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The Deadly Laos Methanol Poisoning that Terrified the World · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: So I want you to picture this. A twenty three
0:02
year old backpacker is standing right at the border of Vietnam.
0:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's hundreds of miles from where he started.
0:08
Speaker 1: His trip exactly. And you know, he's exhausted, which is
0:11
completely normal when you're doing that whole Southeast Stasia backpacking thing.
0:15
But then adam nowhere, his vision just gets consumed by
0:20
this blinding, kaleidoscopic light, like static on an old television screen. Yeah,
0:26
just completely taking over his eyes. And he thinks maybe
0:29
he's having like a severe migraine or just extreme dehydration
0:34
from the heat.
0:35
Speaker 2: Which is a fair guess, honestly, right.
0:37
Speaker 1: But he has absolutely no idea that a single, like
0:41
a free shot he drank two days prior in a
0:43
totally different country is currently destroying his optic nerve in
0:47
real time.
0:47
Speaker 2: It's terrifying. He's actively going blind.
0:50
Speaker 1: Going blind. Yeah, and he's hundreds of miles away from
0:52
the poison that actually did it, which is just.
0:54
Speaker 2: The ultimate nightmare scenario. I mean, you're far from home,
0:58
you're removed from your daily life, just wrapped in this
1:02
bubble of shared adventure with all these other young travelers.
1:04
Speaker 1: And you think you're safe totally safe.
1:07
Speaker 2: Because everyone around you is just having a good time.
1:09
The rules feel so relaxed. But that very lack of
1:13
rules the exact thing that makes that off the grid
1:16
travel so appealing. That is the mechanism that allows a silent,
1:20
lethal chemical to just slip right into your glass.
1:23
Speaker 1: So today we're looking at a specific tragedy from November
1:27
twenty twenty four. Ground zero is this town called vang
1:31
Ving in Laos, right, And for this deep dive, we're
1:34
pulling from some really intensive investigative reports on these recent
1:37
methanol poisonings. Our mission here isn't just to recount the tragedy, though.
1:41
Speaker 2: That's important, You have to look deeper.
1:43
Speaker 1: Exactly, we are uncovering the hidden chemical dangers of unregulated tourism,
1:49
the physiological mechanics of a killer that hides in plain sight,
1:53
and the systemic geopolitical failures that leave travelers just incredibly vulnerable.
1:59
It's a lot to cover, it is, Okay, So let's
2:01
unpack this because I really want you the listener, to
2:04
try and put yourself in those shoes.
2:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. Imagine you're in a super tight budget.
2:07
Speaker 1: Right, You've been saving up forever to do the banana
2:10
Pancake Trail. You know, they're a legendary backpacking route through Asia.
2:14
You finally check into your hostel, you drop your heavy bag,
2:17
and the staff hands you a free drink to welcome you, just.
2:21
Speaker 2: A totally universal gesture of hospitality.
2:24
Speaker 1: Exactly how could you possibly know that taking that drink
2:27
is literally stepping into a trap.
2:29
Speaker 2: Well, the short answer is you couldn't, not at all, right,
2:33
not without understanding the entire ecosystem of where you just landed.
2:37
Because to really grasp how that trap was set, we
2:41
have to look way beyond the events of that single night.
2:44
Speaker 1: We have to zoom out.
2:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, bank Being isn't just like a random location where
2:48
something bad randomly happened the town itself. It's history, it's
2:52
economic desperation. Honestly, it's an active participant in this tragedy.
2:56
We really have to understand the environment that bred this disaster.
2:59
Speaker 1: Okay, let let zoom in on Vingveing then, because if
3:02
you pull up photos of this place online right now,
3:04
it does not look like a danger zone.
3:06
Speaker 2: No, it looks like a literal paradise.
3:08
Speaker 1: It really does. It's about two hours north of the
3:12
capital city Van Chian, and you've got these massive jagged
3:16
limestone karsts just covered in dense green jungle, jetting up
3:21
into the sky.
3:22
Speaker 2: It's incredibly dramatic scenery.
3:24
Speaker 1: Super dramatic. There are these deep cave systems and the
3:27
Nomsong River cuts right through the center of it all.
3:29
It's breathtaking. But you know, beneath that beautiful postcard exterior,
3:34
vang Vang has a really dark, deeply entrenched history when
3:38
it comes to catering to tuists.
3:41
Speaker 2: Deeply entrenched is definitely the right phrase. I mean, for
3:44
a long time, the town's entire economy was tethered to
3:47
this very specific extreme brand of hedonism.
3:51
Speaker 1: Like going way back.
3:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, going back fifteen years or so, the main attraction
3:54
wasn't eco tourism, it wasn't hiking. It was river tubing,
3:58
but not the lazy riff you're picturing at like a
4:01
family water.
4:01
Speaker 1: Park, right, this is totally different.
4:03
Speaker 2: Completely. You would rent a literal tractor inner tube, get
4:06
on the Knamsong River and the banks were just lined
4:09
with these makeshift.
4:10
Speaker 1: Bars and they'd literally throw ropes out to drag you
4:13
in right like physically pull you out of the.
4:15
Speaker 2: Water exactly that you're floating down the river. Someone chucks
4:18
the rope, you grab it and they haul you up
4:20
the muddy bank. Yeah. The music is absolutely blaring. You
4:24
buy cheap beer. You buy buckets, like literal plastic sand buckets.
4:28
Speaker 1: The kind kids use at the beach, Yeah.
4:30
Speaker 2: But filled with local spirits and sugary mixers. And there
4:34
were unregulated rope swings, these massive rickey slides launching people
4:38
into shallow water.
4:39
Speaker 1: Oh man, it.
4:40
Speaker 2: Was a giant, chaotic, heavily intoxicated playground, and honestly it
4:45
was deadly. By twenty twelve, this hit an absolute breaking.
4:49
Speaker 1: Point because tourists were dying right.
4:51
Speaker 2: Young tourists were dying at a really alarming rate. They
4:54
were drowning in the river, or diving into shallow water
4:57
and fracturing their skulls on some merged rocks, or just
5:00
suffering massive toxic overdoses.
5:02
Speaker 1: It got so bad the government actually had to step in.
5:04
I mean, they instituted a massive crackdown in twenty twelve,
5:06
didn't they.
5:07
Speaker 2: They did. They sent in authorities to literally bulldoze the
5:11
riverside bars, just tear them down.
5:13
Speaker 1: Wow.
5:14
Speaker 2: They tore down the rope swings. They heavily restricted the
5:16
tooting operations, and they tried to execute this massive rebrand
5:20
for the whole town.
5:21
Speaker 1: They wanted vang Ving to be known for like kayaking
5:24
and rock climbing, mountain biking, eco tourism.
5:27
Speaker 2: Right, but a rebrand is just a marketing strategy. It's
5:30
just pr exactly. It doesn't instantly erase the economic reality
5:35
of a town that relied almost entirely on party dollars
5:38
to survive. The physical bars on the river banks were dismantled, sure,
5:43
but the cultural DNA of Aangvying that promise of cheap,
5:47
lawless partying, it just migrated. It moved, It moved off
5:51
the river banks and embedded itself right into the town center,
5:55
specifically inside the budget hostels.
5:57
Speaker 1: So the party didn't stop, It just got a roof
5:59
over it, exactly, which brings us to the epicenter of
6:02
this specific tragedy in twenty twenty four, the Nana Backpacker Hostile.
6:07
Speaker 2: Right, So, Nana Backpacker Hostile was a textbook example of
6:09
this new iteration of the party economy. Their entire business
6:13
model was engineered around capturing the young cash strap traveler
6:17
and just keeping them on the property.
6:18
Speaker 1: So they wouldn't spend their money anywhere else. In town.
6:21
Speaker 2: Precisely they offered incredibly cheap dormitory beds, a giant pool,
6:27
this hypersocial vibe, and really aggressive alcohol promotions. We're talking
6:32
about just handing out free shots of local vodka and
6:35
whiskey to anyone hanging out in the common areas.
6:38
Speaker 1: It creates a captive audience.
6:40
Speaker 2: It does it keeps the party in house.
6:41
Speaker 1: Wait hold on, though, let's talk about that giving away
6:44
free alcohol in a developing country where profit margins have
6:48
to be like razor thun to begin with, right, that
6:51
doesn't make economic sense to me unless the alcohol costs
6:55
literal pennies. It really reminds me of a loss leader
6:58
in retail, you know, like when a grocery store sells
7:00
you a Thanksgiving turkey below cost, just to get you
7:02
in the door, hoping you'll buy all the expensive side dishes.
7:05
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
7:06
Speaker 1: But how are they making the booze that cheap in
7:08
the first place. How does that pressure to provide endless
7:12
free alcohol lead to illicit distillers cutting corners.
7:16
Speaker 2: Well, the lost leader analogy works, but you really have
7:19
to look at the macroeconomic reality of LAOS to see
7:22
why it turns deadly in this context.
7:24
Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for me.
7:25
Speaker 2: So Laos is a one party communist state and it
7:29
remains one of the poorest nations in Southeast Asia. They
7:33
desperately rely on foreign currency from tourism. It's a huge
7:37
part of their economy. But their regulatory infrastructure is practically
7:41
non existent, meaning no oversize, zero oversight. There is no
7:45
health inspector showing up with a clipboard to test the
7:48
well liquor at a random backpacker hostile.
7:51
Speaker 1: So it's literally the Wild West of beverage distribution exactly.
7:54
Speaker 2: So imagine you're the manager of that hostel. You're in
7:57
this fierce desperate competition with the hostel down the Stace
8:00
Street to attract the backpacker.
8:01
Speaker 1: Dollar, and the backpackers just want the cheapest option, right, So.
8:04
Speaker 2: The only way you win that crowd is by offering
8:07
the cheapest drinks or better yet, free drinks. So you
8:10
go to a local supplier to buy bulk spirits. That
8:13
suppliers also under intense pressure to sell it to you
8:16
as cheaply as humanly possible, so you don't go to
8:18
their competitor.
8:19
Speaker 1: It's a chain reaction.
8:20
Speaker 2: It is in a regulated market like the US or
8:23
the UK. There's a hard floor to how cheap alcohol
8:26
can actually be because making safe ethanol takes time, it
8:30
takes specialized equipment, and it gets taxed heavily.
8:33
Speaker 1: Right, you can only make it so cheap, exactly.
8:36
Speaker 2: But in an unregulated gray market, illfit distillers start looking
8:40
for chemical shortcuts to stretch their batches and maximize those
8:45
tiny margins. The economic pressure triples all the way down
8:48
the supply chain until safety is entirely sacrificed for fractions
8:53
of a cent.
8:54
Speaker 1: It's just a terrifying race to the bottom. And unfortunately
8:57
that exact race to the bottom is what set the
9:00
stage for the night of November eleventh, twenty twenty four.
9:03
Speaker 2: It was the perfect storm.
9:04
Speaker 1: So we've got the geographic backdrop, we have this intense
9:07
economic pressure to provide endless sheep wicker, and now we
9:11
really need to move to how this actually played out,
9:14
because the timeline is critical here and is incredibly critical.
9:17
Speaker 2: The timeline is actually what turned a localized, single night
9:20
poisoning into a massive, fragmented international crisis.
9:24
Speaker 1: Okay, so take me to that night.
9:25
Speaker 2: So on the evening of November eleventh, there were around
9:27
one hundred guests hanging out at the Nana backpacker hostel.
9:30
Speaker 1: Just a typical Monday night, Just a.
9:32
Speaker 2: Normal Monday, and as usual, the staff started offering free
9:36
shots to the crowd. It was a local Layotian vodka,
9:40
reportedly a brand labeled Tiger Vodka.
9:43
Speaker 1: And to these kids, it's just another fun night on vacation.
9:46
Speaker 2: Exactly many of them took the shots, maybe they mix
9:48
them with sprite or coke, hung out by the pool,
9:51
and then went on to keep partying at other bars
9:53
in town. Right from the outside, everything seems completely one
9:57
hundred percent.
9:58
Speaker 1: Normal, perfectly normal. But that is the most insidious part
10:02
of this specific chemical, isn't it. The consequences of what
10:06
they swallowed didn't manifest immediately at all.
10:09
Speaker 2: No, there's a massive delayed onset.
10:11
Speaker 1: When people woke up the next day, November twelfth, or
10:13
even into the thirteenth, the victims began to scatter. They
10:17
checked out of the hostel, they continued their travel itineraries,
10:20
They bored in buses to totally different countries, or they
10:23
just stayed in bed trying to sleep off what they
10:25
assumed was just a really vicious hangover.
10:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had no idea they were in danger.
10:29
Speaker 1: Wait, but that delay doesn't make sense to me. I mean,
10:32
if I eat a bad piece of chicken, or I
10:34
get food poisoning from a street vendor, my body reacts
10:37
violently in like an hour or two. My body wants
10:40
it out immediately.
10:41
Speaker 2: Right, That's the normal biological response to a toxin in
10:44
the stomach.
10:45
Speaker 1: So how does a lethal chemical weapon just sit in
10:48
their stomachs for days without triggering any alarms.
10:50
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is, it doesn't sit in the stomach.
10:53
It enters the bloodstream almost immediately, just like the normal
10:56
alcohol does when you take a shot. Okay, the delay
10:58
happens because the poison itself isn't actually what hurts you.
11:03
It's what your body turns the poison into over time.
11:07
Speaker 1: What.
11:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we'll get into the deep chemistry of that
11:10
in a moment.
11:10
Speaker 1: Yeah.
11:11
Speaker 2: What's crucial right now is just understanding the logistical nightment
11:13
or that specific delay caused.
11:15
Speaker 1: Because they scattered exactly.
11:17
Speaker 2: By the time these travelers realized something was fundamentally horribly wrong,
11:22
they were no longer together in one central place, right.
11:25
Speaker 1: I mean, if thirty people walk into a local clinic
11:27
in vang Vieing on the exact same morning with the
11:30
exact same symptoms. A doctor spots the pattern instantly, it's obvious.
11:35
Speaker 2: Right, it's a mass casualty event. They triage it.
11:37
Speaker 1: But that didn't happen here. They were completely scattered across
11:41
the map. Let's talk about the human tole for a second,
11:43
because these were real people just looking for an adventure.
11:46
Speaker 2: It's absolutely heartbreaking, it is.
11:48
Speaker 1: There were two young women from Australia, Holly Morton Bowles
11:51
and Bianca Jones. They were only nineteen years old, so
11:54
young best friends from Melbourne on the trip of a lifetime,
11:59
and they they were scheduled to check out of their
12:01
accommodation on November thirteenth, which is two days after the
12:04
initial drinks, and they just never showed up at the
12:06
front desk.
12:07
Speaker 2: And once they were finally discovered unresponsive in their room,
12:11
the medical reality of rural laos really set in.
12:15
Speaker 1: Because vang Yang doesn't have the facilities exactly.
12:18
Speaker 2: Fangving does not have a major high acuity hospital capable
12:23
of complex toxicology interventions. So this frantic race began.
12:27
Speaker 1: They had to move them.
12:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had to be loaded into ambulances and driven
12:31
two hours south over really rough roads just to get
12:34
to VENCNN and from there, as their organs began to
12:38
rapidly fail, they actually had to be evacuated across the
12:41
border into Thailand to seek advanced life support.
12:44
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
12:45
Speaker 2: Tragically, despite all of that immense effort, Bianca passed away
12:49
on November twenty first, and Hally on November twenty second.
12:53
The Australian Prime Minister even released a statement calling it
12:56
every parent's worst fear.
12:57
Speaker 1: And you completely understand why. It was this pro long,
13:00
agonizing escalation where the parents were probably rushing across the
13:04
world completely helpless to stop it. It's a awful and
13:08
it wasn't just the Australians. There were two Danish women
13:11
and Sophie or Killed Carman who was twenty and Fridge
13:13
of Ventrvald Sorensen, who was twenty one. They were found
13:17
unconscious on a bathroom floor. They were literally vomiting blood
13:20
before they ultimately suffered fatal heart failure after being rushed
13:22
to Vienchian.
13:23
Speaker 2: And we also have Simone White. She's a twenty eight
13:26
year old British lawyer working at a really prominent firm
13:29
in London. The details of her case are incredibly painful
13:32
to read.
13:33
Speaker 1: I read she was texting her family right before.
13:35
Speaker 2: She was She had literally just texted her mother to
13:38
say she was having the best holiday ever, right before
13:42
the severe symptoms hit her, and her condition deteriorated so
13:45
rapidly and so severely that doctors actually attempted brain surgery
13:49
to relieve the pressure in her skull, but she passed away.
13:52
Speaker 1: That is just there are no words. And there was
13:55
an American man too, James Lewis Hudson, who was fifty seven.
13:58
He didn't even make it to a hostlepital. He's found
14:01
de ceased right in his hostel bed.
14:02
Speaker 2: Six lives, just entirely erased in a matter of days.
14:05
Speaker 1: And then you have the survivors. We mentioned Calem MacDonald
14:08
earlier in the intro. He's a twenty three year old
14:11
from the UK, and his story really hammers home how
14:14
terrifying this timeline delay was.
14:17
Speaker 2: It really does.
14:17
Speaker 1: He took the shots at the hostel, left bang Ving
14:20
completely unaware he was poisoned, and traveled all the way
14:23
to the border of Vietnam before it hit him.
14:25
Speaker 2: That kaleidoscopic blinding light you mentioned right.
14:28
Speaker 1: He realized he was going blind, hundreds of miles away
14:30
from where he actually drank the Alcoholkalem's story perfectly illustrates
14:35
why this became such an unmanageable crisis for authorities.
14:39
Speaker 2: The poison acted like a biological time bomb. When it
14:42
finally detonated, victims were literally spread across Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
14:48
Speaker 1: It became this massive, fragmented cross border emergency exactly.
14:52
Speaker 2: And here's where the geopolitics really compound the tragedy. Laos
14:56
has a highly controlled media environment and incredibly open bureaucratic system.
15:01
Speaker 1: They don't exactly share information freely.
15:03
Speaker 2: No they don't. So hospitals in Laos weren't immediately issuing
15:07
regional alerts or talking openly with hospitals in Thailand or Vietnam.
15:11
Speaker 1: So the doctors treating Callum and Vietnam might have absolutely
15:14
no idea that doctors in Thailand are treating two Australians
15:17
with the exact same thing. The dods aren't being connected
15:20
at all.
15:20
Speaker 2: Precisely, they're all trying to solve the same mystery in isolation.
15:23
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to lean into the mechanism of this
15:26
time bomb. Because Callum describing that kaleidoscopic blinding light that
15:30
doesn't sound like a bad hangover. To me, that sounds
15:32
like a body horror movie.
15:33
Speaker 2: It's a very specific, terrifying symptom.
15:36
Speaker 1: So let's pivot to the hard science of it all.
15:38
What exactly was in those little plastic shot glasses at
15:41
the hostel?
15:42
Speaker 2: Well, to understand the poison, we have to distinguish between
15:45
two chemicals that are almost identical twins, ethanol and methanol.
15:50
Speaker 1: Okay, ethanol and methanol, right.
15:51
Speaker 2: So, Ethanol is the alcohol humans have been consuming for
15:55
thousands of years. It's the active ingredient in a craft ipa,
16:00
a glass a Bordeaux, or a standard shot of tequila.
16:03
Speaker 1: The stuff that gets you drunk exactly.
16:05
Speaker 2: And your liver evolved to process it. Methanol, on the
16:08
other hand, is a completely different beast entirely. Its chemical
16:11
formula is H three oh. It's sometimes called wood.
16:14
Speaker 1: Alcohol woo alcohol.
16:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. It is a highly toxic, extremely cheap industrial solvent.
16:20
It is literally the chemical you use to make anti
16:22
freeze for your car or paint thinner in industrial fuel.
16:25
Speaker 1: Wait, isn't methanol just rubbing alcohol, like the stuff you
16:27
put on a scrape when you fall down.
16:29
Speaker 2: No, Actually, you're thinking of isopropyle alcohol, that's a different
16:33
chemical structure entirely. Methanol is strictly industrial. But here's the
16:38
terrifying part to a human being holding a shot glass.
16:42
Ethanol and methanol are completely indistinguishable.
16:45
Speaker 1: Wait, really, you can't smell the difference.
16:47
Speaker 2: You cannot. Methanol is a clear liquid. It smells almost
16:51
exactly like regular drinking alcohol, and if you drink it,
16:54
the initial intoxicating effect, the buzz you feel, it feels
16:58
exactly the same as ethanol.
16:59
Speaker 1: That is wild.
17:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, you cannot tell by tasting it that you are
17:03
swallowing an industrial solvent.
17:04
Speaker 1: So if I'm gonna lisit distiller in the jungle and
17:06
I'm trying to, I don't know, double my batch of
17:09
vodka to make more money, and I just pour in
17:11
a gallon of cheap anti freeze solvent, My customers won't
17:15
even notice when they drink it.
17:16
Speaker 2: They won't notice it all. They'll just think it's strong liquor.
17:18
It's the perfect invisible adult rent. But the lethal dose
17:22
is shockingly small.
17:24
Speaker 1: How small are we talk?
17:25
Speaker 2: As little as thirty milliliters, which is exactly one standard
17:29
shot glass or about one ounce, can be absolutely fatal
17:32
to an adult.
17:33
Speaker 1: One shot, one single shot. That is chilling, It really is, okay,
17:37
so walk me through this scientifically, someone drinks that one
17:40
shot of methanol, what is actually happening inside the biological
17:45
processing plant of the human body. You mentioned earlier that
17:48
the poison doesn't hurt you, your body turns it into poison.
17:51
Speaker 2: Explain that to me, Okay, It all comes down to
17:53
your liver, specifically, an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase or eighty.
17:59
Speaker 1: H for sure it.
18:00
Speaker 2: Think of your liver as a chemical recycling plant, and
18:03
eighth is the foreman on the factory floor. When you
18:06
drink normal ethanol, your body flags it as a mild toxin.
18:10
The ADH foreman grabs the ethanol, breaks it apart, and
18:14
turns it into relatively benign byproducts that your body can
18:17
easily flush out through your urine in your breath.
18:19
Speaker 1: Right. It's doing its job, cleaning up the mess I
18:22
made at the bar, exactly.
18:23
Speaker 2: It's a very efficient system. But when you drink methanol,
18:26
that factory goes completely.
18:27
Speaker 1: Rogue because it doesn't recognize it.
18:29
Speaker 2: The ADH enzyme doesn't know the difference between the two.
18:31
It just sees an alcohol molecule, so it grabs the
18:33
methanol starts breaking it down, but instead of a benign byproduct,
18:38
it converts the methanol into formaldehyde.
18:40
Speaker 1: Wait, formaldehyde like actual embalming fluid.
18:43
Speaker 2: Precisely your liver starts manufacturing embalming fluid directly into your
18:48
own bloodstream.
18:49
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
18:49
Speaker 2: But it doesn't even stop there. The body rapidly oxidizes
18:52
that formaldehyde into an even more dangerous, highly corrosive compound
18:57
called formic acid.
18:58
Speaker 1: Formic acid.
19:00
Speaker 2: Yes, and this is where the catastrophic, irreversible damage occurs.
19:03
Speaker 1: Okay, formic acid, What does that actually do to me?
19:05
Once it's in my blood, it triggers.
19:07
Speaker 2: A condition called severe metabolic acidosis. Essentially, as the comic
19:12
acid floods your system, the pH level of your blood
19:15
just plummets.
19:16
Speaker 1: It becomes acidic.
19:17
Speaker 2: Your blood literally becomes highly acidic. It starts destroying your
19:20
cells from the inside out. But formic acid has a
19:24
very specific devastating affinity.
19:26
Speaker 1: For the optic nerve, so it targets the eyes.
19:28
Speaker 2: It violently attacks the cells of the optic nerve, starving
19:31
them of oxygen and physically destroying the tissue. Wow, and
19:35
that is exactly what caused calums kaleidoscopic lights, the visual
19:38
snowstorms he saw, and the eventual total blindness. The acid
19:42
was physically eating away the connection between his eyes and
19:45
his brain.
19:46
Speaker 1: That is horrifying, and that explains the massive delay exactly,
19:50
the twelve to twenty four hour window where everyone was
19:52
packing their bags and getting on busses thinking they were
19:54
totally fine. The methanol itself was just getting them drunk
19:58
at the hostel. It took hours and hours for that
20:01
ADH enzyme to metabolize it, build up the formaldehyde, and
20:05
slowly convert it into the deadly formic acid.
20:09
Speaker 2: That delay is the deadliest characteristic of methanol poisoning bar none.
20:14
In the first twelve hours, the victim just feels intoxicated. Then,
20:18
as the acid slowly builds up, they start to feel
20:20
hung over because they've been drinking, right. They get a headache,
20:23
a little nausea, some dizziness. Yeah, and to a nineteen
20:26
year old backpacker who's out doing shots and drinking buckets
20:29
all night and louse, this is one hundred percent expected.
20:33
They assume they just partied way too hard.
20:35
Speaker 1: So what do they do. They pull the covers over
20:37
their head, They drink a bottle of water and they
20:39
try to just sleep it off.
20:40
Speaker 2: Which is the absolute worst thing you could possibly do.
20:42
Speaker 1: Because while you're sleeping peacefully, your liver is quietly functioning
20:47
like a bomb factory, just churning out acid into your blood.
20:50
Speaker 2: Yes, and by the time the late stage symptoms arrive,
20:54
you know the snowfield vision where it looks like static
20:56
on an old TV. The profound hyperventilation as the body
21:01
literally tries to pant the acid out of the lungs.
21:04
Speaker 1: Wait panting it out, Yeah.
21:06
Speaker 2: Your lungs try to exhale the excess acid as a
21:09
desperate compensatory mechanism.
21:11
Speaker 1: That is insane.
21:12
Speaker 2: And then comes the seizures, the coma, the multiple organ failure.
21:16
By the time those hit, the acid doses is profound,
21:19
the blood is highly toxic, and the window to save
21:22
the patient's life is just slam and shut.
21:24
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about that window, because there has to
21:27
be a way to stop this. Let's say someone recognizes
21:29
the symptoms, maybe they realize their vision is getting blurry
21:32
and it's not normal, and they actually manage to get
21:34
to a hospital in time. How do doctors fight acid
21:37
in the blood, Because looking into the medical interventions for this.
21:40
It is wild.
21:41
Speaker 2: It is wild. It requires an incredibly aggressive, multi prompt approach. First,
21:46
they have to pump the patient full of sodium bicarbonate.
21:49
Speaker 1: Which is essentially medical grade baking soda, right exactly.
21:53
Speaker 2: They use it to try and neutralize the acid in
21:55
the blood and raise the pH back to normal survivable levels.
22:00
And they also use a specialized drug called pham pizzole.
22:02
Speaker 1: Okay, how does fum pazzole work? Does it destroy the asset?
22:05
Speaker 2: No, Fumbasol actually targets the factory.
22:08
Speaker 1: Format, the eighth enzyme.
22:10
Speaker 2: Yes, it binds directly to the eighth enzyme in the
22:13
liver and just blocks it. It essentially shuts down the
22:16
recycling plant entirely, so the liver can't convert any more
22:20
of the raw methanol into formic acid. It halts the
22:23
production line.
22:24
Speaker 1: That sounds perfect.
22:25
Speaker 2: It is, but foam pizole is incredibly expensive and very rare,
22:29
especially in developing nations.
22:30
Speaker 1: Okay, but there's another treatment, right, Because this is where
22:33
it gets absolutely fascinating to me. I was reading the
22:35
sources and one of the primary emergency treatments for methanol
22:39
poisoning in places that don't have phonem pazole is actually
22:42
administering regular drinking alcohol. Yes, are you seriously telling me
22:46
that the cure for being poisoned by fake alcohol is
22:49
to pump the patient full of real alcohol.
22:51
Speaker 2: It sounds like a joke, I know, but it is
22:53
a fundamental cornerstone of emergency toxicology. The principle is called
22:59
competitive in.
23:00
Speaker 1: Ambition, competitive in addition. Walk me through that.
23:03
Speaker 2: So, remember that enzyme alcohol dehydrogenes. It's the enzyme that
23:08
mistakenly turns the methanol into the deadly acid. But here's
23:12
the biological trick. That enzyme strongly prefers normal ethanol over methanol.
23:18
Speaker 1: It likes the real stuff better.
23:19
Speaker 2: It has a much higher affinity for it. Given the
23:21
choice between the two, it will always grab the ethanol first.
23:24
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I see where this is going. It's like
23:26
throwing a stake to a guard dog so you can
23:27
sneak past the gate.
23:29
Speaker 2: That is exactly what it is. If a doctor hooks
23:31
you up to an IV and pumps pharmaceutical grade ethanol
23:34
in your bloodstream, or in desperate situations where they don't
23:37
have IV ethanol, they literally put a nasogastric tube down
23:40
your throat and give you controlled, high proof doses of
23:44
commercial vodka or.
23:45
Speaker 1: Whiskey wait, really actual vodka.
23:48
Speaker 2: Yes. If they do that, all of your ADH enzymes
23:50
will abandon the methanol and rush over to process the
23:53
normal alcohol. It keeps the enzymes entirely busy.
23:56
Speaker 1: And because the enzymes are distracted with the real alcohol,
23:59
the methanol just sits there exactly.
24:01
Speaker 2: It remains in your system and its original raw unmetabolized state,
24:06
and unmetabolized methanol is actually much less toxic. It just
24:09
makes you feel really drunk.
24:10
Speaker 1: That is incredible.
24:12
Speaker 2: This competitive inhibition buys the body time to slowly excrete
24:16
the raw methanol harmlessly through your urine and breath. Or
24:20
more importantly, it buys the doctor's time to hook you
24:23
up to a hemodialysis machine.
24:25
Speaker 1: Right. Hemodialysis, because if the acid is already in your blood,
24:28
you have to physically get it out of there. Explain
24:31
how that works for someone who isn't familiar with dialysis.
24:34
Speaker 2: Hemodialysis is literally an artificial kidney outside of your body.
24:39
They insert these large catheters into your veins, pump your
24:42
entire blood supply out of your body, run it through
24:44
a complex machine with specialized filters that pull the formic
24:47
acid and the methanol out of the fluid and then
24:50
pump the clean blood back into you.
24:52
Speaker 1: It sounds like a massive, highly invasive procedure.
24:55
Speaker 2: It is. It requires highly specialized equipment and train technicians.
24:59
Speaker 1: And that right there is the crux of why this
25:01
was so lethal, isn't it? Because think about where these
25:03
kids were. Vang Ving is a rural town in Laos.
25:07
The local clinics there are equipped to handle a spoined
25:10
ankle from a rock climbing trip, or maybe stitch up
25:13
a cut you got on a kayak.
25:14
Speaker 2: They do basic trioge.
25:16
Speaker 1: They absolutely do not have rows of hemodialysis machines waiting around.
25:20
They don't stock foam pizzole, which costs thousands of dollars
25:23
of vile.
25:24
Speaker 2: They don't. And that is the true healthcare gap that
25:26
turns a poisoning into a massacre. By the time a
25:29
victim is finally loaded into an ambulance, driven two hours
25:33
over unpaved roads to v Chian and then potentially airlifted
25:36
or driven across international borders into Thailand just to access
25:40
the dialysis machine, the formic acid has had days to
25:44
ravage their internal organs.
25:45
Speaker 1: The damage is done, the optic.
25:46
Speaker 2: Nerve is gone, the brain is swelling. In resource poor settings,
25:50
the biological time bomb is almost always fatal because the
25:53
distance to the diffusal expert is simply too far to survive.
25:56
Speaker 1: It just makes you realize how utterly defenseless they were,
25:59
which brings us to the aftermath of all this. We've
26:01
established the horrific, unforgiving science of what happened in their bodies.
26:05
Six people are dead, dozens more injured, some permanently blind,
26:10
and the cause, methanol, is a well known, easily identifiable chemical.
26:14
It wasn't a mystery virus that popped out of nowhere.
26:17
It was a painted product served by a business. Yes,
26:20
So how did the Laotian authorities respond? Because when you
26:23
look at the investigation, the legal outcomes, and the quest
26:27
for accountability, it is deeply infuriating.
26:31
Speaker 2: Infuriating is putting it mildly. Now. The initial reaction from
26:34
the local authorities looked like a really swift crackdown. They
26:37
made moves right in the immediate days following the cluster
26:40
of hospitalizations and the massive media uproar, local police descended
26:45
on the Nana backpacker hostel. They shut the place down
26:49
and detained a large group of the staff, somewhere between
26:51
eight and eleven employees.
26:52
Speaker 1: Okay, so they arrested the staff. Interestingly, I read that
26:55
most of the staff members they attained were actually Vietnamese
26:58
nationals who had just crossed the board to work in
27:00
the hostel.
27:01
Speaker 2: That's correct.
27:02
Speaker 1: And what about the owner, you know, the guy actually
27:03
running the business and profiting.
27:05
Speaker 2: The owner fiercely and publicly denied adding anything to the
27:09
alcohol himself. His defense was entirely deflecting blame of the
27:13
supply chain. He essentially told the police, look, I buy
27:17
the alcohol in bulk from a certified supplier. The police
27:19
inspect it. I just poured it into the glasses. He claimed.
27:22
He was just a victim of a bad batch.
27:24
Speaker 1: Which you know, to be completely fair. Might be true.
27:27
He might not be the actual guy pouring the anti
27:29
freeze into the barrel out back, but he is the
27:31
guy choosing to buy the impossibly cheap, unregulated liquor to
27:37
boost his profit margins.
27:38
Speaker 2: He is responsible for what he serves.
27:40
Speaker 1: Exactly did the police go after the supplier?
27:42
Speaker 2: Then they did. They tracked the supply back to the
27:45
specific brands mentioned by the victims, Tiger Vodka and Tiger Whiskey.
27:49
The authorities actually located the distillation factory, rated it, shut
27:53
the facility down, and rested the owner of the distillery.
27:56
Speaker 1: Okay, so on paper, that sounds like real action. They
27:58
arrested the hostile staff, closed the factory, that got the distiller.
28:02
But then we get to the actual legal outcomes in court,
28:05
the penalties.
28:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where it falls apart, and this.
28:07
Speaker 1: Is where the families of the victims, who were already
28:11
living through hell, were left absolutely reeling. What actually happened
28:15
to the eleven hostile employees who were arrested.
28:18
Speaker 2: They essentially walked away, walked away. The eleven employees were
28:21
brought to court, but the Liotian legal system did not
28:24
pursue charges of manslaughter or criminal negligence leading to mass casualties.
28:29
They were charged with incredibly minor infractions, primarily evidence destruction.
28:34
Speaker 1: Evidence destruction What does that even mean in this specific context,
28:38
washing the shot glasses.
28:39
Speaker 2: Pouring the remaining alcohol down the grain before police could
28:42
confiscate it, hiding bottles, essentially trying to clean up the
28:45
bar area after people started getting violently sick.
28:48
Speaker 1: Oh wow, and.
28:50
Speaker 2: The penalty for this evidence destruction was a suspended sentence,
28:54
meaning no actual jail time served in a fine.
28:57
Speaker 1: And how much was the fine?
28:58
Speaker 2: That fine was approximately a hundred and eighty five US dollars.
29:01
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? One hundred and eighty five dollars?
29:04
Speaker 2: That's it.
29:05
Speaker 1: Six young people died in absolute agony. Parents had to
29:09
fly across the world to watch their children die on
29:11
life support, and the penalty for the people who served
29:14
them the poison and then actively tried to cover it
29:17
up was less than the cost of a budget airline ticket.
29:20
Speaker 2: You can entirely understand why the victims' families were just
29:23
screaming about injustice to the international press. The Australian parents
29:28
were incredibly vocal about it, calling it an absolute failure
29:31
of accountability. It is a failure and it highlights a
29:34
deeply concerning culture of evasion because it wasn't just the
29:38
legal system handing out slap on the risk fines. The
29:41
business itself went into overdrive to cover its tracks.
29:44
Speaker 1: Right, let's talk about that cover up, because almost immediately
29:47
after the tragedy hit the global news, the Nana backpacker
29:51
hostel didn't just close its doors out of respect or
29:54
foreign investigation. They began systematically wiping their existence off the Internet.
30:00
Speaker 2: They initiated a massive digital scrubbing. They removed their listings
30:03
from all the major hostile booking websites.
30:05
Speaker 1: Just deleted them, deleted.
30:07
Speaker 2: They deleted online reviews from travelers who had mentioned getting
30:10
unusually sick or complaining about suspicious drinks in the weeks prior,
30:14
and then shockingly, reports started emerging that they were attempting
30:18
to quietly reopen the building under an entirely new name,
30:22
claiming to be under new management.
30:24
Speaker 1: That is so deeply chilling to me. Think about the
30:28
last time you booked an Airbnb or a hostel for
30:30
a trip. You go on the app, you scroll through
30:32
some nice photos of a pool, you see a four
30:34
star rating, and you click book.
30:36
Speaker 2: You trust the platform.
30:38
Speaker 1: You'd have zero way of knowing that just weeks prior,
30:40
police were literally carrying bodies out of that exact dorm
30:44
room that the staff smiling at the front desk handing
30:47
you a room key had just paid one hundred and
30:49
eighty five dollars fine for washing poisoned down the sink.
30:52
It's this brutal clash between a business's desperate need for
30:55
economic survival and basic human morality.
30:58
Speaker 2: It really is. And if you want to understand why
31:01
the authorities allowed one hundred and eighty five dollars fine
31:04
to be the end of the story, you have to
31:06
connect this to the broader geopolitical reality of LAOS. We
31:10
mentioned it earlier, but it's vital context. LAOS is a
31:13
one party communist state. Information flow is tightly aggressively controlled
31:18
by the central government.
31:19
Speaker 1: They manage the narrative.
31:20
Speaker 2: Strongly, and the state had a massive vested interest in
31:24
protecting its tourism industry at all costs. Tourism is one
31:28
of their very few reliable sources of foreign currency, so
31:31
when a catastrophic global scandal like this hits, their institutional
31:36
instinct is not radical transparency. Their instinct is containment.
31:40
Speaker 1: Sweep it under the rug as fast as humanly possible,
31:43
so the backpackers keep coming.
31:44
Speaker 2: Exactly, there was immense diplomatic pressure bearing down on them.
31:48
The governments of Australia, the UK and the US were
31:51
demanding real answers. They wanted transparent investigations. They even offered forensic.
31:55
Speaker 1: Assistance and did LAOS accept it.
31:57
Speaker 2: Not really. The local LAOS share and authorities were I need,
32:00
remarkably slow moving, very tight lipped and defensive. They released
32:04
very few official statements. They essentially just wanted the news
32:06
cycle to end.
32:07
Speaker 1: And scrubbing a hostel's name off a booking app is
32:10
a very easy way to make the story disappear for
32:13
the next batch of nineteen year olds who arrived three
32:15
months later, completely oblivious.
32:18
Speaker 2: To what happened, out of sight, out of mind.
32:20
Speaker 1: And this is the core issue, isn't it. The government's
32:22
containment strategy shifts the entire burden of safety off of
32:26
the host country, off of the business is profiting, and
32:30
squarely onto the shoulders of the individual.
32:32
Speaker 2: Traveler white hundred percent, which.
32:33
Speaker 1: Is exactly what we need to focus on next. We've
32:36
talked deeply about Vangving, but I want to make it
32:38
clear that this is not a freak, isolated accident that
32:41
only happened in one town in Laos. We need to
32:45
look at the broader context because this is actually a massive, recurring,
32:49
regional epidemic.
32:50
Speaker 2: That is perhaps the most sobering reality of this entire
32:53
deep dive. What happened in vang Vieng is just a
32:56
symptom of a much much larger disease methanols are happening
33:01
with terrifying regularity across the developing world, particularly throughout Asia.
33:05
Speaker 1: It's not just a few people.
33:07
Speaker 2: We are not talking about a dozen unlucky people a year.
33:09
We are talking about thousands of individuals affected annually.
33:13
Speaker 1: Let's look at the numbers from the sources. In twenty nineteen,
33:16
there was a massive outbreak in the state of Assam
33:19
in India. Over one hundred and fifty t plantation workers
33:22
died from a single batch of tainted local alcohol.
33:25
Speaker 2: One hundred and fifty people.
33:27
Speaker 1: And it's not just historical, and it's not just in
33:29
rural villages either. In twenty twenty four, the exact same
33:33
year as the Laos tragedy, there were deadly methanol poisoning
33:37
incidents right in the heart of Bangkok, Thailand, one of
33:40
the most visited cities on the planet, exactly. So it's everywhere.
33:43
Speaker 2: It is a relentless, inescapable cycle, and the root causes
33:47
are identical no matter what border you cross. It starts
33:50
with widespread systemic poverty, which creates this massive demand for
33:54
the absolute cheapest alcohol possible. You have a sprawling, unregulated
33:58
gray market of illicit discs completely willing to meet that
34:01
demand by using industrial solvents to stretch.
34:04
Speaker 1: Their product because it's cheaper than doing it right, much cheaper.
34:08
Speaker 2: And you have weak, underfunded, or outright corrupt law enforcement
34:12
that fails to intercept these adulterated batches before they hit
34:16
the bars and hostels. It is a loop of toxic
34:19
hooch that primarily prays on the poorest local populations, but
34:23
increasingly it catches budget conscious tourists right in the crossfire.
34:28
Speaker 1: Which means that if you are a traveler stepping into
34:30
that ecosystem, if you're heading out on the banana pancake
34:33
trail anytime soon, you are walking into a minefield. You
34:36
cannot rely on a health inspector to keep you safe.
34:39
You have to be your own absolute advocate.
34:41
Speaker 2: You have to protect yourself.
34:42
Speaker 1: So let's break down the actionable safety guidelines from our sources.
34:46
We need a survival guide for the listener. First and foremost,
34:49
we have to look at the advice from Callam MacDonald,
34:51
the survivor who almost went blind in Vietnam. His advice
34:54
is incredibly blunt. He says to skip the risky spirits entirely,
34:58
and he's right.
34:59
Speaker 2: He really is the single most effective way to protect
35:01
yourself in these unregulated environments. You have to operate out
35:04
of the assumption that any unbranded, locally poured spirit carries
35:08
a lethal risk. The primary rule of thumb is stick
35:12
to beer.
35:12
Speaker 1: Why is beer safer? Though, I mean, can't they just
35:15
put methanol in a beer keg?
35:17
Speaker 2: Well, it's about the manufacturing process. Beer is fermented, not distilled.
35:21
Methanol contamination is overwhelmingly a byproduct of poor distillation practices,
35:26
where they either fail to separate the toxic alcohols that
35:29
naturally occur during heating, or they intentionally add industrial methanol
35:34
to boost the volume of a distilled spirit like vodka
35:37
or whiskey. Ugh, it's economically and chemically impractical to taint
35:41
beer in that same way, so stick to commercial beer.
35:45
If you want spirits, stick to securely sealed, internationally recognized
35:49
bottles of wine or liquor, and ensure you personally break
35:52
the seal yourself.
35:53
Speaker 1: Don't let them open it in the back room exactly.
35:55
Speaker 2: Avoid mixed cocktails at bars where you cannot see the
35:58
bartender pouring from a verify, and absolutely refuse any free
36:02
shots or heavily discounted buckets of liquor. If the price
36:05
seems impossibly cheap, it is because the ingredients are illicit.
36:09
Speaker 1: Okay, So Rule one beer only or sealed bottles you
36:13
open yourself. Rule two is about recognizing the symptoms. We
36:18
talked extensively about how deceptive methanol is, how it perfectly
36:22
mimics a standard hangover. But you can never dismiss severe
36:25
hangover if it includes specific red flags.
36:28
Speaker 2: Correct. A normal hangover will make you feel awful, You'll
36:32
have a headache, you'll be nauseous, you'll want to stay
36:35
in bed all day, but it should not impair your
36:38
core physiological functions. Right if you wake up after a
36:41
night of drinking and you experience any kind of visual disturbance, bluriness,
36:45
profound sensitivity to light, seeing dark spots, or that kaleidoscopic
36:49
snowstorm effect Galum described, that is a massive, blaring red flag.
36:53
It means formic acid is attacking your optic nerve right
36:56
then and there.
36:56
Speaker 1: You can't ignore that.
36:57
Speaker 2: Never. Similarly, if you are experiencing profound shortness of breath
37:01
or deep hyperventilation when you're just sitting still on a bed,
37:04
that is your body trying to expel the acid from
37:07
your blood. In those scenarios, you do not pull the
37:09
covers up and go back to sleep.
37:10
Speaker 1: You get help.
37:11
Speaker 2: You seek emergency medical attention immediately, and you specifically tell
37:16
the doctors you suspect methanol poisoning so they don't waste
37:19
precious time misdiagnosing.
37:20
Speaker 1: You Rule three. Vet your hostiles rigorously. We live in
37:25
an era where our entireed pravel itinerary is dictated by
37:29
online reviews, but you have to read them critically. You
37:32
need to run away from any place that heavily pushes
37:35
free unbranded drinks as their primary marketing tool.
37:38
Speaker 2: It's a huge warning sign.
37:40
Speaker 1: If a hostile's entire identity is based on getting you
37:43
as intoxicated as possible for free, the risk profile of
37:46
that establishment is inherently higher. Look for recent reviews, sort
37:49
by the newest, and just scour them for any mentions
37:52
of people getting unusually sick or complaining about chemical tasting drinks.
37:56
Speaker 2: And finally, preparation is vital. Before you ever step on
38:00
a plane. You must have robust travel insurance, but not
38:03
just any basic cheat policy.
38:05
Speaker 1: Right the fine print matters.
38:07
Speaker 2: You need to read the fine print and is sure,
38:08
it explicitly covers emergency medical evacuation. As we saw with
38:12
the tragedy in vang Vyang, the local rural clinic physically
38:16
cannot save you from metabolic acidosis. They don't have the
38:18
dialysis machines.
38:20
Speaker 1: You have to get out of there.
38:21
Speaker 2: You need an insurance policy that will authorize and pay
38:24
for a helicopter or a medically equipped jet to fly
38:27
you to a Tier one hospital in a neighboring country.
38:31
It's an upfront expense that always seems so unnecessary, right
38:34
up until it is the only thing standing between you
38:37
and lethal organ failure.
38:39
Speaker 1: Stick to beer, recognize the visual red flags, read hostile
38:43
reviews like a detective, and buy the expensive evacuation insurance.
38:48
It sounds like an exhausting amount of work for a
38:50
vacation that is marketed as being utterly carefree.
38:53
Speaker 2: It does, and this raises an important question. Doesn't it
38:56
a fundamental question about the responsibility of the global tourism
39:00
industry as a whole? What do you mean, well, should
39:02
the entire burden of survival really fall on a nineteen
39:05
year old backpacker from Melbourne? Do they bear the sole
39:08
responsibility of extreme vigilance or should there be international standards
39:12
forced upon these host countries? If a nation wants to
39:15
reap the massive economic benefits of global tourism, shouldn't they
39:19
be required by international trade organizations or global booking platforms
39:23
to provide a baseline guarantee that the drunks they serve
39:26
won't cause mass casualties.
39:28
Speaker 1: That is the multimillion dollar question, and right now, looking
39:32
at one hundred and eighty five dollars fine in Loos,
39:35
the answer seems to be that the industry is perfectly
39:37
happy letting the traveler take all the risk. Unfortunately, yes,
39:41
So what does this all mean for you, the listener?
39:44
We've covered a massive amount of ground today. We started
39:47
by looking at the tragic, entirely preventable loss of six
39:50
vibrant lives Holly Bianca and Sophie Frija Simone and James,
39:55
people who went looking for an adventure in a purported
39:58
paradise and never came home. We walk through the brutal,
40:02
unforgiving biology of how a single shot of industrial solvent
40:05
tricks your liver into manufacturing embalming fluid, and we examine
40:10
the systemic geopolitical cover ups that allowed the people responsible
40:13
to wash the glasses, pay a tiny fine and walk
40:16
away while families plan funerals across the globe.
40:18
Speaker 2: It's a heavy reality to sit with.
40:20
Speaker 1: It is in our interconnected world. This tragedy proves that
40:24
the illusion of the care free banana pan pig trail
40:27
is just that, a carefully curated illusion. One bad batch
40:32
of alcohol strips away the romance of budget travel and
40:35
leaves you with the cold, hard reality that when you
40:37
step outside the bounds of regulated safety, you are truly
40:41
entirely on your own. Safety shouldn't be viewed as an
40:44
optional upgrade. It is the fundamental requirement for every single
40:47
journey you take. Absolutely, But I want to leave you
40:49
with a lingering thought something we touched on, but that
40:52
really deserves to sit with you the next time you
40:54
open your laptop to plan a trip. We talked about
40:57
how the hostel at the center of this nightmare immediately
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tried to erase its digital footprint. They deleted their listings,
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scrubbed the reviews, and attempted to quietly reopen under a
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new name shortly after the deaths.
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Speaker 2: Quite the slate clean exactly.
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Speaker 1: It makes you wonder in an era where we rely
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entirely on online reviews, star ratings, and booking platforms to
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keep us safe and tell us where to sleep. How
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easily can a lethal history be completely deleted with a
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simple digital rebrand. The next time you are planning an
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adventure and you eagerly click book on a glowing, five
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star rated budget hostel, ask yourself what ghosts might have
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been scrubbed from its history just weeks before you arrived.