Summary
Four people have died, including 19-year-old Australian Bianca Jones, two Danish women in their 20s, and a 56-year-old US citizen, after suspected methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng, a popular backpacker destination in Laos.
Several others, including six British and one New Zealand traveler, remain hospitalized.
The poisoning is believed to be linked to free shots offered at a local bar, prompting warnings from travelers to avoid local spirits.
Authorities fear a mass poisoning, with investigations underway into the source of the contaminated drinks.
Feeling pretty lucky that the “free shots” when I went were apparently actually ethanol. Better to be careful but when you’re a few drinks deep, a little high and floating down a river on a tire inner tube, bad decisions do happen.
In Vang Vieng, stick to the beer and avoid any of the swings, slides and other bullshit at these riverside bars. I saw one guy literally in a full body cast because of this shit.
As I understand it, you can pretty easily fuck up when distilling and leave the methanol in if you don’t know what you’re doing. The first bit of stuff that boils off and collects, the foreshots, contains awful stuff like methanol and acetone. If you don’t remove this you’ll have methanol in your moonshine (and also it will taste awful).
This probably wasn’t done maliciously, would be my guess, but rather someone was learning how to use a still and seriously messed up.
Edit: I may be wrong, it sounds like you’d have to drink a lot of tainted moonshine to die. So maybe this was malicious. Or someone accidentally served foreshots.
Yeah the issue is that methanol mixed with ethanol, which you naturally find in spirits that have been distilled carelessly (or in cost cutting) is less poisonous than pure methanol. Ethanol is actually an antidote to methanol poisoning (although not the preferred one if fomepizol is available) so when they’re mixed you’re less likely to die from it (though you still might go blind, as methanol is acutely toxic to the optic nerve).
In these cases where multiple people died I’m more likely to suspect they were served commodity methanol which is used as a fuel additive and industrial solvent. This stuff is extremely cheap and readily available.
What a tragedy. I feel terrible for these people! My former roommate knew a girl in high school who died from methanol poisoning at a party after some kids found a bottle in somebody’s garage. It’s really terrible.
That’s honestly incredible. How did this happen? Steel stils without any copper cylinders? Wrong bacteria? Wut happen?
Can’t wait for the investigation results, tbh.
You can destil without using copper. That doesn’t stop methanol.
It’s always present in fermented alcohols, but for it to be in a high enough a high enough concentration in the final product to kill you off of one shot… There has to be huge missteps from start to finish to a point way past negligence.
Vang Vien was a wretched hive of scum and villainy 20 years ago. Doesn’t sound likes it’s improved much.
