water borne pub crawl.
Groups of pals in swimsuits and bikinis clamber aboard large internal tubes that may usually be used on vans and drift downstream, pulling in every so often at river aspect bars the place vodka pictures are liberally administered, earlier than plunging again into the water.
By the time they attain Vang Vieng everyone seems to be pretty merry.
“I think we’re going to give the tubing a miss” two 27-year-old ladies from Hertfordshire within the UK inform me (they didn’t wish 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 right here from Vietnam, simply as information of the deaths from methanol poisoning was spreading internationally.
“In Vietnam we got free drinks, particularly when you’re playing games in the evening,” considered 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 precisely what they sound like – small plastic buckets crammed with low-cost vodka and different liquor. Groups of pals share the combination by way of lengthy plastic straws.
“Now this has happened it really makes you think about it,” the lady’s good 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 ladies mentioned they’re now sticking to ingesting bottled or canned beer.
The deaths of six vacationers has despatched shock waves by way of the backpacker scene. Young feminine travellers really feel most susceptible. The lifeless embrace Briton Simone White, 28, two younger Australians, Holly Bowles and her greatest good friend Bianca Jones, and two young Danish women, Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman and Freja Vennervald Sorensen.
Only one of many lifeless, a 57-year-old American, James Louis Hutson, was male. On the travellers’ chat-groups many have been questioning whether or not solely ladies’s drinks had been spiked with methanol. The reality is, it’s nonetheless a thriller.
What we do know is all of the victims stayed on the identical place, The Nana Backpackers hostel. It’s now been confirmed the American sufferer was discovered lifeless in his bed room there on 13 November. On the identical morning the 2 Danish victims had been discovered unconscious of their rooms and rushed to the native hospital.
Today, the Nana hostel is closed, the swimming pool that till a number of days in the past was internet hosting pool events, is empty. A brief stroll away beside the river a bar known as “JaiDees” has additionally been raided. The homeowners of each have forcefully denied serving any unlawful or do-it-yourself alcohol.
Out on the river there’s little signal that the poisonings are stopping folks coming to Vang Vieng. Late November is peak vacationer season. The wet season is over, the skies are clear and the temperature is a comparatively cool 28C (82F).
Along the principle drag hostel homeowners instructed me they’re totally booked. The younger travellers from Europe and Australia are literally the minority. By far the most important teams are from neighbouring Thailand and China, the latter shuttling south on the newly completed Chinese-built Laos high-speed rail line.
Vang Vieng remains to be a dusty rural city. But it’s booming. Local enterprise homeowners glide previous in huge black land cruisers and vary rovers. As I walked again to my lodge on Saturday night time, I used to be greatly surprised by the loud bark from the exhaust pipes of a Lamborghini cruising alongside Vang Vieng’s single foremost avenue.
Twenty years in the past this was a sleepy little city surrounded by rice fields. Now it’s being reworked by Thai and Chinese cash. Fancy new lodges are bobbing up with riverside cocktail bars and infinity swimming pools.
But the younger western backpackers usually are not right here for the five-star expertise, they arrive for the pleasant anything-goes ambiance.
At a neighborhood motorcycle rental I meet two contemporary graduates from Sussex University.
Ned from Somerset says he has no intention of cancelling plans due to what occurred. “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 good 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 persons are lifeless, 5 of them younger ladies.
The shock waves from what occurred right here has rippled out all over the world to suburban houses from London to Melbourne, the place frightened dad and mom with youngsters on the backpacker path are frantically messaging, checking the place they’re, and making an attempt to steer them to not go to Vang Vieng.
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