‘Don’t drink alcohol’: Laotian tourists avoid injections after suspected poisoning

Among young Western travelers hitting the tourist trails of Southeast Asia, Vang Vieng has become famous for its so-called “tubing.” One described it to me as like crawling through a pub on water.

Groups of friends in swimsuits and bikinis climb aboard huge tubes typically found on trucks and float downstream, stopping occasionally at riverside bars where they drink generously of vodka before diving back into the water.

By the time they reach Vang Vieng, everyone is quite cheerful.

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

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

The couple arrived here from Vietnam just as news of deaths from methanol poisoning spread around the world.

“In Vietnam they give us free drinks, especially when you play games in the evening,” one of them tells me. “And we just never thought about it, you just assume that what they give you is safe. We’ve drunk buckets before, but we’re not going to take any more risks, and many here feel the same way.”

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

“Now that it’s happened, it really makes you think about it,” says the woman’s friend. “Are you wondering why the drinks are free? At the hostel where the deaths occurred, we heard they were giving out free vodka and whiskey every evening for an hour. I think if this happened in the UK you’d probably think it was a trick.”