'I visited Laos methanol poisoning party town and still shudder at the memory'

Vang Vieng successful Laos has had a estimation for unsafe partying for implicit a decennary and attempts to betterment the town's tourer offering person intelligibly failed, writes Laura Hill

Over a decennary ago, I visited the enactment municipality of Vang Vieng in Laos, wherever calamity struck successful caller days with the deaths of six tourists linked to methanol poisoning. Even backmost past the municipality was known arsenic a hot-spot for drinking and partying for young people.

A mecca for young backpackers, the main attraction successful 2011 was tipsy tubing, which progressive floating down the stream successful an aged motortruck interior tyre, stopping disconnected astatine the half-dozen bars on the way. Super-strength cocktails were served successful buckets, and home-made whisky shots were handed retired for escaped astatine the makeshift bars, which had been precariously built on the stream adjacent to town.

Horror stories of radical injuring themselves, oregon worse, connected the stream were shared among backpackers, but still, hundreds of tourists lined up each greeting to walk the time partying connected the river. A person from schoolhouse had visited the municipality a fewer months earlier and posted connected Facebook photos of horrific injuries he'd suffered erstwhile helium deed his caput connected a stone aft jumping from a enactment plaything into the murky river.

That didn't deter maine though, and I was anxious to halt disconnected successful the infamous tiny municipality connected my trip. Upon arrival, I was reminded of the 'strips' successful Magaluf and Zante, though connected a smaller scale. The tiny main thoroughfare was a bid of large, neon-lit bars serving cocktails alongside 'happy menus' which offered a scope of amerciable drugs from mushroom shakes to opium joints. Bartenders casually encouraged customers to effort the 'happy menus' contempt Laos's strict cause laws, which inactive see the decease penalty.

The program for the time was to prosecute an interior tube, leap connected the backmost of 1 of a twelve vans ferrying hundreds of young radical a fewer miles retired of municipality and interval down the Nam Song River, stopping astatine bars connected the way. Lifejackets were not disposable astatine the clip I visited.

When I collected the interior tube, I had to motion a disclaimer papers written wholly successful Laos. The unit past numbered the papers with the corresponding fig drawn connected my manus successful imperishable marker: 'So we cognize who you are if we find you,' they joked. Looking back, I shudder astatine however easy I shrugged disconnected this wide informing motion and deed the bars.

The tubing should person taken 3 hours, with stops astatine bars on the way, but aft underestimating the spot of the homemade whisky, I recovered myself stranded miles from town, freezing acold successful the acheronian earlier being rescued and ferried backmost to municipality wherever the parties went connected until the aboriginal hours.

It wasn't until aft I realised however lethal the town's main tourer attraction could be. Vang Vieng's tiny infirmary recorded 27 tourer deaths successful 2011 owed to drowning oregon diving head-first into rocks, the Guardian reported astatine the time.

In 2012, conscionable 1 twelvemonth aft I visited the Laos authorities staged a clampdown connected safety. Travel bloggers said that galore of the bars were closed, and those that re-opened had a strict acceptable of rules with nary much enactment swings and conscionable a fewer bars unfastened astatine a time.

The information measures astir the stream tubing intelligibly did not widen much widely. Recent reviews of Vang Vieng suggest that contempt this effort to cleanable up its image, the estimation arsenic a hard-partying hotspot remained. Revellers stock photos of the 'Happy Menus' which are inactive disposable successful the bars and praise the chaotic nighttime outs connected the town's strip.

The 'free shots' I retrieve being liberally handed retired person remained arsenic a selling constituent for the bars, with devastating consequences. Clearly the lessons of the aboriginal 2010s person been long-forgotten, arsenic Vang Vieng finds itself again associated with the decease of young travellers.

Backpackers who are looking to bask themselves shouldn't beryllium pushed into risking their lives. I fearfulness thing has changed, and travellers' lives volition proceed to beryllium enactment astatine hazard by unscrupulous radical hoping to pull arsenic galore tourists arsenic imaginable with nary respect for the information and wellbeing of the chiefly young radical passing done the municipality connected the South East Asia backpacker trail.

After truthful galore lives person been lost, it's clip for Vang Vieng to telephone clip connected the party.