There are nights when Bethany Clarke dreams and her world is just as it always was. On those nights, she is still racing through the bucket list of countries to visit with her lifelong friend Simone White.
Ever since they took their first trip together, aged 17, to the Greek island of Rhodes, the pals had embarked on a decade of travels, punctuating their holidays from university and beyond with an array of globetrotting adventures.
The list is impressive: Thailand, Vietnam, China, Bali, Australia, Cambodia… and then Laos. But when Bethany wakes up, ‘it all comes crashing down’.
For Simone never made it home from Laos. The 28-year-old solicitor was one of six people who died there last November after unwittingly consuming drinks that had been laced with deadly methanol.
Two Australian teenagers, two Danish women, an American man and Simone, united in tragedy by one common thread: they had been drinking free shots at Nana Backpackers Hostel in the town of Vang Vieng, north of the capital Vientiane.
At least six other people fell ill after downing contaminated vodka shots that night – Bethany, 28, and another friend, David, among them.
Bethany and Simone had both drunk five or six shots, mixing the vodka (free for the duration of a two-hour ‘happy hour’) with Sprite, bought from the hostel bar.
Bethany Clarke (left) with her friend Simone White, who died in Laos after the two women drank contaminated vodka shots
The chilling but insidious escalation of symptoms that took three friends from a laughter-filled night out to one of them suffering a seizure and lapsing into unconsciousness is a powerful illustration of the dangers of bootleg alcohol.
Looking back, Bethany, a podiatrist, has no explanation for why she and David survived and her childhood friend did not. Different metabolism? Perhaps.
All she does know is that while her own blood tests would later show a high level of methanol, tests on Simone – who never regained consciousness, and whose ventilator was switched off nine days later – were at an ‘astronomical’ level.
A highly toxic, industrial chemical better known for use in solvents, methanol is very similar to ethanol – the pure form of alcohol in alcoholic drinks. It’s odourless, tasteless, cheap and, as the tragedy of Laos so vividly underlines, one mouthful can be deadly.
It can occur as a by-product in home-brewed alcohol, and is sometimes added to bootleg drinks to make them stronger. What makes it so very dangerous is the way our bodies process it.
Once consumed, enzymes in the body metabolise methanol into formaldehyde, the same product used in embalming, before breaking it down again into compounds which can cause organ failure, attack nerves and lead to blindness, brain damage and death.
All of this is new information for Bethany. ‘Having spoken to all of our friends and family, not many people actually had heard of it before it affected us,’ she says.
It is why she is speaking now, desperate to prevent ‘someone else losing their best friend’ because of a lack of knowledge about what might lurk in a bottle of cheap spirits. ‘We didn’t know that we were taking such a gamble with our lives,’ she says. ‘Obviously, if someone had said to me, “there is a possibility that this drink could lead to blindness or coma or death”, I wouldn’t have drunk it.’
The banner at Nana’s Backpackers Hostel proclaiming 8-10pm as happy hour was enticing – particularly as the drinks (vodka or whisky) were not just cut-price, but free
Doctors without Borders estimates that methanol poisoning accounts for more than 14,000 deaths globally in the last 30 years
‘You never expect one night of drinking to lead to that. I mean, the amount we drank was moderate. Six shots, it’s not a small amount, but it’s pretty much in line with what a lot of people would drink on holidays.’
She dearly wishes that she and Simone had been taught about the risks of methanol poisoning when they were at school, in Orpington, Kent, which is why she has launched a government petition calling for the dangers of bootleg alcohol to be taught in the personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) or biology curriculum.
She speaks about what could be achieved with a short talk, a video or public health advert, but in truth her own experience is powerful enough.
The two girls, blonde and smiling, met as four-year-olds in primary school, their friendship enduring as they went to different secondary schools and then when Simone went to Newcastle University, to study law, and Bethany to Southampton, to study podiatry.
Bethany gives Simone the credit for being the glue that held the friendship together.
‘She was just one of those people, she was good at staying connected with everyone. If ever I had a problem, she would be the person I would go to first.’ Even when living on opposite sides of the globe (Bethany moved to Brisbane last March), rarely a day would pass without some communication.
The sadness weighs, but there are years of happy memories. They went travelling for six weeks aged 20 – to China, Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam.
There were other holidays planned – the Philippines was on their list and for the last New Year, they were supposed to be celebrating in style in Dubai.
‘There were very few countries left on her bucket list, to be honest,’ says Bethany, wistfully.
Because Simone’s work as a solicitor in London was intense, it was Bethany who took on most of the planning for the two-week trip to Cambodia and Laos – a destination meant to serve as the halfway point for the two friends.
Bethany would research hotels and hostels. They could have afforded more luxurious accommodation, but they wanted the atmosphere of being with other young backpackers.
And so they arrived, on the fourth day of their trip, at the Nana Backpackers Hostel, meeting their friend David and spending the day river ‘tubing’, bobbing along the Nam Song River in large inflatable rings, stopping for drinks en route.
The banner at Nana’s proclaiming 8-10pm as happy hour was enticing – particularly as the drinks (vodka or whisky) were not just cut-price, but free.
The two women met as four-year-olds in primary school, their friendship enduring as they went to different secondary schools and then when Simone (right)) went to Newcastle University, to study law, and Bethany to Southampton, to study podiatry
At the time, says Bethany, nothing seemed terribly unusual. ‘I only put a little bit of Sprite in and remember tasting it and thinking, this is quite nice; I actually assumed they had watered it down.’ In fact, those drinks were devastatingly potent.
The first indication of something awry came when they all woke the following morning feeling something akin to a hangover. But different. ‘Not quite fatigued, but a bit weak,’ says Bethany.
‘I use the phrase “cognitive decline” a lot, but basically I mean not thinking straight.
‘But when all three of you feel the same, you’re not too concerned, you think it will wear off.’
But as they set off on a swimming and kayak trip to a nearby lagoon, it didn’t wear off. They had no appetite; the girls had no desire to swim. ‘David was in the water and I remember saying “I don’t know how he’s got the strength to do that,” because I felt so weak. All I could do was sit and drink coconut water.’
The second part of the tour, kayaking, was no better. ‘I had absolutely no strength in my muscles,’ says Bethany. ‘I remember both of us just lying on the
backs of the kayak, looking up at the sky, while the people we were with did the kayaking.’
Simone was sick into the water, and after returning to the hostel and boarding a minibus to their next stop, Vientiane, she vomited more. Bethany stood up to help and promptly fainted.
On the fourth day of their trip, at the Nana Backpackers Hostel, Beth and Simone met their friend David and spent the day river ‘tubing’, bobbing along the Nam Song River in large inflatable rings, stopping for drinks en route
‘Even that wasn’t a red flag, I’d never fainted before, any normal person would have thought “what the hell’s going on here?”, but I didn’t really think anything of it.’
David was alert enough to be alarmed, and asked the driver to take the trio to a hospital, where staff initially suspected food poisoning, or drugs. Eventually all three were put on IV drips.
‘I’ll do whatever you do, Biff,’ said Simone, who was reluctant to acquiesce. Biff is what Simone called Bethany. Those were the last words she said to her friend.
Then Simone was sick again, and began gasping for breath. Bethany, on a video call from Australia, demonstrates how her friend’s upper body jerked backwards, repeatedly.
‘She wasn’t able to talk, she actually became quite agitated, trying to rip the cannula out,’ recalls Bethany. Simone was moved to an intensive care area of the same ward.
‘I went in there and tried to talk to her. Her eyes were glazed, like she couldn’t concentrate or focus.
‘But at that point, I suppose because we had all drunk the same, we’d all done the same things… I knew whatever it was, we’d all consumed it. I thought everything would be OK. ‘
Agonisingly, it wasn’t.
David took control. He found a private hospital, 20 minutes away that (after frantic attempts to prove they had medical insurance) sent an ambulance to collect the trio. Still feeling very unwell, David researched their symptoms on his phone.
‘I remember him saying in the ambulance, do you think it could be methanol poisoning? ‘They said “yes”, it could be, we’ve seen it before.’
Simone fell ill and died after drinking bootleg alcohol. Her mother, Sue, had to made a terrible 17-hour flight to be at her daughter’s side in Laos
At the hospital, tests confirmed the friends’ fears. Confirmation of just how they had been poisoned would be amplified when two other pairs of friends arrived at the same hospital, who had drunk shots at the same hostel, on the same night.
Bethany was asked to sign forms to allow medics to treat Simone in intensive care. She was put on haemodialysis, to clean her blood.
It was the following morning, when nurses said Simone hadn’t woken, that panic set in. Then doctors asked Bethany to call Simone’s mother, Sue White, in the UK and ask for permission to carry out emergency surgery, to relieve the swelling on her brain.
Poor Sue made a terrible 17-hour flight to be at her daughter’s side, arriving just in time to see her being prepped for theatre.
It didn’t go well. On the Sunday evening, five days after those happy hour drinks, a CT scan revealed Simone’s brain power was crashingly low; the following morning it had dropped again. ‘Basically they said to us that we’d have to wait for her to die on the ventilator,’ says Bethany. ‘Which could take weeks or months.’
Switching the machine off wasn’t an option for medics, because of their Buddhist faith.
In the intervening days, Bethany made painful contact with Simone’s friends back home, one by one, gathering voice messages, goodbyes.
‘I didn’t want to hear those private messages, it felt like listening to something I shouldn’t be, so I left her with the phone by her ear,’ says Bethany, who is haunted by the memory of her friend laying prone, head shaven, after surgery.
The two friends in Thailand on their trip of a lifetime
Ultimately, after intervention from the British Embassy, permission was granted, but it was Sue who had to press the switch – an agonising process in itself, as the back-up ventilator kicked in and that too had to be switched off, before Sue was left to remove her daughter’s breathing tube.
It was a private moment, just Sue in the room, with Bethany waiting outside the door.
It took a ‘very long time’ she says, ‘watching the monitors getting slower and slower’.
Understandably, six months on they are all still haunted by the experience. She doesn’t know what her own recovery would have been like without treatment. She knows at least one other survivor has ongoing vision problems.
An investigation into what unfolded in Laos is understood to be ongoing. No charges have been brought. In an interview with a US TV channel last November, Nana Backpackers Hostel owner Duong van Huan denied the poisoned drinks came from his bar and said he had been in business for almost 11 years, and it was the first time something like this had happened.
‘I really take care of all the customers [who] stay with our hotel and our hostel,’ he said.
Since Simone’s death, more than 250 others have died from methanol poisoning around the globe, according to figures compiled by Doctors Without Borders.
Bethany wants to ensure no other traveller loses a life to a cheap shot. ‘Steer clear, drink beer,’ is the campaign’s slogan. Or buy a bottle from Duty Free on the way out.
Bethany adds: ‘Simone was a lawyer and would have been working for justice. Without justice, the next best thing for me was to get education in place so other people don’t have to go through this.
‘And if someone does drink something that’s a gamble, at least they’ll know what they’re risking.’
