Bali tourist wakes up blind and 'gasping for air' after innocent decision
Ashley King didn't think much of it when she ordered a 'tropical' cocktail from a bar in Kuta on her last night out.
A tourist has detailed the horrifying moment she woke up gasping for breath and struggling to see after sipping on an innocent-looking “tropical” cocktail while on holiday in Bali.
Speaking out following the suspected mass methanol poisoning in Laos that claimed six lives, Ashley King said she hadn’t thought much of it when she ordered an “ordinary” mixed vodka drink at a bar in Kuta.
The American woman said was living in Australia in 2011 when she decided to visit the busy holiday hotspot for a handful of days, and made an easy, yet potentially deadly split-second mistake on her last night out. “[It] was no different from any other night that I had gone out,” she told The Project on Sunday night.
However, she began to feel increasingly unwell over the next two days as she travelled to New Zealand.
“When I finally got to my accommodation I went to bed and when I woke up the next morning, I noticed that it was really dim lighting in the hostel, which I just chalked it up to cheap, hostile lighting,” she explained. “And about 10 minutes later I was unable to breathe and I was gasping for air.”
Ms King said by the time she was rushed to the nearest hospital she was “in the dark, blind”.
“It was something that [the doctors] hadn’t seen before, and it was kind of a bit of a conundrum for them to figure out what was wrong,” she said, adding they eventually realised she had a large amount of methanol in her system.
Methanol is a dangerous byproduct of the distillation process that has no odour and on occasion isn’t properly removed when bootleg spirits are made, and in turn, poisons unwitting patrons. While rare, methanol poisonings have been an obscure and ugly offshoot of capitalism in Bali, with Colin Ahearn, a well-known safe drink advocate, telling Yahoo News on Friday that drinking any liquor in the holiday destination is not worth the potential risk.
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While in hospital, Ms King said her parents received a “terrifying” phone call urging them to get on the next flight to New Zealand because there was a “very good chance” she wasn’t going to survive. Miraculously, she did, but still suffers from the effects of the poisoning 13 years on.
“I’m blind now. I’ve got about 2 per cent of my eyesight, and it was by far the most traumatic and hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through. I had to learn how to live my life all over again. Losing your eyesight and gaining a disability is really difficult,” she told The Project, sharing her compassion for the families of Melbourne teens Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles.
“I know how easy it is to say yes to a drink at the bar and not think anything bad is going to happen to you,” Ms King said, claiming that the only reason she’s alive today is because she ingested the methanol on her last night and was able to reach a first world hospital by the time she was severely ill.
The traveller’s warning to others comes after three more staff from a hostel at the centre of the Laos scandal were arrested by police. Local authorities have now moved to prohibit the sale and consumption of Tiger vodka and Tiger whisky over concerns they could be a “health risk”.
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