The deaths of six Western tourists – including Australian teenagers Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles – due to inadvertently drinking spiked alcohol in the Laotian backpacker mecca of Vang Vieng has revived recent memories of the town’s dark history of young travellers’ fatalities and accidents.
In the early years of this century, Vang Vieng was averaging 20 tourist deaths a year and many times more serious accidents, peaking in 2011 when 27 tourists died.
The main causes of deaths and injuries back then were related to “tubing” – floating through town on the Nam Song River on inflated inner tubes – as well as excessive alcohol consumption and drug-taking. A common cause of injuries was jumping or falling off rope swings and zip lines into shallow water.
A street sign directed at tourists in the town of Vang Vieng, Laos. Credit: Jimmy Thomson
That form of tubing, where you literally go with the flow, is a fun way to stay cool. Add waiters “fishing” for customers by throwing ropes to pull them into riverside bars and the provision of cheap alcohol, and the risk factors climb.
Back in the day, competition became about how much alcoholic bang you could get for your bucks and the highly dangerous practice of lacing it with ethanol and methanol was too great a temptation for some bar owners.
From 2012 on, in response to the alarming rise in tourist deaths and injuries, the Laos government tightened regulations. Most of the riverside bars were shut down, rope swings, diving platforms and zip lines were removed, and closing times were enforced on some remaining bars. Even tubing was made safer.
But Vang Vieng’s reputation as a party town remained. When I visited in 2013, the riverside bars were offering “buckets” of whiskey at knock-down prices. The bottles in the ice buckets certainly didn’t contain single malts, but once you’ve mixed in enough Coke or ginger ale, who’s sniffing for subtle notes of peat and heather?
Back then, as Vang Vieng transitioned from unfettered hedonism to merely being Laos’ backpacker party central, the bars had day beds rather than chairs around the tables, and TVs played episodes of Friends and The Simpsons on perpetual loops.
Bar staff still fished for tourists coming down the river on tubes, but signs in the town warned visitors about dressing appropriately.
Increasingly, Laotian authorities focused more on the safety of tourists, according to some sources, with improved medical facilities in Vang Vieng and more diligent checks on bars and what they were serving their customers.
Australian tourists wait to go tubing in Vang Vieng in 2012.Credit: Larissa Ham
Obviously, their ability to monitor the contents and safety of alcoholic beverages still leaves a lot to be desired. But you have to consider this in the context of where Laos sits in terms of development – easily the least advanced of the post-Indochina triumvirate it comprises with Cambodia and Vietnam.
Vang Vieng is an outlier in geographic and social terms. The tourist town is 155 kilometres north of the capital, Vientiane, and about 185 kilometres south of the spiritual hub of Luang Prabang.
However, it is easily accessible from both by fast, modern and relatively cheap trains on the Laos-China Railway which began on this line three years ago.
With about three-quarters of a million residents, Vientiane is as low-energy a city as you will find in this part of the world. Luang Prabang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with more than 30 significant “stupa” or Buddhist temples, is even more laid back.
Vang Vieng has a permanent population of about 25,000-30,000, so the annual influx of 900,000 visitors makes it clear what the main industry is. Visitors still go there searching for excitement, but many of the thrills have changed.
Tourism has evolved with an increased focus on safer outdoor activities, like guided rock climbing and cave exploration, kayaking tours, hot air ballooning, hiking and cultural visits to local villages.
Better hotels, more diverse cuisine, and game-changing rail links mean the town attracts more families and increasing numbers of Asian tourists, especially from China and Korea.
But there is clearly a hangover from the early days when hedonism ruled, and caution was thrown to the wind. The party may not be over for Vang Vieng and, as the authorities search for the culprits, travellers still need to view every unidentifiable drink as a potential dive into shallow waters.
Jimmy Thomson is an author and journalist.
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