Laos party town bans Tiger liquor as families mourn Oz victims
The Laos tourist town at the centre of a deadly mass methanol poisoning has outlawed Tiger Vodka and whiskey, a full fortnight after tainted alcohol killed six foreign backpackers and hospitalised at least a dozen more.
Authorities in the Laos tourist town of Vang Vieng have outlawed the sale or consumption of Tiger Vodka and Tiger Whiskey, a fortnight after a mass methanol poisoning that killed six foreign backpackers, including Australian teenagers Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles.
The ban was announced by the Vang Vieng Public Health Office late on Tuesday in an official notice issued at the directive of the national health department, and comes as the family and friends of 19-year-old Ms Jones prepare for her Melbourne funeral on Friday. The funeral for her childhood friend, Ms Bowles, also 19, will be held next Monday.
“To wholesalers, retailers, minimart stores, liquor stores, tech stores, liquor bars and alcohol drinkers in Vang Vieng; stop selling and drinking Tiger Vodka and Tiger Whiskey in Vang Vieng,” the public notice reads.
“(They) are strictly prohibited from selling and drinking Tiger Vodka and Tiger Whiskey because these alcohols contain contaminants that pose a risk to health and can cause disability or death. Therefore we inform you … to take strict action.”
The decades-old Tiger distillery on the outskirts of Vientiane is understood to have been shuttered by authorities following the methanol poisoning deaths of six foreign nationals, including the two Australians.
Ms Jones and Ms Bowles were staying at Vang Vieng’s Nana Backpackers hostel and had been drinking at the guesthouse as well as several other bars in the area on November 12 before falling ill hours later.
The two died within a day of each other in Thai hospitals after being evacuated from Laos.
The young women from the Melbourne bayside suburb of Beaumaris had been travelling together through Southeast Asia.
Nana hostel manager, Duong Duc Toan, had told reporters he gave away free shots of Tiger Vodka to about 100 guests as a gesture of hospitality on the night the tourists fell ill but denied it was his bar’s liquor which made the tourists sick.
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