By Bill Birtles and Lauren Day for ABC
The Nana backpackers hostel in Vang Vieng, Laos. Photo: ABC / Mitchell Woolnough
Two weeks on from the first case of suspected methanol poisoning in Laos, fellow backpackers have been investigating the culprit in lieu of public information from police.
It comes as Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs in a notable public statement urged authorities in Laos to be transparent.
"We are clear with our Lao counterparts that Australians expect those investigations to be thorough and transparent," a DFAT spokesperson said.
Police confirmed in recent days they had questioned the operators of the Nana backpacker hostel, where at least five of the six victims who died were staying.
Among them were 19-year-old Australian friends Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles, who both died in hospitals in Thailand last week after becoming ill at the Nana hostel.
Now a fellow backpacker who knew two of the other victims - Danish women in their early 20s - has carried out a survey of other travellers he came across in Asia, that further pins suspicion for the poisoning on the hostel.
The European man wished to remain anonymous as he continued his travels in Asia, but he provided the ABC with the results of a survey of more than 20 tourists he met who had recently been to Vang Vieng, the town at the centre of the poisonings.
He asked them if they or any of their friends had to seek hospital treatment for suspected poisoning while in Vang Vieng, of which 14 people answered yes.
Of the 14, all but one respondent said they or the people they knew who became ill stayed at the Nana backpacker hostel.
The other one had become sick in Vang Vieng on an earlier trip and blamed tainted drinks at another bar in the town.
Photo: ABC / Mitchell Woolnough
Police last week forcibly shut down the Nana hostel and questioned staff including the bartender and owner.
But police haven't publicly released further information, other than a pledge by the Laos government that the perpetrators would be brought to justice.
Complicating matters is that some respondents in the survey who became ill or knew of others had said they'd also visited different bars while in Vang Vieng.
One of the venues, Jaidee bar, was searched by police last week and the owner Jaidee questioned, although he has vehemently denied to the ABC that his bar was responsible for the poisonings.
The European backpacker also provided an account of a woman who accompanied one of the two Danish women to a hospital in Vang Vieng.
She said a staff member at the hospital massaged one of the woman's toes and said she would be OK as she was having a seizure.
She later died.
On Monday, the New Zealand embassy in Thailand confirmed one of its citizens suspected to have been poisoned by methanol in Vang Vieng around the same time as the other victims has returned home, after being hospitalised.
The embassy did not provide details of their condition.
A British woman Lucy Davison also said on social media last week she spent five days in a Vientiane hospital after being poisoned around the same time.
Like most of the survey respondents, she attributed it to spirits consumed at Nana, without naming the hostel.
Staff at Nana backpacker hostel have denied that their drinks contained methanol.
Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles died in Thai hospitals of suspected methanol poisoning. Photo: Facebook / ABC News
Families seek answers amid diplomatic pressure
The Australian government says it's working closely with authorities in Laos, and is coordinating representatives from the other countries affected, including Denmark, the UK and US.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also offered Australian Federal Police (AFP) assistance to the Lao government, although he acknowledged Laos is a sovereign country that would not necessarily accept the assistance.
The father of one of the two Melbourne women who died, Mark Jones, has called on authorities in Laos to be transparent and get answers so that no tourist ever dies again from methanol poisoning.
But an expert on the South-East Asian country thinks hopes of a transparent investigation that delivers justice should be tempered.
Keith Barney, an associate professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU, said Laos did not have a good track record of openness for sensitive matters.
"I'm not very optimistic about what will be turned up in any investigation, but I wouldn't want to close off the possibility of finding something," he said.
"I'd be very surprised if there was any level at all of transparency in an investigation", Dr Barney said, although he noted the Lao government has worked together reasonably well with Australia before on the illegal trade of wildlife.
"If there are any powerful interests behind the scenes, that normally closes off investigations."
In Vang Vieng, local tourist operators, bar owners and others have been speculating on how methanol likely ended up in the spirits that tourist consumed.
Some said they believe local distilleries making cheap whiskey or vodka may have unintentionally botched the ingredients.
Others theorised that methanol may have been deliberately mixed in as a means of drink spiking, because most of the victims were women.
But with so little public information to go off from authorities in the communist state, there are more questions than answers.
- ABC
