BBCBecause the solar slowly dips behind the jagged peaks of Mount Nam Xay, a bunch of brightly colored sizzling air balloons drift throughout the Vang Vieng valley.
Within the river beneath, younger vacationers chortle and splash one another from their kayaks.
It’s not exhausting 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.
However the city has discovered itself on the centre of a world scandal after six vacationers died final week following suspected methanol poisoning.
It’s believed their alcoholic drinks might have contained methanol, an industrial chemical usually utilized 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 is named “tubing.” One described it to me as a water borne pub crawl.
Teams of buddies in swimsuits and bikinis clamber aboard big interior tubes that may usually be used on vehicles and drift downstream, pulling in now and again at river facet bars the place vodka pictures are liberally administered, earlier than plunging again into the water.
By the point they attain Vang Vieng everyone seems to be pretty merry.
“I believe we’re going to provide 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 pictures are a part of the bundle, however nobody desires to drink the native vodka proper now.”
The pair arrived right here from Vietnam, simply as information of the deaths from methanol poisoning was spreading internationally.
“In Vietnam we received free drinks, significantly if you’re enjoying video games within the night,” one in all them tells me. “And we simply by no means considered it, you simply presume what they’re providing you with is secure. We’ve drunk buckets earlier than, however we aren’t going to take the danger once more, and lots of people right here really feel the identical.”
“Buckets” are precisely what they sound like – small plastic buckets full of low-cost vodka and different liquor. Teams of buddies share the combination by way of lengthy plastic straws.
“Now this has occurred it actually makes you concentrate on it,” the lady’s good friend says. “You surprise why are the drinks free? On the hostel related to the deaths we heard they had been giving free vodka and whisky pictures for an hour every night. I believe if that occurred within the UK you’ll undoubtedly suppose it was dodgy.”
Each 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. Younger feminine travellers really feel most weak. The lifeless embody Briton Simone White, 28, two younger Australians, Holly Bowles and her greatest good friend Bianca Jones, and two younger Danish ladies, Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman and Freja Vennervald Sorensen.
Solely 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 similar 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.
In the present day, the Nana hostel is closed, the swimming pool that till a couple of days in the past was internet hosting pool events, is empty. A brief stroll away beside the river a bar referred to as “JaiDees” has additionally been raided. The homeowners of each have forcefully denied serving any unlawful or selfmade 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).
Alongside the primary drag hostel homeowners instructed me they’re totally booked. The younger travellers from Europe and Australia are literally the minority. By far the biggest teams are from neighbouring Thailand and China, the latter shuttling south on the newly completed Chinese language-built Laos high-speed rail line.
Vang Vieng continues to be a dusty rural city. Nevertheless it’s booming. Native enterprise homeowners glide previous in huge black land cruisers and vary rovers. As I walked again to my resort on Saturday night time, I used to be shocked 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 language cash. Fancy new resorts are arising with riverside cocktail bars and infinity swimming pools.
However the younger western backpackers usually are not right here for the five-star expertise, they arrive for the pleasant anything-goes environment.
At an area motorcycle rental I meet two recent graduates from Sussex College.
Ned from Somerset says he has no intention of cancelling plans due to what occurred. “Persons are scared for certain,” he says, “however I don’t get the impression anybody is leaving. Everybody continues to be right here having a very good time.”
He provides: “However everybody can also be saying the identical factor, don’t drink the spirits, so individuals are being cautious, there’s undoubtedly that feeling within the air, however I believe it’s really fairly secure now as a result of all of the bars are on edge, no-one desires to go to jail”.
His good friend Jack is equally unflustered. “We’ve come right here to satisfy up with some buddies and have some enjoyable, and we’re nonetheless going to do this,” he says. “I’ve been right here per week now and I can inform you the folks listed here are completely pretty. They’re among the nicest folks we’ve met in all of South East Asia. So no matter occurred, I don’t suppose there’s something malicious about it.”
Malicious or not, six individuals are lifeless, 5 of them younger ladies.
The shock waves from what occurred right here has rippled out all over the world to suburban properties from London to Melbourne, the place frightened mother and father with youngsters on the backpacker path are frantically messaging, checking the place they’re, and attempting to steer them to not go to Vang Vieng.