‘Don’t worry’: Claims Laos hostel staff brushed off dying backpacker

Vang Vieng: A grieving backpacker who has taken it upon himself to try to uncover the truth about a suspected mass methanol poisoning in Laos has recounted his search for his friends through a second-rate health system and while dealing with hostel staff who told him almost nothing.

The man’s account is contained in the results of a survey he began soon after his Danish friends Anne-Sofie Coyman, 20, and Freja Sorensen, 21, died in a Laos hospital. He has found that the Nana Backpacker Hostel was the common denominator among eight hospitalisations identified by more than 20 respondents.

Danish backpackers Anne-Sofie Coyman (left) and Freja Sorensen, who died in Laos.

Australians Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles had been staying at Nana and began their fateful night out on November 11 or 12 with the nightly two-hour “happy hour” at the hostel bar. They died last week. Both were aged 19.

The Danes also went to a hostel bar before they were hospitalised on November 13, the same day American James Hutson, 57, was found dead in a room next to empty bottles of vodka. The other death from the suspected poisoning was 28-year-old British woman Simone White, though her movements beforehand remained unclear.

The grieving backpacker, who is travelling through South-East Asia, redacted the names of respondents and asked to be kept anonymous to protect himself and others “from corrupt government and police forces”. He said his work was an attempt to fill the void left by Laotian authorities, who have stayed largely silent about the tragedy.

One account in his document, from a woman who tried to help Coyman and Sorensen, alleged the hostel declined to call an ambulance even when one of the women was having a seizure.

Bianca Jones (left) and Holly Bowles died after a suspected mass drink poisoning.

Instead, a female worker allegedly massaged the Danish woman’s toes and feet, saying it was only a panic attack and, “‘I’m saving her, don’t worry.’”

The dying woman eventually got to Vang Vieng Hospital by taxi, according to the statement, which also claimed the other Dane made her way to the hospital sometime later.

This contradicted information fed into state-owned media that the Danish women were discovered by staff unconscious on their bathroom floor.

This masthead could not independently verify the testimony. A worker at the hostel said any information about what happened needed to come from Laotian authorities.

The document’s creator said he met Coyman and Sorensen in Vietnam last month. They had such a good time together, they agreed to meet in Laos and travel to Thailand as a group.

He identified them in the document as Danish woman one and Danish woman two.

“We had arranged to meet in Laos on Thursday [November 14] – the girls had already been in Vang Vieng for a few days, but I was still in a different country,” he wrote.

“On [November 13], Danish woman one told me that she was sick and had never been so sick before – she said she had been vomiting all night and day.”

Foreign tourists walk past the closed Nana Backpackers hostel in Vang Vieng.Credit: AP

Concerned, he said he got to Vang Vieng as fast as he could, but the women were no longer contactable. He did not know where they were staying.

“After searching for a whole day I overheard a story about a sick girl getting hospitalised and that she had been staying at Nana Backpackers Hostel,” he said. “I rushed there and showed the staff their names and photos.”

But he said a worker told him they had “checked out” the previous day. Later, the same worker had sent a voice memo saying one woman had gone to the Laotian capital, Vientiane.

“The girls are best friends, so I thought that they would have been together,” he said. The hostel worker allegedly claimed to the man that he did not know anything.

“I spent the day [November 15] in Vang Vieng trying to locate where exactly they were, but no hospitals were able to speak English on the phone or didn’t even have a working phone number,” the man said.

“In the evening I contacted Danish woman one’s parents to let them know that I was concerned. They also were unable to make contact with their daughter or her friend on the phone.”

He said he got through to Kasemrad International Hospital in Vientiane on the emergency line, but he said staff were rude and failed to call him back as promised. At the hospital in Vang Vieng, meanwhile, “they had no clue about anything” and “started laughing at me when I tried to use a translation app on my phone”.

“I got angry … so I took a book I could see off the counter, which I rightfully guessed would be a patient information book. I saw Danish woman one’s name, and the notes stated that she was in [Vientiane] in a coma.”

At some point that night, he got a return call from the emergency line in Vientiane to say that she had died, but he did not believe the information was legitimate.

“I contacted Danish woman one’s father and asked if he could send someone to look there,” he said. “It was already late in the evening so I booked a bus from Vang Vieng to Vientiane to go and look for them myself in the morning.

“I went to bed and asked the parents to keep me up to date. In the night the father told me that I didn’t need to search for them any more because it had been confirmed to him that they both passed away.”

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