Calum Macdonald’s new mission after going blind from methanol poisoning in Laos
One of the victims of a mass methanol poisoning in Laos – which killed two Australian teens – has issued a warning to other travellers after he went blind from having a “free drink” at a bar.
Spectacular, limestone karsts. Lush foliage, dark green water. The faces of new friends.
These are the last vivid images that backpacker Calum Macdonald can remember before he went blind as a result of methanol poisoning in Laos.
He had met Danish women Freja Vennervald Sorensen and Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman while “tubing” – floating down the Nam Song river in Vang Vieng and stopping at bars.
They went out drinking on Monday, November 11, last year, starting off at their hostel, Nana Backpackers, where it is suspected they were poisoned with methanol laced spirits which were served as “free drinks”.
“I thought about those few days in the months after, because those were the last few days that I had any sight,” Macdonald, 24, said.
He left Vang Vieng the next day and was “feeling fine”.
But on the 24-hour bus ride to Hanoi, Vietnam, he was actually going blind.
Freja and Anne-Sofie were poisoned too, but didn’t make it. They died in a hospital in Laos.
“I didn’t really notice anything significantly wrong until we got off the bus to cross the border,” Macdonald said.
“My whole vision was just totally sort of engulfed in this really blinding white light.”
He thought it was just a passing moment.
“Perhaps it’s a bit silly, but my attitude was always like, I’ll sleep this off, I’ll be fine,” he said.
Arriving in Hanoi at night, he simply thought he was struggling to see because it was dark.
His group managed to get to their hotel room and then he realised something was wrong.
“My friends and I were sitting around in the room chatting. I said to them at one point ‘come on lads, like why are we sitting in the dark? Let’s switch the light on. Because to me in the room it seemed dark.
“And they told me that actually the light was already on.”
His friends helped get him to an international hospital, who insisted they check his medical insurance details before he was allowed treatment.
Those documents were on his mobile phone, which was difficult to access without his sight.
He stayed there for three weeks as doctors ran checks, hoping that it may have been something other than methanol poisoning, which causes irreversible blindness.
Macdonald returned home to the UK and spent another two weeks in hospital, but was able to be reunited with his family from Sunbury on Thames, about an hour west of London.
More tests were conducted, but ultimately, doctors declared that methanol had caused his blindness.
His family protected him, he only found out other people had died while staying in Laos six months later.
Macdonald’s friend started reading out news reports on his phone, and then the names, including Freja and Anne-Sofie, Australians Holly Morton-Bowles and Bianca Jones, 19, British lawyer Simone White, 28, and 57-year old American James Louis Hutson.
He said he was shocked, particularly when his friend read out the Danish girls’ names.
“We went out with them the night before. And then we also went out with them on that night that we think we were poisoned. They were also in the same room as us in the hostel. It was like this big shared kind of thing,” Macdonald said.
“I certainly had more to drink, I imagine, than they did. So I don’t know why they were more severely affected than I was.”
Macdonald said he had been careful when travelling, declining an offer to go on a hot-air balloon ride in Vang Vieng because he thought it was too dangerous.
“I’m kind of scared of heights anyway and I thought like there’s absolutely no way I’m doing that. I’ll play it safe. They were fine on the hot air balloon so it didn’t work out too well for me,” he said.
Macdonald has visited UK parliament this year and will be part of an educational video rolled out in schools across Britain, warning of the dangers of methanol poisoning.
“Once I did hear about (the deaths) it made me think maybe I do have a little bit of a responsibility here to speak a little bit about what happened because it might help other people, people might see it and it might mean that similar things don’t happen to them,” he said.
Now working in finance, he said he still hoped people would travel.
“I think it’s unrealistic to expect people not to drink at all because I just think that’s unrealistic,” he said.
“Certainly, stick to beer.”
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Originally published as Calum Macdonald’s new mission after going blind from methanol poisoning in Laos
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