The father of an Australian teenager who died from methanol poisoning while on a backpacking holiday has issued a plea to the Laos government to fully investigate his daughter’s death and ensure such incidents don’t happen again. Bianca Jones, 19, was one of six foreign tourists who died in a suspected mass methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng, a popular backpacker destination in northern Laos. The deaths of two Australian teenagers, a British woman, an American man and two Danish women – and reports of others taken ill – prompted several Western nations to warn their citizens of the potentially fatal consequences of drinking tainted alcohol in the Southeast Asian country. Laos, an opaque communist state that tightly controls its media, remained silent on the deaths for over a week before issuing its first statement, but details are still scant, including who else remains in hospital, which nationalities are affected and…
