I just saw some news about deaths from basically bars putting wood alcohol into drinks (to save money I guess?), and so far have claimed about 6 backpackers.
I think I’d be very careful getting drinks in those places.
It takes very little wood alcohol to kill you, as little as 30 mL will do it.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll make sure the bar tender puts no more than 29 ml in my drink next time.
I read a related article yesterday. I think it’s only in Laos, but correct me if I’m wrong. I would just stick to beer if I was there, or not drink at all.
Yet another good reason to not drink alcohol. 
It’s also not hard to put ethylene glycol into alcoholic drinks and it wouldn’t taste “off”, except it will kill you.
Your details are a bit off here. The news you saw was about some tourists getting suspected methanol poisoning in Laos. It’s been in the news quite a lot over the last few days.
I haven’t seen anything reported yet about who’s supposed to be responsible, but I doubt it was the bars adding methanol to drinks deliberately as you suggest. Probably some tainted bottle(s) of lao lao or something made and sold by someone else and used innocently. The place they were staying (now closed) looks quite established and reputable, and they apparently previously denied the drinks came from them.
I don’t think it’s in any of the bars’ interests to deliberately poison foreign tourists. The town where it happened (Vang Vieng) is quite reliant on its tourism industry. It’s still Laos so safety standards aren’t great, but I think it’s just an unfortunate accident, at least on the part of the town. Methanol poisoning isn’t that uncommon in rural places with little to no regulations.
A decade ago the town was killing drunk Western tourists by poorly designed rope swings into the Nam Song river. It’s been relatively safe since the government shut that down. I went around 2015 or so. Nice place. I wouldn’t drink the home-made whisky though — that’s obviously going to be sketchy.
I think the current problem is just restricted to Vang Vieng by the way, not broader Laos and not Thailand or Cambodia. Some of the tourists actually died in Thailand I think, but that’s just because Thailand is where you go if you’re in Laos and need a decent hospital.
So in this case, the current thread title indicating “deaths in Laos/Thailand” would mean “fatally poisoned in Laos and then seeking help but unfortunately dying in Thailand”?
Guy
This article here about the current Laos incident says in its last paragraph:
“In neighbouring Thailand, at least six people died and more than 20 were hospitalised after drinking methanol-laced bootleg alcohol in August.”
That’s how I understood the current situation, yes. At least one of the people who died had gone/been taken to Thailand after getting sick. I think 6 people died so far, but I read there were some more sick people.
I changed the title before to remove “Cambodia” and put more of a focus on Laos, but that’s what I meant yeah. You can change it to something else if you like.
Or just “Methanol poisoning in Laos” or something.
That might just be an unrelated case. These things aren’t that uncommon in rural areas, and Thailand is a big place.
I see. I now understand that there were separate fatal incidents, including an earlier incident in Thailand in August.
Guy
That one was apparently on the outskirts of Bangkok, so quite a long way from Vang Vieng and presumably unconnected. For the Laos one, I would guess the culprit is either fake bottles filled and sold in Myanmar/China (as pictured in the article) or some home-made local liquor like lao lao.
The possibility of fake alcohol, especially Western spirits, used to be an open secret when I lived in China. I have a vague memory of a bar owner friend showing me a vendor’s price list, with two columns for real and fake… and that was one of the reliable vendors that actually tells the customers what they’re buying. I mostly drank beer as a result.
That situation sounds . . . not good.
For these people who have died, that must be an awful way to go. You’re partying, or in the cases on the outskirts of Bangkok enjoying a simple drink, and next thing you know things have gone very wrong—and for many of them, that’s it.
Guy
The news is certainly giving me a retroactive shudder about the bootleg alcohol I bought out of a plastic bag in Indonesia all those years ago. Boy that was dumb. (No harm came of it, beyond presumably a hangover.)
You’ve been lost for quite some time tho.
Indeed. Though I also don’t think you can really go to a place like Laos and expect safety standards to be as strict as they were in the place you came from.
The risk (not necessarily of alcohol poisoning) is part of the attraction, and doing the stuff necessary for Laos to have, say, a highly regulated alcohol industry would take away some of the appealing aspects of traveling there too. I assume the reason we have those regulations in other countries is because people died of methanol poisoning and stuff in the past and we decided to fix that.
I had some CaptianQ whisky in Korea years ago. I used to put my whisky in the freezer. The CaptainQ turned syrupy when I did this, which didn’t seem right. But I drank it anyway. The worst hangover. Young and stupid.
Police are linking the poisoning to the backpacker hostel that all the victims stayed at. Scary stuff:
A fellow United Kingdom backpacker, who wished not to be named, had two “free vodkas” at Nana Backpackers shortly before 3pm on November 9 but became sick, according to the Herald Sun .
The backpacker told the Herald Sun she suffered temporary blindness, spent a day vomiting, and had a resting heart rate of 170 beats per minute when she finally received medical help.
An average resting heart rate for a 21-year-old woman is 70 beats per minute.
She said it was difficult to communicate with the doctors, who spoke little English and “thought I was drunk”.
She said her heart rate lowered after a saline drip and hospital staff discharged her with nausea medication.
Bethany Clarke, a UK tourist who was hospitalised alongside her friend and victim Simone White, says her liver began to “shut down” and she underwent “many infusions and tablets and days of recovery”.
Source of poisoning found - it was the vodka factory: