For the throngs of young western travellers on South East Asia’s backpacker trail, Vang Vieng has become famous for what is called “tubing.” One described it to me as a water borne pub crawl.
Groups of friends in swimsuits and bikinis clamber aboard huge inner tubes that would normally be used on trucks and drift downstream, pulling in from time to time at river side bars where vodka shots are liberally administered, before plunging back into the water.
By the time they reach Vang Vieng everyone is fairly merry.
“I think we’re going to give the tubing a miss” two 27-year-old women from Hertfordshire in the UK tell me (they didn’t want to give their names).
“The vodka shots are part of the package, but no one wants to drink the local vodka right now.”
The pair arrived here from Vietnam, just as news of the deaths from methanol poisoning was spreading across the world.
“In Vietnam we got free drinks, particularly when you’re playing games in the evening,” one of them tells me. “And we just never thought about it, you just presume what they are giving you is safe. We’ve drunk buckets before, but we are not going to take the risk again, and a lot of people here feel the same.”
“Buckets” are exactly what they sound like – small plastic buckets filled with cheap vodka and other liquor. Groups of friends share the mixture through long plastic straws.
“Now this has happened it really makes you think about it,” the woman’s friend says. “You wonder why are the drinks free? At the hostel associated with the deaths we heard they were giving free vodka and whisky shots for an hour each evening. I think if that happened in the UK you would definitely think it was dodgy.”