Vang Vieng – a tiny town on the Nam Song river surrounded by limestone mountains and paddy fields – is known for its scenery.
It is also known as a party town – a reputation Laos officials have been trying to shed over the past decade.
A four-hour bus ride from the capital Vientiane, it has long been the stopping point on the Banana Pancake Trail backpacking route between Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before heading north to the ancient temples of Luang Prabang.
In Vang Vieng, hostel bunks are advertised at less than €10 (£8) a night, while a bucket of beer can cost half that. Drugs like marijuana and mushrooms are in ready supply, openly advertised at cafes and diners.
During the early 2000s and 2010s the town was famous for hardcore partying and river tubing. But after several tourists were injured or died, efforts were made at raising safety standards.
“To combat the river tubing deaths they demolished a bunch of the riverside bars that were selling buckets of vodka to people floating by,” one Western diplomat in the region told the BBC.
Laos officials aimed to re-centre the town as a spot for eco-tourism rather than just a hub for the young and drunk.
“And it worked,” they say. “It’s actually changed a quite a lot in the past decade, they’ve cleaned it up, it’s way more modern than it used to be.”
But because of that: “I think it can be very easy for young travellers to miss that this is still a very poor country with lax regulations and safety standards.”
The diplomat said methanol poisoning – where alcoholic drinks are contaminated with a toxic compound – is well-known among consulates and tourism operators.
Consulates are fairly regularly having to deal with cases of tourists who have fallen ill from dodgy drinks, the diplomat noted.
South East Asia is documented as the worst region for methanol poisoning. Local producers making cheap alcohol often will not correctly reduce the toxic level of methanol produced in the process.
Thousands of deaths are recorded every year in the region, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
But for tourists, awareness around poisonous alcohol is low.
British backpacker Sarisha told the BBC’s Newsbeat programme she had never considered the risk of free drinks when she was recently staying at Nana Backpacker.
Like most other hostels, happy hours were a daily staple at the venue as well as free shots of local vodkas as courtesies, she said.
“It’s a very party city,” she said.