Ashley King was on a roll. It was 2011 and the 18-year-old Canadian was on her gap year. She’d just spent a month in Bali en route to a hiking trip in New Zealand. She was having so much fun that she’d been thinking about deferring college for another year so she could work abroad.
On her last night in Bali, she and a few fellow backpackers went out to a nightclub in the party district of Kuta, where they were served cocktails in plastic water bottles.
The next morning, she had what she believed was the worst hangover of her young life. Freshly arrived in Auckland, she was so exhausted she could barely move. Her iPod seemed to have died, as the screen wouldn’t light up at her touch. The lighting in her hostel seemed so poor she kept fiddling with the switches. Her headache wouldn’t go away. She had trouble breathing.
Eventually, King would realize that she wasn’t hungover at all. She was suffering from methanol poisoning.
The cocktails she’d drunk in Kuta were likely mixed with methanol — a clear, odorless solvent that naturally occurs in the alcohol distillation process, but has potentially deadly side effects if ingested — instead of vodka.
“I had done my research because my mom was quite scared about me going to Bali,” King says. “I had looked up the Canadian website for travel, if there was anything about Bali that I should be aware of.” The only things mentioned, she says, were the Bali bombings — the 2002 terror attacks on nightclubs in Kuta that killed 202 people — and pickpocketing.
There weren’t any issues with the iPod screen. King was now blind — a permanent effect of methanol poisoning.
King had heard anecdotal stories about tampered alcohol before. But she felt she was being safe. To her, the risk was limited to “street” drinking situations that were obviously sketchy.
“It never clicked that that’s something that I could get in a bar,” she says. “I was in a bar that was recommended by Lonely Planet. I wasn’t in some hut on the side of the road drinking.
“You can’t prepare yourself for something if you don’t know it exists. I thought I would have been attacked by a shark before I would have ended up blind.”
It’s likely that the number of people who have been killed, blinded, or permanently injured by methanol poisoning will never be known. But periodically, a significant case happens and brings the issue back into international headlines.
In November 2024, six tourists died in the popular backpacker town of Vang Vieng, Laos after drinking alcohol mixed with methanol. The dead included two Australian teenagers on a gap year in Southeast Asia and a physician from England.
Asta Man, senior communications officer for medical charity Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF), says the majority of methanol poisoning cases occur in areas of poverty, where there’s a market for tainted liquor.
It’s highly unlikely that anyone sets out to deliberately poison a bunch of people this way, she says. Methanol is a normal byproduct of distillation, but not everyone has the technical knowledge or equipment to ensure it is fully removed during the production process.
Incidents of international tourists accidentally getting poisoned while on vacation get the most attention, but the majority of methanol poisonings occur at parties, weddings or other group events, often in countries where alcohol bans or lack of supply lead to unregulated distillation. Testing can be costly, leaving many to take their chances and drink despite the potential consequences.
“There’s always shame,” Man says. “In some cultures they have almost accepted this as a risk of drinking spirits. They may not know what methanol is, per se, but in the local language they might have a word for ‘alcohol that makes you blind.’ It’s an accepted risk.”
MSF advises that travelers drink beer directly from the can or bottle, and to check that spirits are being poured from a bottle with an intact brand label. It also encourages people to read up on the symptoms of methanol poisoning — like blurred or cloudy vision — so they don’t just assume they have a regular hangover.
“Even with Western cultures, as much as drinking alcohol is common there is some belief that ‘if you do stupid things, it’s because of alcohol, it’s your own burden to bear’ and that stigma comes with a lack of sympathy,” says Man. “You can’t smell it, you can’t taste it, but you put the burden on that person to recognize something that’s unrecognizable.”
Despite going blind, King is considered one of the lucky ones — she at least survived. But methanol exposure can lead to a range of long-term conditions, including liver disease, and greatly increases the likelihood of certain cancers.
Before losing her sight, King had intended to major in drama. Eventually, she wrote a play loosely based on her experiences, which became a four-part podcast called “Static: A Party Girl’s Memoir.”
However, sharing her story publicly came with challenges — and stigma. King says many social media commenters blamed her for drinking in the first place and said her blindness was solely the result of her own bad choices.
For Stephanie Boyle, stories like King’s are essential toward educating the public about a danger that can hide in plain sight.
Boyle works at the Safer Tourism Foundation, which — as the name implies — aims to make traveling less dangerous. It was set up 10 years ago by British woman Sharon Wood after her two young children died in Greece due to carbon monoxide poisoning in a vacation house their family was renting.
The foundation’s work has expanded to raise awareness about other potential hidden hazards travelers can encounter on the road. These days, that includes educating people about the risks of methanol exposure.
The biggest obstacle, though, isn’t a lack of education. It’s a lack of interest in mixing travel, which is fun, with anything that feels unfun.
Boyle believes that the single best way to get the message out is to highlight the stories of people like Ashley King. Putting human faces on a public service announcement is more likely to make people care.
“We are not trying to be the fun police,” says Boyle.
‘Sometimes, something bad happens’
Man, from MSF, believes that a two-pronged approach is best. MSF puts out public service information, but the group also goes into areas with a high risk of methanol poisoning to educate doctors about what to look for and how to identify the symptoms of a possible poisoning.
“People want a black and white answer,” she says. “They want to know there’s one thing they can do not to be harmed, but sadly in real life that’s not the case. 99% of the time, it all goes smoothly. Everyone has their fun. A lot of tourists go to Laos and Cambodia and Thailand and do not encounter these issues. Sometimes, something bad happens.”
Currently, the UK Foreign Office website lists the following countries as risks for methanol poisoning: Cambodia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Fiji, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Russia, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.
Boyle, from the Safer Tourism Foundation, thinks that slow change over time will make a big impact. She cites a few other examples of things most travelers do that no longer feel like a chore: wearing a seatbelt, for example, using phone-tracking apps, or even putting on sunscreen.
“We try to speak to people in a language that doesn’t feel like we’re telling them off, or like we’re being killjoys,” she says. “I want people to enjoy themselves to the max, and I actually think that making sure that you’ve thought about all those safety precautions means that you can let your hair down a little bit more when you’re traveling.”
