July 13, 2025 • 62 mins
Bethany Clarke and Simone White were best friends.
They’d known each other since they were kids. So when they set off on a long-awaited backpacking trip through Southeast Asia, it was meant to be a joyful, carefree adventure.
But just three days into their holiday, everything changed.
At their hostel in Laos, Bethany and Simone attended happy hour drinks by the pool. What they didn’t know was that the drinks had been contaminated with methanol, a toxic and often fatal chemical sometimes found in unregulated alcohol.
Within 24 hours, both women were seriously unwell and found themselves in hospital. Simone didn’t survive. Bethany did.
This is the story of what happened next - the decisions no one should have to make in a foreign hospital, the grief of losing your best friend, and the unbearable weight of being the one left behind.
You can follow Bethany Clarke’s advocacy account and sign her petition here:
https://www.instagram.com/simonewhitemethanolawareness/
If this story has brought up anything for you, please reach out to Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit Lifeline.org.au
To learn more about methanol poisoning and alcohol safety while travelling, visit DFAT SmartTraveller.
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CREDITS:
Guest: Bethany Clarke
Host: Kate Langbroek
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Bree Player
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
On about half past eight, we noticed that her breathing
had changed and she started gasping for air. And that
for me was when I thought, crap, I really have
no idea what this is, because the hangover would never
lead to that.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Bethany Clark was three days into the trip of a
lifetime with her best friend Simone White when everything changed.
They were traveling through Lao, having the kind of adventure
you meant to have in your twenties, meeting people, seeing
the world, having fun. But one night they were given
vodka shots at the backpacker hostel they were staying at.
(01:04):
The drinks had been laced with methanol, a toxic chemical
that can be deadly. By the next day, both Bethany
and Simone were seriously unwell. The friends eventually admitted themselves
to hospital. Only one of them survived. This is a
story about survival, grief, and what it takes to speak
(01:29):
out when your best friend can't. It's also a warning
one Bethany is determined to share because it could save
someone's life. Bethany Clark, Welcome to No Filter.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Can I say first of all that I'm extraordinarily sorry
for the circumstances that have led to us meeting.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Appreciate that, thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
And the circumstances that I'm referring to occurred not even
a year ago, November twenty twenty four, last year, and
you were traveling with your best friend, Simone White. The
pair of you grew up in England together. We did
tell me a little bit about your upbringing together.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So we met.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I think I was four, she would have been five
in the first year of primary school.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And yeah, we've basically been friends ever since.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
She was that person to just keep us connected the
entire time, so throughout various phases of our life. You know,
we went to different secondary schools, we went to completely
different unis, different parts of the country. She was always
the anchor and the person that would always arrange the plans.
We just did so many holidays together over the years.
We did a massive backpacking trip when we were twenty
(02:47):
and we did, you know, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong,
and we had a great time and obviously we just
had no idea about what was to come, and we
booked to go to Lao and Cambodia as part of
a trip. So I was over in Australia doing my
working holiday and she was as a lawyer back in
(03:10):
London and Cambodia seemed to be the halfway point, so
that's where we met and then a few days later
we went to Lao and that's when it all went wrong.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
What you're talking about, too, is a part of the
world that means a great deal to Australians. You would know,
having spent so much time here that a lot of
Australians start their traveling adventures by traveling through Southeast Asia.
And in fact I met my husband on a trip
to Lao twenty.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Five years ago.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Yes, So when the stories broke that you and Simone
were in hospital, that there were these British girls and
there were other backpackers as well who were in hospital
at that point being treated for methanol poisoning, the whole
(04:05):
nation kind of traveled that time period with you in Australia.
It was also November, just before people leaving school here
were about to go on schoolies, so it was really
kind of a reminder of what can happen in a
world that feels so open, welcoming fun, a celebration of youth.
(04:29):
Was that the mindset that you and Simone had when
you set off on your adventures.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, I mean it was just supposed to be a
fun holiday. Really.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Initially the plan wasn't actually to go to Lao at all.
It was just to be Cambodia, and Simone kind of
encouraged me to go with the plan of it also
being loud because we were only supposed to be there
for four days. And this happened on the i think
the third day, And it was really just because it's
in the same region as Cambodia, and we were planning
to do the islands like Co Wrong Co Wrong Center
(05:00):
m because it's that close. She was like, Oh, we
may as well do it too, because we're not going
to want to go back just to do Loo. We
weren't there long and this happened, and yeah, we were
just there to chill out. We weren't drinking particularly heavily either.
It was just wasn't much going on in that hostel. Really,
it was just that happy hour between eight and ten, and.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
That's what did it.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
You were in a town called rain Being, which is
has become a bit of a hot spot for tubing.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
You can go tubing down the river.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
That's what we did that day that it happened.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Yeah, and so you'd had a kind of celebratory day
in the outdoors, you went back to your the backpacker's
hostel where you were staying, a place called Nana not
a backpacker.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, So we finished the tubing, went back there, got ready,
and we knew about this happy hour starting at eight,
So we got there shortly after eight, and I think
we I suspect we had about five or six We
were doing rounds and we were sort of going up
to get the shots, which we would then to count
into plastic tumblers.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
And then we also brought some sprite which we mixed
with it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
So I can't say that I ever tasted Neat vodka,
but I remember just putting a little bit of sprite
in testing it to see how strong it was, and
I thought, oh, maybe they've diluted it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
It's quite weak.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
So at that point, obviously I didn't have any concerns
because if something just tastes weak, you think, oh, well,
there's probably not a lot of ethanol.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
In this a lot of alcohol.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
But obviously, when I look back to that time, I think, well,
maybe that's because it wasn't actually ethanol. It was methanol,
so it kin'd of been pure methanol. Obviously we know that.
But yeah, for for whatever reason, Simone must have had more.
I mean, she had exactly the same volume, but the
(06:50):
concentration of what she had must have been more.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
What was the vibe at the backpackers that night, so
I imagine there were people were in pretty high spirits. People
are on holidays there from all around the world. Everybody's
genuinely young. How many people were they at the at
that happy hour?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
It's tricky because we just sat at the table and
I think we were probably the first to arrive, and
we were sitting with two Swedish backpackers and a Dutch
backpacker that we've met already. And I don't recall seeing
loads and loads of people there. I know there would
have been a few, but you know, I don't think
it would have been any more than thirty. And we
(07:31):
actually felt that there wasn't that much going on, so
we were able to play a card game, which normally
if there's a lot going on, you wouldn't even be
able to hear. So we were playing Piccolo, which is
a game on your phone. Yeah, I don't recall it
being particularly loud, and I think that's also why at
ten o'clock, when the drinks finished, the happy hour drinks finished,
everybody just went somewhere else because there wasn't an amazing atmosphere.
(07:54):
So yeah, it's supposed to be a party hostel, but
I didn't get that particular vibe that night. So yeah,
at ten o'clock, I actually went to bed because it
was either that I had jet lag or it was
that the method I was already starting to kick in,
so I thought, okay, I'm going to go to bed,
and the other three went onto a bar that we've
been to a couple of nights before, so we knew
(08:16):
that that one was okay. So they had a couple
of drinks there and then came back. But yeah, later
on we deduced that it can't have been that other
bar because I didn't go there, and I still had
I still had a problem.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
And we was simone at this point.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
So I got to bed about ten.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
She'd come back with our male friend at about just
after midnight, so there was the three of us staying
in a private room, and the male friend. I'm not
going to mention his name because I don't think he
really wants to be mentioned, but he is somebody that
we both known for about ten years, and he met
Simone at secondary school.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Did you wake up when they came back.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
No, I think I was just truly out for the
can I just I just passed out.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
So at what point did you realize that you were unwell?
You had activity these planned the next day, So.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
We woke up the following morning, I think at about
eight am, and we had this tour sort of half
an hour later, so we were sort of trying to
get everything ready and leave. But I just remember kind
of coming down the steps from the hostel room and thinking, oh,
I don't feel very steady here, and just generally feeling
a bit confused and not really knowing what was going on.
(09:34):
Absolutely no hunger whatsoever, which is quite unusual.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
Yeah, because normally, if it's a straightforward hangover, you're like,
get me something.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Very sy yeah. Yeah, and both of you were the same, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Very similar. I mean our male friend was similar at
that point too. I think we all just agreed that
something wasn't right, but we had no idea what it was,
and because our cognitions didn't seem to be functioning either,
we would never have come to the conclusion at the
time that it was anything other than a hangover, because
that was the only thing that sort of fitted with
what we'd done, and we all wait diferent food. We
(10:10):
definitely couldn't have put it down to food poisoning, so
that was the only conclusion we came to at the time.
And then obviously when we went to this tour, nothing
really improved where it would have done. Really for a hangover,
after you've had something to drink, had something to eat,
you'd expect to feel that little bit better. But during
that Blue Lagoon experience, Simone and I just had to
(10:32):
sit down and we didn't want to swim, And again
that's quite unusual for us because we're quite energetic. Especially
when you're hungover. You just want to be in water,
don't you, But no, not interested. And also our male
friend at the time must have been feeling a little
bit better because he was able to swim at that point,
So that was all a little bit of a blur.
But we actually took some pictures whilst we were there,
(10:54):
because there were a couple of tourists that came up
to us and said, can we have a picture with you, which,
you know, we took a picture with them, and that
is the last picture I have of Simone, and then
we went on to do this kayaking experience shortly after that.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Was that still at the Blue Lagoon. No, it was
a different location.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
It was exactly where we'd done the tubing the day before,
but because we felt that it might be nice just
to sort of go at our own pace kayaking, that's
what we chose to do.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Except when we got.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
There, Simone and I couldn't actually sit up to do
the kayaking, So instead of being able to use your core,
sit up straight and paddle, we just had to lay
flat on the backs of the kayaks and let the
people that were so basically running the tour they had
to get on our kayaks and actually paddle for us.
So again, that should have been a big red flag.
(11:48):
And I think at the time I was thinking this
is this is quite odd, but again, because my brain
wasn't functioning, I just thought, oh, this is you know,
a really severe hangover. You know, I just didn't seem
to have the lateral thinking of oh, could this be
methanol poison?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Could this be something else?
Speaker 3 (12:04):
It It just seemed to be an easy conclusion for
me to come to. And I've saw Simone sort of
being sick off of her kayak with our male friend
on it, and I'm thinking, oh, she doesn't really do
that unless it's motion sickness, and I'm thinking it's really
motion sickness because we're so slow on these things. But anyway,
(12:24):
that was the first time that she'd actually vomited. And
then that experience, I was literally just looking up at
the sky waiting for the whole thing to end because
it was just pointless, you know, we weren't enjoying it.
And we got back to the hostel after that when
it had finished, and we were literally just waiting around
to get on our bus to VNTI Anne, which was
(12:45):
the next place that we needed to be, and that's
where we were staying in our hostel the following well
that night, but obviously we didn't end up getting there.
But yeah, back at the hostel, Simone actually asked me,
can you order me some food? And I'm thinking, oh, wow,
you actually feel like eating, so again, I wasn't too
worried about her at that point, so I'm thinking, what's
good that you want to eat, because I've got no interest.
(13:08):
So I ordered the food for her. She ate probably
half of it, and then probably an hour later, we
were just chilling by this pool at Nana backpacker by
on these sun loungers, and then we needed to get
on this bus. So probably around two o'clock we got
on the bus. I just literally passed out right at
the back of the bus. So I was knackered, and yeah,
(13:30):
just so fatigued that I just couldn't stay away to
talk to them. So I just sat at the back
of the bus and they sat at the front. And
then around an hour through that journey, probably at three
half us three, my male friend called out to me, Biff,
which is what someone used to call me, can you
get off the bus.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Simon's being sick vomiting.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
So I got off, checked on her, and then I fainted,
and again, you know, in my head, I'm thinking, oh,
that's a bit strange, but again I didn't seem to
be able to understand that was quite severe in addition
to the other symptoms, so you know, and I'm also thinking, oh,
that can't have been a seizure, because I'm known I
(14:10):
have epilepsy. So I was thinking, oh god, it's not that,
because that would have been horrific, you know, that would
have been trick ending. So the fact that I'd managed
to literally just jump up after this faint and think,
oh I kind of been a seizure because I'd still
be out of it. We just got back on the bus,
and no one around us on this bus seemed to
take really any interest. No one said, you, guys, okay,
I just saw you faint, You're okay. Nothing, So again,
(14:34):
I suppose I just thought, oh, well, it can't be that.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Bad, yes, because you're reading the cues from the people
around you, and the people around you probably just assumed
that you were two girls who had a large night. Yeah,
and you were suffering the effects of a hangover. Had
they pulled the bus over because Simone was so seek
at that time.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
And then our male friend said to the driver, I
think we're going to need to drop us to a hospital,
which they were prepared to do luckily, but unfortunately we
went to a public hospital in Vieni Anne, who they
were just pretty to be honest. So when we got there,
I ended up just waiting outside with Simone because again
we didn't understand severity of what was going on. So
(15:19):
our male friend went in and we just watched him
go in, and we waited outside just to sort of rest.
There was some I think there's some benches or something
that we could sit on, so we were just sitting there,
and then after about an hour of doing that, I
said to Simone, I think I'm going to have to
go in because I'm not really feeling any better and
I want to see what's happened with our other friend.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
So I went in.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Had he gone in?
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Was he he was going in sort of to advocate
for you, to say, I'm with these two girls who
are unwill.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
And particularly he felt unwell and that's why he went in.
But for us, we I think if I'd thought there
was something seriously wrong, I would have gone in, But
because again I'm just thinking, oh, it's a hangover, and
I think this is the trouble. When we see these
other cases, people just rest it off and they think
that it's going to be fine and they're just laying
in bed and then it all just goes wrong and
they don't actually realize the severity what's going on. So,
(16:10):
you know, the two Danish girls that are being sick,
blood and the messaging, and I'm being sick, you know,
large coming up. Surely that would be a red flag
if you were feeling normal, But because you'd ingested this stuff,
your brain just doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
I didn't realize that.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
One of the side effects of mythanol poisoning is that
it has this cognitive effect on you, so that you
don't think clearly. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
And this is why I've had to kind of give
myself a bit of a bit of slack because at
the time I was poisoned too, and I didn't pick
up on what was going on. And I think having
sort of spoken to my mum after the event as well,
you know, my apparently when I rang her after the event,
(16:57):
my eyes were moving properly and my speech was slow,
and clearly it wasn't just me, you know, other people
could see it. It wasn't just like you know, I
thought my brain wasn't working. She could see it wasn't working. So,
you know, at least I don't have to blame myself
in that, you know, my brain was working perfectly, and
my friends still died. You know, I think in this situation,
(17:20):
we were all screwed basically. And also with Simone, you know,
she chose not to go into that public hospital as well,
and I did try and encourage her in there, but
she just wasn't having it. And she was one of
those strong willed people who, you know, you couldn't tell
her to not do something or to do something. She
would have to make that decision herself. She's a very
strong willed person.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And also she was a lawyer, So just knowing generally.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
The personality type that become lawyers, they do tend to
be people who are very certain of themselves.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yes, and I think she wouldn't have thought that it
was anything bad going on because similarly to me, she
probably thought it was just a hangover, because I think
she said to her other friend, this is a really
severe hangover. This was earlier in the day, so she
obviously hadn't come to the conclusion it was anything worse,
and she had no idea about methanol poisoning either. So anyway,
(18:16):
we sat outside this hospital for a while.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I then went in.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
As soon as I got in, I said to them,
look what is this, And they were like, well, we
think it's food poisoning. I said, too rather friendly, it
can't be that, because we all have different diets.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
It can't possibly be that.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I wasn't vomiting, I hadn't had diarrhe I hadn't even
got stomach pain. So they just kept going on with
that diagnosis, really, and until somemone came in, that was
still their diagnosis, and they took me up to an
ivy drip, which I was very reluctant to do. I
didn't really want them sticking needles in my hand without
knowing what it was that was actually going on. But
(18:53):
because our male friend had had success with feeling better,
I thought, all right, well I'll just continue on the
same treatment plan that you've started on. I think they
also gave me some anti sickness stuff later as well,
but at that time I didn't feel that bad.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
What was the situation at the hospital, what, what was
the makeup of it was? I imagine it was quite
a humble DIYer. Yeah it was, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Right world, Yeah so it was.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
When you went in, it was one big ward, obviously
really overcrowded. There was just a separate room which was
used as their sort of version of ICU. Not many doctors,
very few nursing stuff sort of available, And I remember
actually going to the toilet in there at one point
and there was no pound wash, there was there was
no toilet paper. I actually ripped my canula out to
(19:38):
use the toilet. That was basically what we were, what
we're talking about. I imagine the care for other people
wasn't great. If we were told that we had food poisoning,
then I'm sure there were probably other misdiagnoses going on
there too, But anyway, I eventually got myself in there,
That's what they said, and then I waited probably another
hour before Simone eventually came in and she walked in.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
She's still talking again.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I'm thinking, well, you're pretty much the same as me,
except that you've been vomiting, which is obviously a bit
more severe.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
So they put her in a bed, which wasn't really
part of the ward.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
It seemed like the hospital was so overcrowded that she'd
sort of gone on like a gurney type I don't know,
like a stretchery type thing, you know, those wheelie beds,
And I think she would have got in there maybe
past five six o'clock, and then they started her on
all the same course of treatment, and I also gave
her some electrolytes, which she vomited up immediately, and I
(20:31):
checked her heart rate actually with my watch, and it
was eighty two.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So I thought, oh, well, you know, it's a.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Bit high, but it's not overly overly concerning at this point,
and at about eight half past eight, we noticed that
her breathing had changed and she started gasping for air,
and that, for me was when I thought, crap. I
really have no idea what this is, because a hangover
would never lead to that, and I had no other
(20:59):
sort of differentials in my head. And they said to me,
we think that she's got she's had some drugs. So
is it amthetamines? Has she taken amfetamines? No, for God's sake,
just listen to what I'm saying. So they just kept
going on about drugs, and at this point she also
needed to be restrained because she was also ripping out
(21:19):
her canula. And yeah, we were obviously just confused because
we weren't like that. So we just thought, well, why
is it that she's doing that, you know, And they
moved her into this separate part of the hospital which
was just a three bed ICU room.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
So I went in there with her, tried to talk
to her, and she just looked.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
How was she at that point? Was she?
Speaker 3 (21:44):
No, she had this oxygen in her nose, but she
she wasn't able to talk to me.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
She wasn't even able to look at me at this point.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
So I'm saying to her, look, try and calm down,
because they were saying to me, is she anxious?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And I'm like, no, she doesn't get anxious.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
But I was trying to say to her, look trying
and concentrate on me, like but she just looked vacant.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
She just looked ahead. She also looking at me.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
So that's when I knew that something obviously wasn't right
with her brain. And luckily, our male friend was on
his phone and he had his phone connection all set
up so that he was using the internet where I didn't,
and he managed to find a private hospital which was
I think twenty minutes away, so he called them. I
think the first call was made at about nine pm
and they said to him, look, you need to have
(22:26):
insurance to come here, and we were obviously like what
we do but they said, oh, we need proof, and
basically wasn't getting anywhere and they weren't coming. So he
called them again at half past nine, same thing, we
need to see the insurance. So anyway, we rang them
a third time and I ended up saying to the doctor,
can you please speak to this hospital because we're not
(22:47):
getting anywhere here, like we need to be somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
And luckily she did and they did come and collect us.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
But by the time that they came probably half past ten,
and that's probably quite a long delay for somebody who's
struggling to breathe.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
So we got to this private hospital.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
I know he got there at twenty past eleven, as
that's what it said on the report. But during that journey,
I've got absolutely no recollection. I remember sitting at the
front next to the driver and literally just falling asleep.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Don't remember the journey.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
After the break.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Bethany shares what unfolded during those critical hours at the
private hospital. At this time while you're trying to advocate
for simone where you've realized is in different circumstances than
you were, but your own circumstances were terrible.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Well, yeah, it wasn't great.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
I was just feeling so fatigued, most fatigued I've ever
felt in my life.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
It was just awful.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
And then when we arrived, I vaguely remember our male
friend saying to the paramedic, do you think this could
be methanol poisoning?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
You'd actually done a bit of research on his.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Phone, and obviously I was like, what, you know, we've
been poisoned, and they said, well, yeah, actually it could be,
because we've seen four or five cases of this before,
so is every chance that it is that. But what's
frustrating is that in the media there's no reports of
methanol poisoning ever in Lao, So it's frustrating that it
has happened there before, but it's never been recorded. So
(24:26):
when we got in there, I've got a handover all
the passports, signing to sort of say we give our
consent for everything that's happening. They said to me, look,
we're going to take her off for hemodialysis, clean her blood,
and hopefully, you know, we're going to do our best
for her. So they put us into sort of a
triage area of the hospital. We were given a couple
of beds there while Simone was separate to us and
(24:49):
was taken off for that. And yeah, they said to me,
you know, we'll do the best we can to save
her life, but we think she's in here a bit late.
And I'm thinking, well, it's not possible. You know, we're
all the same, we've had the same stuff. You know,
there's no reason why she can't come back from this.
So I wasn't too concerned, and also in my state,
I wasn't in a position to be concerned. I was
just tied, so I was just falling. As soon as
(25:10):
they'd come over to get me to sign something, I'd
fall straight to sleep. So the only thing I remember
was sort of being moved to icee you and coming
round the following day waking up asking how she was,
and they said, well, actually we think she's a bit
better this morning because you know, I cleaned her blood.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
All of her organs are you know, they should be clean.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Now. We're going to do some bloods on her check them.
And the next thing I heard, all of her organs
were fine. It was just you know, they've given us
some sedation because she was so agitated because of the
breathing thing, and she'd also had five seizures, but at
the time I was told it was one seizure, which
I thought, you know, one seizure or you can come
back from that. But because it was five, that's a
(25:52):
lot of seizures for somebody that doesn't have seizures.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Were you able to see her at that time.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
No, No, So with the information that I had, I
made the decision to contact her mum and say, look,
apparently she's feeling better this morning. But I told her
what the diagnosis was, metabolic sidosis as a result of
being poisoned with methanol, which is where your blood is
really acidic as a result of the form of acid
(26:18):
and formaldehyde that is the byproducts of consuming methanol.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
So yeah, that's kind of what we knew at the time.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
I told her mum that over text message because I
wasn't really in a position to have a phone call
with somebody, and she came straight back saying, I hope
she gets better soon, and I was thinking, you know, yeah,
I hope so too. But I kind of I suppose,
I kind of thought maybe she'd want to speak to
me or kind of get a bit more clarification, but
(26:47):
her mum is very much always sort of thinks about
the best case scenario, whereas I'm always what is the
worst case scenario?
Speaker 2 (26:56):
A catastrophized her?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
I am, yeah, So I'd had that conversation with her,
and I thought, oh, well she thinks it's all right,
then yeah, hopefully it will be, and which.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I shouldn't think it was all right.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
But you know the way that I that she sent back,
I wasn't worried that she was really worried, if you
see what I mean.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
But then there was a bit she wasn't panicking.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
She wasn't panicking. No way. My mom would have been like,
oh God, what's happened?
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Had you called your mom? Had you messaged your mum
at this point?
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Or were your nuts? Just with Simon?
Speaker 3 (27:26):
I was waiting because I also didn't want to worry
my parents if there was going to be some kind
of disaster with myself. You know, I wanted to be
clued up, and I didn't want to have a phone
call and say, well, I don't know, I don't know.
I wanted to know what was going on a bit
more before I had sort of made calls. And also
I wasn't really with it enough to get through a
(27:47):
phone call either. So that all happened. I think the
either later on that day or followed the following day,
but the text message was kind of the first thing
that we we got done, because you know, I didn't
really want to be responsible for what was going on
with her because I have my own stuff to deal with,
and also I was thinking, well, yeah, maybe she will
(28:10):
need to come over at some point.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
She needs to know now.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
So anyway, we then kind of got moved later on
that day, so we've been in ICU I think for
about twenty four hours. We then got moved to a
separate part of that hospital to just basically recover because
we weren't kind of critical anymore.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
They'd managed to give us some sodium by carbonate.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
And Simone was we're still at this point.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Still in ICU, so she always was in ICU. We've
been given pretty much everything you can think of, you know,
sodium by carbonate, potassium, magnesium. The only symptom that I
really had that I can recall being particularly severe in
that hospital was really really severe burning in suphagus. So
they given me this potassium drink that I needed to
(28:52):
drink to get my potasium levels up, and I say, look,
can you give this to me in another form because
I literally can't get this down, and they were like, you.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Have to drink it. We've got no other way of
giving that to you.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
So I had to force myself to drink it, but
every single sit it was burning, so I had to
have tiny bit of water to flush it down, but
even the water was burning. It was just obviously the
former CASSID had got in and that's the area that
it was kind of attacking, where I think for the
others they were getting more stomach pain and more stomach
related stuff. But actually, other than the nausea, I wasn't
(29:22):
getting too much stomach pain at that time, so for me,
I think that was the most severe part. But that
obviously had improved a bit, and they'd given me a
lot of gastro drugs, you know, about four different stomach
related drugs to take. So I was, yeah, just discharged
to this other part of the hospital to basically just
(29:42):
drink plenty of water and to just try and sleep,
but obviously, given what had.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Happened, there was no way that sleep was on the cards.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
A male friend and I went off and we spent
another I think three nights on that separate ward just recovering,
and during that time her mum had managed to book
flights to come over because she was meant to have
come around from sedationan I think doing day or the
(30:10):
day after, and that she still hadn't. So he said
to Sue, you know, she was meant to have come
around from sedasia, but she hasn't. Basically, I think it'd
be good if you can get over here. So that's
when she booked her flights.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
So simone, as you said, was under sedation, the expectation
would have been that she would have regained consciousness and
come to So who had been messaging her mum Sue
to tell her that her daughter had not me So again.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Contrically the lack of communication in that hospital because no
one really spoke good English. It was having to go
via me because they didn't seem to be able to
call her and tell her this, So I was having
to be the sort of interpreter. But yeah, I had
a conversation with the new resurgeon when she wasn't waking up.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
I then spoke to him.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
He said, look, what's happening is that the left side
of her brain is swollen and we need to do
a decompression craniotomy to release this swelling on her brain.
Otherwise it's just not going to get better and she
could be in a coma.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
Which is a massive This is a massive operation. It was,
but obviously we had no other option.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
And he said, look, it's about twenty percent chance it
will actually do what it needs to do, but there
will be other surgeries and other sort of risks as
well that could happen, so they could be bleeding, etc.
And even if it did work, we would then need
to do another surgery.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
And I was like, this is just nuts.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
It was.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
It was so surreal. I didn't think it was even happening.
I was like, am I in some kind of alternate universe?
Like word just really didn't understand what was going on.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
At this point.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
Bethany, have you been able to lay eyes on somemone
or are you still in the two different parts of
the hospital.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
I did see her, yeah, and as soon as I
saw her, she had a tube down her, So no,
it wasn't a nice sight. I just remember looking at
her and thinking like come on, like you need to
get out of this, this is ridiculous. Come on, But
she just she was too far gone. You know, she
would have already been brain damaged. I think in that
(32:20):
public hospital when I was trying to look at her
and she was looking beyond me. I think her brain
damage was done then, to be honest, but I didn't
know that at the time, and I was just I
was just thinking, oh, well, she's had the same as me,
she'd be fine, and yeah, she obviously wasn't fine. So yeah,
this conversation with the nearest surgeon, he said, well, can
(32:42):
you ring Simone's mum then and explain that? And that's
what I had to do. So I caught my dad
first and said, you know, the statistics of what was
likely to happen, and they said, oh god, okay, I'm
going to ring Sue. And we had a three way
conversation where basically I ended up telling Sue what the
deal was, and Sue was very practical and said, yes,
(33:04):
I'll get the forms back straight away.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yes, we'll have to do it. You know, I think
she just got into that mindset.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Of because you two had grown up together. I imagine
that you'd seen quite a lot of Sue, yes, Simon's
mum as well, growing up, so she knew you very well,
and you her. Did your parents know each other as well?
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yeah, we used to spend Christmas Eve together, so we'd
go for a meal, and that's actually what we're going
to be doing this year as well, and we've done
it for the last few years quite religiously, so that
will continue.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
So soon knew the makeup of you and knew that
you how grave the situation was for you to be
calling her and saying this is the operation of said
needs to be done.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
I think she would have known from the brain surgery
being mentioned that really the chances were very slim, but
she just had no other option but to kind of
come over because not only for Simone, but for us,
because we were just in a state of like, how
can we deal with this on our own? Like you know,
it was just torrific being in that hospital and the
lack of communication as well, you know, and it was
(34:14):
good to have an adult there who it could sort
of take responsibility for.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
What was going on as well.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Yes, because yeah, it was a lot for me to
sort of mentally deal with everything, the trauma and everything else.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
At this point, how are you feeling mentally? Have you
emerged from that sort of the vacancy of the methanol poisoning.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
You're not one hundred percent obviously, Oh.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
No, I wouldn't have been one hundred percent, But I
think I could have a conversation without it sounding odd, right.
I was just really really tired but couldn't sleep because
of the situation. I was just wired, I think would
probably be the right way of describing it. At one point,
the doctors did give us some sort of sleeping pills
so that we could get to sleep, but even that
(35:01):
didn't cut it for me. Yeah, it was just a
really really bad time. And I remember going online to
try and get a neurology consult that you pay like
five pounds for and you'd sort of type in all
of the details and then they'd come back to you
and say this is what you should do. And I'd
got pictures of her scans of her brain, you know,
(35:22):
her brain basically where she was unconscious, and I was
sending this off to this neurologist on this website and
he would he was just sort of coming back and saying, well,
you have to trust the doctors there basically because they
can deal with her in real time. I was just like, yeah,
but this is a different country, different roles, Like obviously
everything was going through her insurer, but I suppose I
(35:44):
just didn't fully trust that what was going on there
would have been what was going on in the UK,
or in Australia or in a developed country. But we
were assured by the insurers that basically this brain surgery
would be the right thing to do. But actually we
found out later from a professor who specializes in methanol
(36:05):
poisoning that you would never do brain surgery because it
would never work and it would just be basically be.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
A complete waste of time. And it was obviously causing more.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Stress as well, because she had to have her hair
shaved off, you know, we had to she had to
have several blood transfusions to get her platelets high enough
to actually do the surgery in the first place.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
And obviously there was the additional sort of worry.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
For her mum about her going through a procedure like that, So.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, where's her mum? Where's her mum?
Speaker 3 (36:36):
At this point, by the time that she actually had
the brain surgery, Sue had actually seen her just before
she went in, so it was it was actually quite
good timing with the delays with the transfusions that she
needed to have.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Sue got there just in the nick of time to
see her.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Obviously her hair was shaved and everything, but yeah, it
was nice for her to see her beforehand, I think.
And yeah, and then the next thing, we were told,
probably four or five hours later, that she'd come out
the brain surgery work, but it caused a bleed on
that side, and we had a little bit of hope
for probably a few hours, and then they said, actually,
(37:17):
now the other side of her brain is swollen to
so basically that's it. There's nothing else that we can
do for her. The way that they've phrased it was
particularly odd, I remember, because they were tied doctors and nurses,
a lot of them, and I think this particular doctor
had said something like, we do surgery but she being coma,
and I was like, what do you mean, Like, obviously
(37:39):
we're not going to do another surgery then. So it
was just it was just really difficult to actually communicate
with people. And yeah, it was you had to sort
of rephrase things several times to get them to basically
give you the answer that you needed. They wouldn't be
able to just say, right, we're not going to do
any surgery. They'd be saying roundabout ways of describing it.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
What happened next is something Bith and he will carry forever.
After the break, she shares that moment. Where are you
at this point? Are you still a patient or you're
sort of just there waiting bedside?
Speaker 3 (38:24):
We were still patient, but we were well enough to
actually go downstairs and see her because I think we
were sort of carrying around drips of various things. So
we were around definitely. But yeah, we were then discharged.
I think might have been the Sunday, Saturday or Sunday,
(38:45):
and we've got in there on the Wednesday. Yeah, that's
about right, so four or five five days. Yeah, all
of the surgery stuff had been done. You know by
the time that we left, they basically said, look, we're
going to have to wait for her to die naturally, And.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Obviously we're thinking, well how long is that going to take?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Like, you know, we can't be in a country indefinitely
waiting for her to go.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Was that the first time that they had talked about
death in those terms.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Well, obviously, given that we knew she was undergoing brain
surgery with very limited chance of it working, that had
obviously come into my head before, but yeah, it was
the first time that they really sort of focused in
on the fact that we were going to need to
wait for her to go. But with that, obviously her
heart was functioning. So you know, we were waiting for
(39:36):
about four days and her stats hadn't changed, and sometimes,
you know, we'd wake up in the morning her blood
pressure would be even higher.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
We'd be thinking, well, how long are we going to
be here?
Speaker 3 (39:47):
So in the end, our male friend had book flights
and then I said to Sue, look, I'm going to
have to go because I can't.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I can't be here anymore.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
So we'd book the flights for the twenty first of November,
which is which ended up actually being the day that
Simone died, so Sue we wanted to get on those
same flights. Really that morning, Sue had said to the consulate,
is there anything you can do? Because we're now just
waiting for someone to die and we can't really, we
(40:15):
can't be here much longer, you know, we need to
speed this up somehow. What's the point of that. It's
just harming us, it's not harming her anymore. So prolonging
the agony belonging something that's not gonna Yeah. So what
was actually quite frustrating is that we had a group
chat with somebody who was acting as an interpreter, although
not particularly good English, to be honest, and she was
(40:37):
sending us.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Through the stats.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
But we could see that she was being given glucose
whilst we were waiting for her to die. She was
being given gluecose and she was also being given additional oxygen.
So I thought she was breathing air, but actually she
was breathing more oxygenated air.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
So I'm saying, sorry, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Why is she being given something more than what the
average person would be. You know, we're not trying to
prolong her life here, we're trying to end it. And
they said, oh, we've got to do these things gradually,
blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
What they were actually.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Trying to do is earn more money for their hospital
because some moment at that point, someone was the only
person in their ICU, so she was the one that
was funding everything.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
So that's and she had insurance.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
She had insurance, which obviously was I think it was
a very very hefty insurance bill.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
In the end, it was thirty pounds or something.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
But anyway, yeah, they were doing all this stuff and
we were saying to them, can you stop because this
isn't helping.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
So they did stop it, but it was very gradual.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
They put the gluecose, turned it off, and then the
air they brought the oxygen level down to what air
would be, but still that didn't actually help sort of
bring things to a close. So yeah, Sue had to
have this chat with the consulate and he must have
spoken to the hospital and she was then allowed to
switch it off herself, which is what she had to
do in order for us to leave the country.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
So SA mine's mum who had to turn off, was
that it was effective life support.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Yeah, yeah, and I think it took three gos to
actually fully do it because no one's willing to be
in the room with her.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
I'd said, do you.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Want me in there, but she wanted it to be
a private moment with her and her husband and her son,
so she had them on the end of the phone
and she did it, tried to do it herself, and
I think the first thing that happened was the backup
ventilator came on, so obviously she'd had to come out,
talk to them, ask them how to get that.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Well, then they told her how to do that.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Then she didn't realize she had to take the tube out,
so she had to take the tube out.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Oh, so basically the whole thing was long and drawn out.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
I was looking at these machines on the outside, hoping
that it would be quick, but actually ended up being
a lot longer than we anticipated. But from the time
that she actually turned it off to the time that
Simone officially died, it was about half an hour.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
So yeah, and how was her mum? Then?
Speaker 3 (43:05):
I think relieved actually to some extent, because we were
just waiting and we didn't know when that end date
was going to be, and I didn't want to leave
her in Low so I think there was a little
bit of relief when we were actually able to.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Finally, you know, say goodbye.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
Obviously she was devastated and we were crying and it
was all it was all horrible, but it meant that
she could get that flight with us, which gave us
the safety that we needed and also probably helped her
out a little bit too. So that evening we flew
out of Loud back to the UK.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
You must have been actually exhausted. But how was the flight?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, well I ended up paying for business class just
so that I could sleep, because I hadn't slept that
entire time waiting wait for the inevitable. Really, but I
think that was probably the best sleep that I had
had for the last sort of week because it was done,
there was no more waiting. And Yeah, unfortunately, Simone's mum
(44:11):
had a particularly bad experience on the flight because, you know,
we tried to say to the airline staff, you know,
is there any chance that she could be given a
seat in business class because of what's happened? And you know,
I was showing them the headlines. They were like, no, sorry,
if we said yes to her, we'd say yes to it.
We'd have to say yes to other people. And I
was like, who are the other people though, and they
(44:31):
were like, oh, someone broke their leg. It's like, well, sorry,
this is a completely different it's a completely different situation.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
So there had been no consular you know, wording up
of the airline anything like that. Their assistants didn't extend
to that, to there being compassionate grounds for trading, no,
you know, Simone's mum, No, probably would have.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Been sensible but I think because it was a flight
that was booked so last minute, like she literally booked
it that morning. And the concert was good in that
he got us through the Lao airport because we were
actually quite panicked that we were going to be arrested
for slander because of the things that were going on
on Facebook. You know, I'd put something out of Facebook
saying this is what's going on?
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Has anyone else been poisoned?
Speaker 3 (45:13):
So I was then worried that my name was out
there and that somehow low officials were going to be
in the airport sort of talking to us.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
But anyway, it was fine.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
He insisted it would be fine, and it was fine,
and he got us through the airport okay, And yeah,
that was kind of where his duties sort of ended,
I think.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
But no, the concert was pretty good.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
He did quite well to sort of keep us quite calm,
and yeah, we obviously weren't in a position to be calm,
so he was our grounding really whilst we were there.
But yeah, I think we were just really glad to
be home.
Speaker 4 (45:51):
Was that a time when you know, you were returning
to familiar surrounds, but they were I imagine unfamiliar because
your friend was not there.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Yeah, I think I was definitely in a state of
shock when I got back, because I just kind of
had to keep it all going when we were there,
but when I got back, it was at a state
of yeah, you have to try and still function, but
I was in a state of shock, so I would
sort of get up and then feel dizzy and need
to sit down and just things like that. Really, and
I think that lasted for about two weeks, and obviously
(46:26):
when we were at Christmas really and then obviously over Christmas,
there was a lot of kind of reminders of what
we'd normally be doing, and we actually had events planned
which was supposed to be coming up, but obviously, given
that she was no longer with us, those days we'd
come up and I'd just delete them out of the
calendar because, yeah, it was a horrible time because we
(46:48):
had so many plans which.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
And instead was there a memorial for her or a funeral?
Speaker 2 (46:56):
What did her family do in that event?
Speaker 1 (46:59):
So we didn't. I think Sue didn't want to rush
the funerals.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
So the funeral actually happened in January, so a bit
after Christmas, And I think the reason being that she
didn't want to rush the planning of it, so you
know what kind of music and getting all the photographs together,
and she had a lot of other things to deal
with at the same time, you know, even just the
repatriation process, and you know, other things that needs to
(47:24):
go on, like post mortem, and you know, she had
a house and only just bought a flat, so she
needed to sort things out with that too. So there
was just a lot for Sue to deal with, and
I think she felt it was best to leave it
until January, which was the right decision because I wasn't
in a fit state to attend a funeral the way
that I was, and with that little gap that we had,
(47:45):
I was able to get a little bit of rest
so that I could successfully do a bit of a
tribute for Simone on the day of her funeral.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
So it was for the best.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
Really, what has the process of grief looked like for
you since then?
Speaker 1 (48:03):
It's a very slow process.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
I think for me it was kind of dealing with
the trauma first, because the trauma seems to even now
be too.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
It's two separate things. So the trauma's here and the.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
Grief is here, and I'm now I think trying to
deal with the grief.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
But I've kind of kind of got there with the trauma.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
I think I don't really have flashbacks or anything or
like nightmares, but obviously I do get reminders of things,
but nothing is of debilitating or really really severe. So yeah,
for me, it's just trying to process what's happened, and
you know, the death of her really and the loss,
the personal loss I have from not having my friend anymore.
(48:49):
You know her daily and we'd send voice notes daily,
and you to not have that anymore. She was my
guiding light in a way, like if I had a problems,
she'd be the first person I would contact. So I'm
now having to do a lot of internal work to
try and work these problems out for myself. So yeah,
it's a slow pro aggress and I think, yeah, I've
(49:14):
come a long way.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
Basically, I've come a long way.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
And I think doing this campaign as well has kind
of had this distraction. It's been a bit of distraction,
I think for the grief, but it's also been a
really good way of kind of using my time to
commemorate and remember and do something good in her memory,
because I think that she would have achieved so much
in her life, so that if I can do this
so that other people don't have to go through it,
(49:39):
then I think that can only be a good thing.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
You have.
Speaker 4 (49:42):
You've channeled your pain into advocacy and into this area
which I did not realize was so prevalent, which is
the use of methanol that when to basically make drinks stronger,
stretch it out and underregulated.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, it just makes it a little bit cheaper for them.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Obviously, you can kind of make alcohol badly as well,
and that can come up too, But I think in
this situation it definitely all seem to be a case
of organized crime, because Vang Vieg did have a bit
of an association with organized crime anyway.
Speaker 4 (50:22):
So yes, yeah, I kind of see there's a ced
underbilly in that town.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
Yeah, and it was a Vietnamese own hostel and the
two people that were probably involved and fled to Vietnam,
so I think they kind of knew what was going
on and have moved on.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
And then, so as far as I understand the backpacker,
the hostel Nana closed down for a period and then
they've reopened.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
Well, they were trying to, and I've done my best
efforts to try and sabotage that.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
So they were trying to open up in August.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
So I then obviously spoke to the BBC and various
news outlets to make sure that they won't be doing that. Yeah,
I think, I hope, hope that they're not going to open.
Speaker 4 (51:11):
Now, right, and at government level, what had been the
ramifications in that area anything, Is it followed up? Has
anyone been charged?
Speaker 3 (51:24):
Well?
Speaker 4 (51:24):
Is anyone going to be held to account for Samone's death?
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Thirteen people were detained at the time, and then we
found out through I think the Danish or Australian families
that they were all released, and that was just before
we went on This Morning, which is a British morning show,
that was in February. So since then we found out
that these thirteen people are going to be charged with
(51:51):
various offenses, so things like elimination of evidence, which I
can understand because I sent the police a picture of
a load of bottles being discarded outside the hostel, literally
like two hundred bottles, and somebody had sent me that
and said, look, I picked up one of these bottles.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
It's clearly been washed out with washing up liquid.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
So they've obviously discarded of the evidence that they had,
so they may not have found any methanol in the bottles.
I don't know because we don't speak to the law
authorities about stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (52:20):
But six people died m Yeah, and the six people
who died had were they all involved, they'd all been
staying at the backpackers or they'd all been to the
happy hour at Nana's.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Yeah, everyone stayed there.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
I think the difference with the man who died was
that he was found in his room and I don't
know that he went to the happy hour, and we're
not sure the circumstances of his death, but everybody else
definitely methanol poisoning related.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Then the Danish girls had a very very awful sort
state of affairs going on with that because they were,
you know, vomiting blood and it all just Yeah, and
their parents didn't even get the right death certificate. I
think the death certificate said heart failure. It was all
just completely wrong, and they had to agree to that
death certificate because otherwise they wouldn't have got their children's
(53:12):
bodies back.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
So it's just.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
It's on another scale to what we had to deal with,
really but I mean they didn't even find out that
they died until a way later, I think the Saturday.
So yeah, it's horrific. But yeah, these charges. Food and
beverage safety was one of them, which it's not really
it's not really the right thing. And working without a
(53:38):
work permit was another one.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
I'm not really sure what that's about.
Speaker 4 (53:43):
Not charges specifically pertaining to the loss of life.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
No, and we were told it would be six years,
we were told, or six or seven years for a
mass poisoning. But it's proving that it was a mass poisoning,
which shouldn't be difficult to do if for six people
have died in place, But for some reason it's not
enough evidence. So they obviously needed to have the methanol
sort of in situ to be tested, but of s
(54:09):
if it was all chucked away, then they haven't got
that evidence. Yeah, it's infuriating because we can say for
sure that is definitely where we drank. And they sent
me a load of c's TV the hostel through a
Facebook messenger. They sent me all the CSTV of us
sitting there drinking in the hostel. Yet we're being told
they're not going to be charged for that offense.
Speaker 4 (54:30):
It's just how was it when you saw that footage?
Speaker 1 (54:33):
Yeah, I really didn't like watching it back initially.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
It proves we were there, so it's good that they
sent me it.
Speaker 4 (54:41):
What do you think Simone would say about what you're
doing now, which is basically encouraging young travelers to drink
safely overseas.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
I don't know, really. I think she'd be happy.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
I guess that I was taking my time to do this,
but at the same time, I think she would have
done it for me. So yeah, And I always kind
of think, oh, bet she'd be doing more, but she'd
be doing this, that or the other. So I always
kind of worry that I'm not doing enough in some ways.
But yeah, I've just tried to sort of take up
(55:20):
all the interviews to do as much as I can
really to try and get the message out there. But
now it's really up to up to individual governments to
make decisions, and that's why I set up a couple
of different petitions. Got the petition in the UK trying
to educate young people in schools, and I set up
a separate petition just recently trying to get governments and
(55:40):
airports to advertise, just like Australia do about the dangers
of methanol poisoning. So I know you've got posters up
on the back of toilet cubicle doors, and I think
that's really what needs to be rolled out across the world.
I can't see why it should be that hard to do,
given that it's already happening.
Speaker 4 (55:57):
So Simone was the organizer, but you're the organizer now.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
Yeah, I've had to be yeah without her.
Speaker 4 (56:06):
Yeah, and how would you like her to be remembered?
Speaker 1 (56:11):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (56:13):
I just for some reason, I hate this question because
I feel like I never do her justice with whatever
I say. But she was just a really strong, independent, intelligent, active,
friendly you know, pretty much any positive adjective, you know,
she was it. She was just the best sort of
(56:37):
friend that I could have asked for. She listened to me,
you know, any sort of rubbish came out of my mouth,
she would put up with it. And yeah, she'd always
give me good, good advice. And yeah, I will never
have a friend like her again.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
That's a huge loss.
Speaker 4 (56:53):
How do you feel the shape of her that's missing
from your life?
Speaker 1 (56:57):
You can't, I think, is the answer to that.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
You just can't but the way that my grief counselor
explained it is that you sort of build up your
life around the grief. So the grief sort of stays
the same, but you build up your life around. So
I guess doing this kind of work, advocacy work, campaigning,
it's building stretching what I would normally be doing. So
it's just a way for me to help the situation
(57:23):
but also to process what's gone on.
Speaker 4 (57:25):
It's interesting because I think in the face of extreme
loss and grief you kind of have two options, and
you can crawl away from it or you can run
towards it. And I have to thank you on behalf
of the for really young travelers who will be benefited,
(57:47):
possibly saved by the work that you're doing in this space.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yeah, I just hope people sort of sit up and
listen and think more about what they're putting inside the bodies. Really,
you know, I'm sure people still think, oh, this cocktail
will be fine.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
You know, I've been here before. You just don't know.
Speaker 3 (58:06):
It's happening in so many different countries around the world,
and there was recently I found out that the Vietnam
are putting their tax on alcohol from sixty five ninety
percent on spirits, so it's only going to start happening.
Speaker 4 (58:18):
More so, is your concrete advice to travelers only drink
from sealed bottles? What form does the advice take?
Speaker 3 (58:30):
I think seal bottles is difficult because I know of
the case Chesney Emmons, she bought some gin from a
shop in Sumatra and she died. So there's a lot
of counterfeit alcohol out there, especially places like Ballei. I
won't be going back to Bali, so I can say that,
but yeah, not just there, it would be in a
(58:50):
lot of different places too, but it's just sort of
knowing where, and you don't know where. Unless we're getting
investigative journalists to go out to these places and buy alcohol,
we're never going to know beer. Beer is safe. Yeah,
so especially out of the can, Yeah, absolutely, or like
pre mixed drinks out of a can.
Speaker 1 (59:09):
You know you can sort of get like not smurn
off eyes.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
I think that comes in a bottle, but you know
that kind of thing where you can see it's like
a smirn Off, but it's come out of a can.
Siders out of a can, anything like that should be
safe because no one can really get anything else in there,
So that is.
Speaker 1 (59:28):
Just really open bottles of spirit.
Speaker 3 (59:31):
That's particularly dangerous because anything could have been put in there,
It could have been topped up with something counterfeit.
Speaker 1 (59:38):
And even wine.
Speaker 3 (59:39):
I think there was an issue with wine in the
nineteen eighties somewhere in Europe where a lot of people
died from that. So nothing's one hundred percent safe, but
I think we can say that cans are relatively safe.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Where will your next trip be.
Speaker 3 (59:56):
Back to the UK for Christmas? I've spent so you're
in Brisbane now? Yeah, yeah, and I'll go And how
is it December?
Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
How is it? Being away?
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
In some ways good because I think there was just
so many memories back in Orpington, which is where we're from.
Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
In London in general.
Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
You know, we lived in we lived together at one
point in the Isle of Dogs, which is kind of
near Greenwich, and you know, she had a flat over
in Greenwich. You know, there's just so many memories in
that part of the world. And so for me being
over here, I mean, she did come here once, but
at least it's much less than at home, and I've
(01:00:38):
got that bit of space to kind of think about
other things as well. It's just not good for you
to be thinking about memories all the time. So I
can choose to dip back into that when I want.
We're at home, i'd have constant reminders.
Speaker 4 (01:00:53):
Yes, well, Bethany Clark, thank you so much for joining
us on No Filter. Thank you for having me, and
thank you for introducing us to your beautiful friends and mine.
Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:01:11):
Last night I couldn't sleep, and it was partly because
I had to get up very early to do this
interview with Bethany Clark, but it was also because of
who she was that I knew that I was going
to meet someone who had lost their best friend, and
who had lost their best friend in the most extraordinary
of circumstances, which was celebrating the joy of life. The
(01:01:36):
conversation that I had with Bethany will stay with me
for a long time. She could have chosen to stay quiet,
she could have chosen to grieve privately. Instead, Bethany Clark
is telling her story not just for her, not just
for Simone, her girlfriend that she lost, but for every traveler.
Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Who deserves to come home.
Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
Like I said, this is a conversation I will never forget,
and I don't think you will either. The executive producer
of No Filter is Brown and the senior producer is
Bree Player. Audio production is by Jacob Brown and I
am your host, Kate Langbrook.
Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
Thank you for listening to No Filter.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
On about half past eight, we noticed that her breathing
had changed and she started gasping for air. And that
for me was when I thought, crap, I really have
no idea what this is, because the hangover would never
lead to that.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Bethany Clark was three days into the trip of a
lifetime with her best friend Simone White when everything changed.
They were traveling through Lao, having the kind of adventure
you meant to have in your twenties, meeting people, seeing
the world, having fun. But one night they were given
vodka shots at the backpacker hostel they were staying at.
(01:04):
The drinks had been laced with methanol, a toxic chemical
that can be deadly. By the next day, both Bethany
and Simone were seriously unwell. The friends eventually admitted themselves
to hospital. Only one of them survived. This is a
story about survival, grief, and what it takes to speak
(01:29):
out when your best friend can't. It's also a warning
one Bethany is determined to share because it could save
someone's life. Bethany Clark, Welcome to No Filter.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Can I say first of all that I'm extraordinarily sorry
for the circumstances that have led to us meeting.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Appreciate that, thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
And the circumstances that I'm referring to occurred not even
a year ago, November twenty twenty four, last year, and
you were traveling with your best friend, Simone White. The
pair of you grew up in England together. We did
tell me a little bit about your upbringing together.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So we met.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I think I was four, she would have been five
in the first year of primary school.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And yeah, we've basically been friends ever since.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
She was that person to just keep us connected the
entire time, so throughout various phases of our life. You know,
we went to different secondary schools, we went to completely
different unis, different parts of the country. She was always
the anchor and the person that would always arrange the plans.
We just did so many holidays together over the years.
We did a massive backpacking trip when we were twenty
(02:47):
and we did, you know, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong,
and we had a great time and obviously we just
had no idea about what was to come, and we
booked to go to Lao and Cambodia as part of
a trip. So I was over in Australia doing my
working holiday and she was as a lawyer back in
(03:10):
London and Cambodia seemed to be the halfway point, so
that's where we met and then a few days later
we went to Lao and that's when it all went wrong.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
What you're talking about, too, is a part of the
world that means a great deal to Australians. You would know,
having spent so much time here that a lot of
Australians start their traveling adventures by traveling through Southeast Asia.
And in fact I met my husband on a trip
to Lao twenty.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Five years ago.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Yes, So when the stories broke that you and Simone
were in hospital, that there were these British girls and
there were other backpackers as well who were in hospital
at that point being treated for methanol poisoning, the whole
(04:05):
nation kind of traveled that time period with you in Australia.
It was also November, just before people leaving school here
were about to go on schoolies, so it was really
kind of a reminder of what can happen in a
world that feels so open, welcoming fun, a celebration of youth.
(04:29):
Was that the mindset that you and Simone had when
you set off on your adventures.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, I mean it was just supposed to be a
fun holiday. Really.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Initially the plan wasn't actually to go to Lao at all.
It was just to be Cambodia, and Simone kind of
encouraged me to go with the plan of it also
being loud because we were only supposed to be there
for four days. And this happened on the i think
the third day, And it was really just because it's
in the same region as Cambodia, and we were planning
to do the islands like Co Wrong Co Wrong Center
(05:00):
m because it's that close. She was like, Oh, we
may as well do it too, because we're not going
to want to go back just to do Loo. We
weren't there long and this happened, and yeah, we were
just there to chill out. We weren't drinking particularly heavily either.
It was just wasn't much going on in that hostel. Really,
it was just that happy hour between eight and ten, and.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
That's what did it.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
You were in a town called rain Being, which is
has become a bit of a hot spot for tubing.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
You can go tubing down the river.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
That's what we did that day that it happened.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Yeah, and so you'd had a kind of celebratory day
in the outdoors, you went back to your the backpacker's
hostel where you were staying, a place called Nana not
a backpacker.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, So we finished the tubing, went back there, got ready,
and we knew about this happy hour starting at eight,
So we got there shortly after eight, and I think
we I suspect we had about five or six We
were doing rounds and we were sort of going up
to get the shots, which we would then to count
into plastic tumblers.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
And then we also brought some sprite which we mixed
with it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
So I can't say that I ever tasted Neat vodka,
but I remember just putting a little bit of sprite
in testing it to see how strong it was, and
I thought, oh, maybe they've diluted it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
It's quite weak.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
So at that point, obviously I didn't have any concerns
because if something just tastes weak, you think, oh, well,
there's probably not a lot of ethanol.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
In this a lot of alcohol.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
But obviously, when I look back to that time, I think, well,
maybe that's because it wasn't actually ethanol. It was methanol,
so it kin'd of been pure methanol. Obviously we know that.
But yeah, for for whatever reason, Simone must have had more.
I mean, she had exactly the same volume, but the
(06:50):
concentration of what she had must have been more.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
What was the vibe at the backpackers that night, so
I imagine there were people were in pretty high spirits. People
are on holidays there from all around the world. Everybody's
genuinely young. How many people were they at the at
that happy hour?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
It's tricky because we just sat at the table and
I think we were probably the first to arrive, and
we were sitting with two Swedish backpackers and a Dutch
backpacker that we've met already. And I don't recall seeing
loads and loads of people there. I know there would
have been a few, but you know, I don't think
it would have been any more than thirty. And we
(07:31):
actually felt that there wasn't that much going on, so
we were able to play a card game, which normally
if there's a lot going on, you wouldn't even be
able to hear. So we were playing Piccolo, which is
a game on your phone. Yeah, I don't recall it
being particularly loud, and I think that's also why at
ten o'clock, when the drinks finished, the happy hour drinks finished,
everybody just went somewhere else because there wasn't an amazing atmosphere.
(07:54):
So yeah, it's supposed to be a party hostel, but
I didn't get that particular vibe that night. So yeah,
at ten o'clock, I actually went to bed because it
was either that I had jet lag or it was
that the method I was already starting to kick in,
so I thought, okay, I'm going to go to bed,
and the other three went onto a bar that we've
been to a couple of nights before, so we knew
(08:16):
that that one was okay. So they had a couple
of drinks there and then came back. But yeah, later
on we deduced that it can't have been that other
bar because I didn't go there, and I still had
I still had a problem.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
And we was simone at this point.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
So I got to bed about ten.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
She'd come back with our male friend at about just
after midnight, so there was the three of us staying
in a private room, and the male friend. I'm not
going to mention his name because I don't think he
really wants to be mentioned, but he is somebody that
we both known for about ten years, and he met
Simone at secondary school.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Did you wake up when they came back.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
No, I think I was just truly out for the
can I just I just passed out.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
So at what point did you realize that you were unwell?
You had activity these planned the next day, So.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
We woke up the following morning, I think at about
eight am, and we had this tour sort of half
an hour later, so we were sort of trying to
get everything ready and leave. But I just remember kind
of coming down the steps from the hostel room and thinking, oh,
I don't feel very steady here, and just generally feeling
a bit confused and not really knowing what was going on.
(09:34):
Absolutely no hunger whatsoever, which is quite unusual.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
Yeah, because normally, if it's a straightforward hangover, you're like,
get me something.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Very sy yeah. Yeah, and both of you were the same, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Very similar. I mean our male friend was similar at
that point too. I think we all just agreed that
something wasn't right, but we had no idea what it was,
and because our cognitions didn't seem to be functioning either,
we would never have come to the conclusion at the
time that it was anything other than a hangover, because
that was the only thing that sort of fitted with
what we'd done, and we all wait diferent food. We
(10:10):
definitely couldn't have put it down to food poisoning, so
that was the only conclusion we came to at the time.
And then obviously when we went to this tour, nothing
really improved where it would have done. Really for a hangover,
after you've had something to drink, had something to eat,
you'd expect to feel that little bit better. But during
that Blue Lagoon experience, Simone and I just had to
(10:32):
sit down and we didn't want to swim, And again
that's quite unusual for us because we're quite energetic. Especially
when you're hungover. You just want to be in water,
don't you, But no, not interested. And also our male
friend at the time must have been feeling a little
bit better because he was able to swim at that point,
So that was all a little bit of a blur.
But we actually took some pictures whilst we were there,
(10:54):
because there were a couple of tourists that came up
to us and said, can we have a picture with you, which,
you know, we took a picture with them, and that
is the last picture I have of Simone, and then
we went on to do this kayaking experience shortly after that.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Was that still at the Blue Lagoon. No, it was
a different location.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
It was exactly where we'd done the tubing the day before,
but because we felt that it might be nice just
to sort of go at our own pace kayaking, that's
what we chose to do.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Except when we got.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
There, Simone and I couldn't actually sit up to do
the kayaking, So instead of being able to use your core,
sit up straight and paddle, we just had to lay
flat on the backs of the kayaks and let the
people that were so basically running the tour they had
to get on our kayaks and actually paddle for us.
So again, that should have been a big red flag.
(11:48):
And I think at the time I was thinking this
is this is quite odd, but again, because my brain
wasn't functioning, I just thought, oh, this is you know,
a really severe hangover. You know, I just didn't seem
to have the lateral thinking of oh, could this be
methanol poison?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Could this be something else?
Speaker 3 (12:04):
It It just seemed to be an easy conclusion for
me to come to. And I've saw Simone sort of
being sick off of her kayak with our male friend
on it, and I'm thinking, oh, she doesn't really do
that unless it's motion sickness, and I'm thinking it's really
motion sickness because we're so slow on these things. But anyway,
(12:24):
that was the first time that she'd actually vomited. And
then that experience, I was literally just looking up at
the sky waiting for the whole thing to end because
it was just pointless, you know, we weren't enjoying it.
And we got back to the hostel after that when
it had finished, and we were literally just waiting around
to get on our bus to VNTI Anne, which was
(12:45):
the next place that we needed to be, and that's
where we were staying in our hostel the following well
that night, but obviously we didn't end up getting there.
But yeah, back at the hostel, Simone actually asked me,
can you order me some food? And I'm thinking, oh, wow,
you actually feel like eating, so again, I wasn't too
worried about her at that point, so I'm thinking, what's
good that you want to eat, because I've got no interest.
(13:08):
So I ordered the food for her. She ate probably
half of it, and then probably an hour later, we
were just chilling by this pool at Nana backpacker by
on these sun loungers, and then we needed to get
on this bus. So probably around two o'clock we got
on the bus. I just literally passed out right at
the back of the bus. So I was knackered, and yeah,
(13:30):
just so fatigued that I just couldn't stay away to
talk to them. So I just sat at the back
of the bus and they sat at the front. And
then around an hour through that journey, probably at three
half us three, my male friend called out to me, Biff,
which is what someone used to call me, can you
get off the bus.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Simon's being sick vomiting.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
So I got off, checked on her, and then I fainted,
and again, you know, in my head, I'm thinking, oh,
that's a bit strange, but again I didn't seem to
be able to understand that was quite severe in addition
to the other symptoms, so you know, and I'm also thinking, oh,
that can't have been a seizure, because I'm known I
(14:10):
have epilepsy. So I was thinking, oh god, it's not that,
because that would have been horrific, you know, that would
have been trick ending. So the fact that I'd managed
to literally just jump up after this faint and think,
oh I kind of been a seizure because I'd still
be out of it. We just got back on the bus,
and no one around us on this bus seemed to
take really any interest. No one said, you, guys, okay,
I just saw you faint, You're okay. Nothing, So again,
(14:34):
I suppose I just thought, oh, well, it can't be that.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Bad, yes, because you're reading the cues from the people
around you, and the people around you probably just assumed
that you were two girls who had a large night. Yeah,
and you were suffering the effects of a hangover. Had
they pulled the bus over because Simone was so seek
at that time.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
And then our male friend said to the driver, I
think we're going to need to drop us to a hospital,
which they were prepared to do luckily, but unfortunately we
went to a public hospital in Vieni Anne, who they
were just pretty to be honest. So when we got there,
I ended up just waiting outside with Simone because again
we didn't understand severity of what was going on. So
(15:19):
our male friend went in and we just watched him
go in, and we waited outside just to sort of rest.
There was some I think there's some benches or something
that we could sit on, so we were just sitting there,
and then after about an hour of doing that, I
said to Simone, I think I'm going to have to
go in because I'm not really feeling any better and
I want to see what's happened with our other friend.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
So I went in.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Had he gone in?
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Was he he was going in sort of to advocate
for you, to say, I'm with these two girls who
are unwill.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
And particularly he felt unwell and that's why he went in.
But for us, we I think if I'd thought there
was something seriously wrong, I would have gone in, But
because again I'm just thinking, oh, it's a hangover, and
I think this is the trouble. When we see these
other cases, people just rest it off and they think
that it's going to be fine and they're just laying
in bed and then it all just goes wrong and
they don't actually realize the severity what's going on. So,
(16:10):
you know, the two Danish girls that are being sick,
blood and the messaging, and I'm being sick, you know,
large coming up. Surely that would be a red flag
if you were feeling normal, But because you'd ingested this stuff,
your brain just doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
I didn't realize that.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
One of the side effects of mythanol poisoning is that
it has this cognitive effect on you, so that you
don't think clearly. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
And this is why I've had to kind of give
myself a bit of a bit of slack because at
the time I was poisoned too, and I didn't pick
up on what was going on. And I think having
sort of spoken to my mum after the event as well,
you know, my apparently when I rang her after the event,
(16:57):
my eyes were moving properly and my speech was slow,
and clearly it wasn't just me, you know, other people
could see it. It wasn't just like you know, I
thought my brain wasn't working. She could see it wasn't working. So,
you know, at least I don't have to blame myself
in that, you know, my brain was working perfectly, and
my friends still died. You know, I think in this situation,
(17:20):
we were all screwed basically. And also with Simone, you know,
she chose not to go into that public hospital as well,
and I did try and encourage her in there, but
she just wasn't having it. And she was one of
those strong willed people who, you know, you couldn't tell
her to not do something or to do something. She
would have to make that decision herself. She's a very
strong willed person.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And also she was a lawyer, So just knowing generally.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
The personality type that become lawyers, they do tend to
be people who are very certain of themselves.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yes, and I think she wouldn't have thought that it
was anything bad going on because similarly to me, she
probably thought it was just a hangover, because I think
she said to her other friend, this is a really
severe hangover. This was earlier in the day, so she
obviously hadn't come to the conclusion it was anything worse,
and she had no idea about methanol poisoning either. So anyway,
(18:16):
we sat outside this hospital for a while.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I then went in.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
As soon as I got in, I said to them,
look what is this, And they were like, well, we
think it's food poisoning. I said, too rather friendly, it
can't be that, because we all have different diets.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
It can't possibly be that.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I wasn't vomiting, I hadn't had diarrhe I hadn't even
got stomach pain. So they just kept going on with
that diagnosis, really, and until somemone came in, that was
still their diagnosis, and they took me up to an
ivy drip, which I was very reluctant to do. I
didn't really want them sticking needles in my hand without
knowing what it was that was actually going on. But
(18:53):
because our male friend had had success with feeling better,
I thought, all right, well I'll just continue on the
same treatment plan that you've started on. I think they
also gave me some anti sickness stuff later as well,
but at that time I didn't feel that bad.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
What was the situation at the hospital, what, what was
the makeup of it was? I imagine it was quite
a humble DIYer. Yeah it was, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Right world, Yeah so it was.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
When you went in, it was one big ward, obviously
really overcrowded. There was just a separate room which was
used as their sort of version of ICU. Not many doctors,
very few nursing stuff sort of available, And I remember
actually going to the toilet in there at one point
and there was no pound wash, there was there was
no toilet paper. I actually ripped my canula out to
(19:38):
use the toilet. That was basically what we were, what
we're talking about. I imagine the care for other people
wasn't great. If we were told that we had food poisoning,
then I'm sure there were probably other misdiagnoses going on
there too, But anyway, I eventually got myself in there,
That's what they said, and then I waited probably another
hour before Simone eventually came in and she walked in.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
She's still talking again.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I'm thinking, well, you're pretty much the same as me,
except that you've been vomiting, which is obviously a bit
more severe.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
So they put her in a bed, which wasn't really
part of the ward.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
It seemed like the hospital was so overcrowded that she'd
sort of gone on like a gurney type I don't know,
like a stretchery type thing, you know, those wheelie beds,
And I think she would have got in there maybe
past five six o'clock, and then they started her on
all the same course of treatment, and I also gave
her some electrolytes, which she vomited up immediately, and I
(20:31):
checked her heart rate actually with my watch, and it
was eighty two.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So I thought, oh, well, you know, it's a.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Bit high, but it's not overly overly concerning at this point,
and at about eight half past eight, we noticed that
her breathing had changed and she started gasping for air,
and that, for me was when I thought, crap. I
really have no idea what this is, because a hangover
would never lead to that, and I had no other
(20:59):
sort of differentials in my head. And they said to me,
we think that she's got she's had some drugs. So
is it amthetamines? Has she taken amfetamines? No, for God's sake,
just listen to what I'm saying. So they just kept
going on about drugs, and at this point she also
needed to be restrained because she was also ripping out
(21:19):
her canula. And yeah, we were obviously just confused because
we weren't like that. So we just thought, well, why
is it that she's doing that, you know, And they
moved her into this separate part of the hospital which
was just a three bed ICU room.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
So I went in there with her, tried to talk
to her, and she just looked.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
How was she at that point? Was she?
Speaker 3 (21:44):
No, she had this oxygen in her nose, but she
she wasn't able to talk to me.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
She wasn't even able to look at me at this point.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
So I'm saying to her, look, try and calm down,
because they were saying to me, is she anxious?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And I'm like, no, she doesn't get anxious.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
But I was trying to say to her, look trying
and concentrate on me, like but she just looked vacant.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
She just looked ahead. She also looking at me.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
So that's when I knew that something obviously wasn't right
with her brain. And luckily, our male friend was on
his phone and he had his phone connection all set
up so that he was using the internet where I didn't,
and he managed to find a private hospital which was
I think twenty minutes away, so he called them. I
think the first call was made at about nine pm
and they said to him, look, you need to have
(22:26):
insurance to come here, and we were obviously like what
we do but they said, oh, we need proof, and
basically wasn't getting anywhere and they weren't coming. So he
called them again at half past nine, same thing, we
need to see the insurance. So anyway, we rang them
a third time and I ended up saying to the doctor,
can you please speak to this hospital because we're not
(22:47):
getting anywhere here, like we need to be somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
And luckily she did and they did come and collect us.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
But by the time that they came probably half past ten,
and that's probably quite a long delay for somebody who's
struggling to breathe.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
So we got to this private hospital.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
I know he got there at twenty past eleven, as
that's what it said on the report. But during that journey,
I've got absolutely no recollection. I remember sitting at the
front next to the driver and literally just falling asleep.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Don't remember the journey.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
After the break.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Bethany shares what unfolded during those critical hours at the
private hospital. At this time while you're trying to advocate
for simone where you've realized is in different circumstances than
you were, but your own circumstances were terrible.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Well, yeah, it wasn't great.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
I was just feeling so fatigued, most fatigued I've ever
felt in my life.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
It was just awful.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
And then when we arrived, I vaguely remember our male
friend saying to the paramedic, do you think this could
be methanol poisoning?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
You'd actually done a bit of research on his.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Phone, and obviously I was like, what, you know, we've
been poisoned, and they said, well, yeah, actually it could be,
because we've seen four or five cases of this before,
so is every chance that it is that. But what's
frustrating is that in the media there's no reports of
methanol poisoning ever in Lao, So it's frustrating that it
has happened there before, but it's never been recorded. So
(24:26):
when we got in there, I've got a handover all
the passports, signing to sort of say we give our
consent for everything that's happening. They said to me, look,
we're going to take her off for hemodialysis, clean her blood,
and hopefully, you know, we're going to do our best
for her. So they put us into sort of a
triage area of the hospital. We were given a couple
of beds there while Simone was separate to us and
(24:49):
was taken off for that. And yeah, they said to me,
you know, we'll do the best we can to save
her life, but we think she's in here a bit late.
And I'm thinking, well, it's not possible. You know, we're
all the same, we've had the same stuff. You know,
there's no reason why she can't come back from this.
So I wasn't too concerned, and also in my state,
I wasn't in a position to be concerned. I was
just tied, so I was just falling. As soon as
(25:10):
they'd come over to get me to sign something, I'd
fall straight to sleep. So the only thing I remember
was sort of being moved to icee you and coming
round the following day waking up asking how she was,
and they said, well, actually we think she's a bit
better this morning because you know, I cleaned her blood.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
All of her organs are you know, they should be clean.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Now. We're going to do some bloods on her check them.
And the next thing I heard, all of her organs
were fine. It was just you know, they've given us
some sedation because she was so agitated because of the
breathing thing, and she'd also had five seizures, but at
the time I was told it was one seizure, which
I thought, you know, one seizure or you can come
back from that. But because it was five, that's a
(25:52):
lot of seizures for somebody that doesn't have seizures.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Were you able to see her at that time.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
No, No, So with the information that I had, I
made the decision to contact her mum and say, look,
apparently she's feeling better this morning. But I told her
what the diagnosis was, metabolic sidosis as a result of
being poisoned with methanol, which is where your blood is
really acidic as a result of the form of acid
(26:18):
and formaldehyde that is the byproducts of consuming methanol.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
So yeah, that's kind of what we knew at the time.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
I told her mum that over text message because I
wasn't really in a position to have a phone call
with somebody, and she came straight back saying, I hope
she gets better soon, and I was thinking, you know, yeah,
I hope so too. But I kind of I suppose,
I kind of thought maybe she'd want to speak to
me or kind of get a bit more clarification, but
(26:47):
her mum is very much always sort of thinks about
the best case scenario, whereas I'm always what is the
worst case scenario?
Speaker 2 (26:56):
A catastrophized her?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
I am, yeah, So I'd had that conversation with her,
and I thought, oh, well she thinks it's all right,
then yeah, hopefully it will be, and which.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I shouldn't think it was all right.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
But you know the way that I that she sent back,
I wasn't worried that she was really worried, if you
see what I mean.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
But then there was a bit she wasn't panicking.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
She wasn't panicking. No way. My mom would have been like,
oh God, what's happened?
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Had you called your mom? Had you messaged your mum
at this point?
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Or were your nuts? Just with Simon?
Speaker 3 (27:26):
I was waiting because I also didn't want to worry
my parents if there was going to be some kind
of disaster with myself. You know, I wanted to be
clued up, and I didn't want to have a phone
call and say, well, I don't know, I don't know.
I wanted to know what was going on a bit
more before I had sort of made calls. And also
I wasn't really with it enough to get through a
(27:47):
phone call either. So that all happened. I think the
either later on that day or followed the following day,
but the text message was kind of the first thing
that we we got done, because you know, I didn't
really want to be responsible for what was going on
with her because I have my own stuff to deal with,
and also I was thinking, well, yeah, maybe she will
(28:10):
need to come over at some point.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
She needs to know now.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
So anyway, we then kind of got moved later on
that day, so we've been in ICU I think for
about twenty four hours. We then got moved to a
separate part of that hospital to just basically recover because
we weren't kind of critical anymore.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
They'd managed to give us some sodium by carbonate.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
And Simone was we're still at this point.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Still in ICU, so she always was in ICU. We've
been given pretty much everything you can think of, you know,
sodium by carbonate, potassium, magnesium. The only symptom that I
really had that I can recall being particularly severe in
that hospital was really really severe burning in suphagus. So
they given me this potassium drink that I needed to
(28:52):
drink to get my potasium levels up, and I say, look,
can you give this to me in another form because
I literally can't get this down, and they were like, you.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Have to drink it. We've got no other way of
giving that to you.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
So I had to force myself to drink it, but
every single sit it was burning, so I had to
have tiny bit of water to flush it down, but
even the water was burning. It was just obviously the
former CASSID had got in and that's the area that
it was kind of attacking, where I think for the
others they were getting more stomach pain and more stomach
related stuff. But actually, other than the nausea, I wasn't
(29:22):
getting too much stomach pain at that time, so for me,
I think that was the most severe part. But that
obviously had improved a bit, and they'd given me a
lot of gastro drugs, you know, about four different stomach
related drugs to take. So I was, yeah, just discharged
to this other part of the hospital to basically just
(29:42):
drink plenty of water and to just try and sleep,
but obviously, given what had.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Happened, there was no way that sleep was on the cards.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
A male friend and I went off and we spent
another I think three nights on that separate ward just recovering,
and during that time her mum had managed to book
flights to come over because she was meant to have
come around from sedationan I think doing day or the
(30:10):
day after, and that she still hadn't. So he said
to Sue, you know, she was meant to have come
around from sedasia, but she hasn't. Basically, I think it'd
be good if you can get over here. So that's
when she booked her flights.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
So simone, as you said, was under sedation, the expectation
would have been that she would have regained consciousness and
come to So who had been messaging her mum Sue
to tell her that her daughter had not me So again.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Contrically the lack of communication in that hospital because no
one really spoke good English. It was having to go
via me because they didn't seem to be able to
call her and tell her this, So I was having
to be the sort of interpreter. But yeah, I had
a conversation with the new resurgeon when she wasn't waking up.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
I then spoke to him.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
He said, look, what's happening is that the left side
of her brain is swollen and we need to do
a decompression craniotomy to release this swelling on her brain.
Otherwise it's just not going to get better and she
could be in a coma.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
Which is a massive This is a massive operation. It was,
but obviously we had no other option.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
And he said, look, it's about twenty percent chance it
will actually do what it needs to do, but there
will be other surgeries and other sort of risks as
well that could happen, so they could be bleeding, etc.
And even if it did work, we would then need
to do another surgery.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
And I was like, this is just nuts.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
It was.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
It was so surreal. I didn't think it was even happening.
I was like, am I in some kind of alternate universe?
Like word just really didn't understand what was going on.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
At this point.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
Bethany, have you been able to lay eyes on somemone
or are you still in the two different parts of
the hospital.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
I did see her, yeah, and as soon as I
saw her, she had a tube down her, So no,
it wasn't a nice sight. I just remember looking at
her and thinking like come on, like you need to
get out of this, this is ridiculous. Come on, But
she just she was too far gone. You know, she
would have already been brain damaged. I think in that
(32:20):
public hospital when I was trying to look at her
and she was looking beyond me. I think her brain
damage was done then, to be honest, but I didn't
know that at the time, and I was just I
was just thinking, oh, well, she's had the same as me,
she'd be fine, and yeah, she obviously wasn't fine. So yeah,
this conversation with the nearest surgeon, he said, well, can
(32:42):
you ring Simone's mum then and explain that? And that's
what I had to do. So I caught my dad
first and said, you know, the statistics of what was
likely to happen, and they said, oh god, okay, I'm
going to ring Sue. And we had a three way
conversation where basically I ended up telling Sue what the
deal was, and Sue was very practical and said, yes,
(33:04):
I'll get the forms back straight away.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yes, we'll have to do it. You know, I think
she just got into that mindset.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Of because you two had grown up together. I imagine
that you'd seen quite a lot of Sue, yes, Simon's
mum as well, growing up, so she knew you very well,
and you her. Did your parents know each other as well?
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yeah, we used to spend Christmas Eve together, so we'd
go for a meal, and that's actually what we're going
to be doing this year as well, and we've done
it for the last few years quite religiously, so that
will continue.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
So soon knew the makeup of you and knew that
you how grave the situation was for you to be
calling her and saying this is the operation of said
needs to be done.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
I think she would have known from the brain surgery
being mentioned that really the chances were very slim, but
she just had no other option but to kind of
come over because not only for Simone, but for us,
because we were just in a state of like, how
can we deal with this on our own? Like you know,
it was just torrific being in that hospital and the
lack of communication as well, you know, and it was
(34:14):
good to have an adult there who it could sort
of take responsibility for.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
What was going on as well.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Yes, because yeah, it was a lot for me to
sort of mentally deal with everything, the trauma and everything else.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
At this point, how are you feeling mentally? Have you
emerged from that sort of the vacancy of the methanol poisoning.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
You're not one hundred percent obviously, Oh.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
No, I wouldn't have been one hundred percent, But I
think I could have a conversation without it sounding odd, right.
I was just really really tired but couldn't sleep because
of the situation. I was just wired, I think would
probably be the right way of describing it. At one point,
the doctors did give us some sort of sleeping pills
so that we could get to sleep, but even that
(35:01):
didn't cut it for me. Yeah, it was just a
really really bad time. And I remember going online to
try and get a neurology consult that you pay like
five pounds for and you'd sort of type in all
of the details and then they'd come back to you
and say this is what you should do. And I'd
got pictures of her scans of her brain, you know,
(35:22):
her brain basically where she was unconscious, and I was
sending this off to this neurologist on this website and
he would he was just sort of coming back and saying, well,
you have to trust the doctors there basically because they
can deal with her in real time. I was just like, yeah,
but this is a different country, different roles, Like obviously
everything was going through her insurer, but I suppose I
(35:44):
just didn't fully trust that what was going on there
would have been what was going on in the UK,
or in Australia or in a developed country. But we
were assured by the insurers that basically this brain surgery
would be the right thing to do. But actually we
found out later from a professor who specializes in methanol
(36:05):
poisoning that you would never do brain surgery because it
would never work and it would just be basically be.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
A complete waste of time. And it was obviously causing more.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Stress as well, because she had to have her hair
shaved off, you know, we had to she had to
have several blood transfusions to get her platelets high enough
to actually do the surgery in the first place.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
And obviously there was the additional sort of worry.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
For her mum about her going through a procedure like that, So.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, where's her mum? Where's her mum?
Speaker 3 (36:36):
At this point, by the time that she actually had
the brain surgery, Sue had actually seen her just before
she went in, so it was it was actually quite
good timing with the delays with the transfusions that she
needed to have.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Sue got there just in the nick of time to
see her.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Obviously her hair was shaved and everything, but yeah, it
was nice for her to see her beforehand, I think.
And yeah, and then the next thing, we were told,
probably four or five hours later, that she'd come out
the brain surgery work, but it caused a bleed on
that side, and we had a little bit of hope
for probably a few hours, and then they said, actually,
(37:17):
now the other side of her brain is swollen to
so basically that's it. There's nothing else that we can
do for her. The way that they've phrased it was
particularly odd, I remember, because they were tied doctors and nurses,
a lot of them, and I think this particular doctor
had said something like, we do surgery but she being coma,
and I was like, what do you mean, Like, obviously
(37:39):
we're not going to do another surgery then. So it
was just it was just really difficult to actually communicate
with people. And yeah, it was you had to sort
of rephrase things several times to get them to basically
give you the answer that you needed. They wouldn't be
able to just say, right, we're not going to do
any surgery. They'd be saying roundabout ways of describing it.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
What happened next is something Bith and he will carry forever.
After the break, she shares that moment. Where are you
at this point? Are you still a patient or you're
sort of just there waiting bedside?
Speaker 3 (38:24):
We were still patient, but we were well enough to
actually go downstairs and see her because I think we
were sort of carrying around drips of various things. So
we were around definitely. But yeah, we were then discharged.
I think might have been the Sunday, Saturday or Sunday,
(38:45):
and we've got in there on the Wednesday. Yeah, that's
about right, so four or five five days. Yeah, all
of the surgery stuff had been done. You know by
the time that we left, they basically said, look, we're
going to have to wait for her to die naturally, And.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Obviously we're thinking, well how long is that going to take?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Like, you know, we can't be in a country indefinitely
waiting for her to go.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Was that the first time that they had talked about
death in those terms.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Well, obviously, given that we knew she was undergoing brain
surgery with very limited chance of it working, that had
obviously come into my head before, but yeah, it was
the first time that they really sort of focused in
on the fact that we were going to need to
wait for her to go. But with that, obviously her
heart was functioning. So you know, we were waiting for
(39:36):
about four days and her stats hadn't changed, and sometimes,
you know, we'd wake up in the morning her blood
pressure would be even higher.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
We'd be thinking, well, how long are we going to
be here?
Speaker 3 (39:47):
So in the end, our male friend had book flights
and then I said to Sue, look, I'm going to
have to go because I can't.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I can't be here anymore.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
So we'd book the flights for the twenty first of November,
which is which ended up actually being the day that
Simone died, so Sue we wanted to get on those
same flights. Really that morning, Sue had said to the consulate,
is there anything you can do? Because we're now just
waiting for someone to die and we can't really, we
(40:15):
can't be here much longer, you know, we need to
speed this up somehow. What's the point of that. It's
just harming us, it's not harming her anymore. So prolonging
the agony belonging something that's not gonna Yeah. So what
was actually quite frustrating is that we had a group
chat with somebody who was acting as an interpreter, although
not particularly good English, to be honest, and she was
(40:37):
sending us.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Through the stats.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
But we could see that she was being given glucose
whilst we were waiting for her to die. She was
being given gluecose and she was also being given additional oxygen.
So I thought she was breathing air, but actually she
was breathing more oxygenated air.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
So I'm saying, sorry, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Why is she being given something more than what the
average person would be. You know, we're not trying to
prolong her life here, we're trying to end it. And
they said, oh, we've got to do these things gradually,
blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
What they were actually.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Trying to do is earn more money for their hospital
because some moment at that point, someone was the only
person in their ICU, so she was the one that
was funding everything.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
So that's and she had insurance.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
She had insurance, which obviously was I think it was
a very very hefty insurance bill.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
In the end, it was thirty pounds or something.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
But anyway, yeah, they were doing all this stuff and
we were saying to them, can you stop because this
isn't helping.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
So they did stop it, but it was very gradual.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
They put the gluecose, turned it off, and then the
air they brought the oxygen level down to what air
would be, but still that didn't actually help sort of
bring things to a close. So yeah, Sue had to
have this chat with the consulate and he must have
spoken to the hospital and she was then allowed to
switch it off herself, which is what she had to
do in order for us to leave the country.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
So SA mine's mum who had to turn off, was
that it was effective life support.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Yeah, yeah, and I think it took three gos to
actually fully do it because no one's willing to be
in the room with her.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
I'd said, do you.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Want me in there, but she wanted it to be
a private moment with her and her husband and her son,
so she had them on the end of the phone
and she did it, tried to do it herself, and
I think the first thing that happened was the backup
ventilator came on, so obviously she'd had to come out,
talk to them, ask them how to get that.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Well, then they told her how to do that.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Then she didn't realize she had to take the tube out,
so she had to take the tube out.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Oh, so basically the whole thing was long and drawn out.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
I was looking at these machines on the outside, hoping
that it would be quick, but actually ended up being
a lot longer than we anticipated. But from the time
that she actually turned it off to the time that
Simone officially died, it was about half an hour.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
So yeah, and how was her mum? Then?
Speaker 3 (43:05):
I think relieved actually to some extent, because we were
just waiting and we didn't know when that end date
was going to be, and I didn't want to leave
her in Low so I think there was a little
bit of relief when we were actually able to.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Finally, you know, say goodbye.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
Obviously she was devastated and we were crying and it
was all it was all horrible, but it meant that
she could get that flight with us, which gave us
the safety that we needed and also probably helped her
out a little bit too. So that evening we flew
out of Loud back to the UK.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
You must have been actually exhausted. But how was the flight?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, well I ended up paying for business class just
so that I could sleep, because I hadn't slept that
entire time waiting wait for the inevitable. Really, but I
think that was probably the best sleep that I had
had for the last sort of week because it was done,
there was no more waiting. And Yeah, unfortunately, Simone's mum
(44:11):
had a particularly bad experience on the flight because, you know,
we tried to say to the airline staff, you know,
is there any chance that she could be given a
seat in business class because of what's happened? And you know,
I was showing them the headlines. They were like, no, sorry,
if we said yes to her, we'd say yes to it.
We'd have to say yes to other people. And I
was like, who are the other people though, and they
(44:31):
were like, oh, someone broke their leg. It's like, well, sorry,
this is a completely different it's a completely different situation.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
So there had been no consular you know, wording up
of the airline anything like that. Their assistants didn't extend
to that, to there being compassionate grounds for trading, no,
you know, Simone's mum, No, probably would have.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Been sensible but I think because it was a flight
that was booked so last minute, like she literally booked
it that morning. And the concert was good in that
he got us through the Lao airport because we were
actually quite panicked that we were going to be arrested
for slander because of the things that were going on
on Facebook. You know, I'd put something out of Facebook
saying this is what's going on?
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Has anyone else been poisoned?
Speaker 3 (45:13):
So I was then worried that my name was out
there and that somehow low officials were going to be
in the airport sort of talking to us.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
But anyway, it was fine.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
He insisted it would be fine, and it was fine,
and he got us through the airport okay, And yeah,
that was kind of where his duties sort of ended,
I think.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
But no, the concert was pretty good.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
He did quite well to sort of keep us quite calm,
and yeah, we obviously weren't in a position to be calm,
so he was our grounding really whilst we were there.
But yeah, I think we were just really glad to
be home.
Speaker 4 (45:51):
Was that a time when you know, you were returning
to familiar surrounds, but they were I imagine unfamiliar because
your friend was not there.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Yeah, I think I was definitely in a state of
shock when I got back, because I just kind of
had to keep it all going when we were there,
but when I got back, it was at a state
of yeah, you have to try and still function, but
I was in a state of shock, so I would
sort of get up and then feel dizzy and need
to sit down and just things like that. Really, and
I think that lasted for about two weeks, and obviously
(46:26):
when we were at Christmas really and then obviously over Christmas,
there was a lot of kind of reminders of what
we'd normally be doing, and we actually had events planned
which was supposed to be coming up, but obviously, given
that she was no longer with us, those days we'd
come up and I'd just delete them out of the
calendar because, yeah, it was a horrible time because we
(46:48):
had so many plans which.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
And instead was there a memorial for her or a funeral?
Speaker 2 (46:56):
What did her family do in that event?
Speaker 1 (46:59):
So we didn't. I think Sue didn't want to rush
the funerals.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
So the funeral actually happened in January, so a bit
after Christmas, And I think the reason being that she
didn't want to rush the planning of it, so you
know what kind of music and getting all the photographs together,
and she had a lot of other things to deal
with at the same time, you know, even just the
repatriation process, and you know, other things that needs to
(47:24):
go on, like post mortem, and you know, she had
a house and only just bought a flat, so she
needed to sort things out with that too. So there
was just a lot for Sue to deal with, and
I think she felt it was best to leave it
until January, which was the right decision because I wasn't
in a fit state to attend a funeral the way
that I was, and with that little gap that we had,
(47:45):
I was able to get a little bit of rest
so that I could successfully do a bit of a
tribute for Simone on the day of her funeral.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
So it was for the best.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
Really, what has the process of grief looked like for
you since then?
Speaker 1 (48:03):
It's a very slow process.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
I think for me it was kind of dealing with
the trauma first, because the trauma seems to even now
be too.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
It's two separate things. So the trauma's here and the.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
Grief is here, and I'm now I think trying to
deal with the grief.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
But I've kind of kind of got there with the trauma.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
I think I don't really have flashbacks or anything or
like nightmares, but obviously I do get reminders of things,
but nothing is of debilitating or really really severe. So yeah,
for me, it's just trying to process what's happened, and
you know, the death of her really and the loss,
the personal loss I have from not having my friend anymore.
(48:49):
You know her daily and we'd send voice notes daily,
and you to not have that anymore. She was my
guiding light in a way, like if I had a problems,
she'd be the first person I would contact. So I'm
now having to do a lot of internal work to
try and work these problems out for myself. So yeah,
it's a slow pro aggress and I think, yeah, I've
(49:14):
come a long way.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
Basically, I've come a long way.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
And I think doing this campaign as well has kind
of had this distraction. It's been a bit of distraction,
I think for the grief, but it's also been a
really good way of kind of using my time to
commemorate and remember and do something good in her memory,
because I think that she would have achieved so much
in her life, so that if I can do this
so that other people don't have to go through it,
(49:39):
then I think that can only be a good thing.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
You have.
Speaker 4 (49:42):
You've channeled your pain into advocacy and into this area
which I did not realize was so prevalent, which is
the use of methanol that when to basically make drinks stronger,
stretch it out and underregulated.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, it just makes it a little bit cheaper for them.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Obviously, you can kind of make alcohol badly as well,
and that can come up too, But I think in
this situation it definitely all seem to be a case
of organized crime, because Vang Vieg did have a bit
of an association with organized crime anyway.
Speaker 4 (50:22):
So yes, yeah, I kind of see there's a ced
underbilly in that town.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
Yeah, and it was a Vietnamese own hostel and the
two people that were probably involved and fled to Vietnam,
so I think they kind of knew what was going
on and have moved on.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
And then, so as far as I understand the backpacker,
the hostel Nana closed down for a period and then
they've reopened.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
Well, they were trying to, and I've done my best
efforts to try and sabotage that.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
So they were trying to open up in August.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
So I then obviously spoke to the BBC and various
news outlets to make sure that they won't be doing that. Yeah,
I think, I hope, hope that they're not going to open.
Speaker 4 (51:11):
Now, right, and at government level, what had been the
ramifications in that area anything, Is it followed up? Has
anyone been charged?
Speaker 3 (51:24):
Well?
Speaker 4 (51:24):
Is anyone going to be held to account for Samone's death?
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Thirteen people were detained at the time, and then we
found out through I think the Danish or Australian families
that they were all released, and that was just before
we went on This Morning, which is a British morning show,
that was in February. So since then we found out
that these thirteen people are going to be charged with
(51:51):
various offenses, so things like elimination of evidence, which I
can understand because I sent the police a picture of
a load of bottles being discarded outside the hostel, literally
like two hundred bottles, and somebody had sent me that
and said, look, I picked up one of these bottles.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
It's clearly been washed out with washing up liquid.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
So they've obviously discarded of the evidence that they had,
so they may not have found any methanol in the bottles.
I don't know because we don't speak to the law
authorities about stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (52:20):
But six people died m Yeah, and the six people
who died had were they all involved, they'd all been
staying at the backpackers or they'd all been to the
happy hour at Nana's.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Yeah, everyone stayed there.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
I think the difference with the man who died was
that he was found in his room and I don't
know that he went to the happy hour, and we're
not sure the circumstances of his death, but everybody else
definitely methanol poisoning related.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Then the Danish girls had a very very awful sort
state of affairs going on with that because they were,
you know, vomiting blood and it all just Yeah, and
their parents didn't even get the right death certificate. I
think the death certificate said heart failure. It was all
just completely wrong, and they had to agree to that
death certificate because otherwise they wouldn't have got their children's
(53:12):
bodies back.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
So it's just.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
It's on another scale to what we had to deal with,
really but I mean they didn't even find out that
they died until a way later, I think the Saturday.
So yeah, it's horrific. But yeah, these charges. Food and
beverage safety was one of them, which it's not really
it's not really the right thing. And working without a
(53:38):
work permit was another one.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
I'm not really sure what that's about.
Speaker 4 (53:43):
Not charges specifically pertaining to the loss of life.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
No, and we were told it would be six years,
we were told, or six or seven years for a
mass poisoning. But it's proving that it was a mass poisoning,
which shouldn't be difficult to do if for six people
have died in place, But for some reason it's not
enough evidence. So they obviously needed to have the methanol
sort of in situ to be tested, but of s
(54:09):
if it was all chucked away, then they haven't got
that evidence. Yeah, it's infuriating because we can say for
sure that is definitely where we drank. And they sent
me a load of c's TV the hostel through a
Facebook messenger. They sent me all the CSTV of us
sitting there drinking in the hostel. Yet we're being told
they're not going to be charged for that offense.
Speaker 4 (54:30):
It's just how was it when you saw that footage?
Speaker 1 (54:33):
Yeah, I really didn't like watching it back initially.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
It proves we were there, so it's good that they
sent me it.
Speaker 4 (54:41):
What do you think Simone would say about what you're
doing now, which is basically encouraging young travelers to drink
safely overseas.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
I don't know, really. I think she'd be happy.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
I guess that I was taking my time to do this,
but at the same time, I think she would have
done it for me. So yeah, And I always kind
of think, oh, bet she'd be doing more, but she'd
be doing this, that or the other. So I always
kind of worry that I'm not doing enough in some ways.
But yeah, I've just tried to sort of take up
(55:20):
all the interviews to do as much as I can
really to try and get the message out there. But
now it's really up to up to individual governments to
make decisions, and that's why I set up a couple
of different petitions. Got the petition in the UK trying
to educate young people in schools, and I set up
a separate petition just recently trying to get governments and
(55:40):
airports to advertise, just like Australia do about the dangers
of methanol poisoning. So I know you've got posters up
on the back of toilet cubicle doors, and I think
that's really what needs to be rolled out across the world.
I can't see why it should be that hard to do,
given that it's already happening.
Speaker 4 (55:57):
So Simone was the organizer, but you're the organizer now.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
Yeah, I've had to be yeah without her.
Speaker 4 (56:06):
Yeah, and how would you like her to be remembered?
Speaker 1 (56:11):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (56:13):
I just for some reason, I hate this question because
I feel like I never do her justice with whatever
I say. But she was just a really strong, independent, intelligent, active,
friendly you know, pretty much any positive adjective, you know,
she was it. She was just the best sort of
(56:37):
friend that I could have asked for. She listened to me,
you know, any sort of rubbish came out of my mouth,
she would put up with it. And yeah, she'd always
give me good, good advice. And yeah, I will never
have a friend like her again.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
That's a huge loss.
Speaker 4 (56:53):
How do you feel the shape of her that's missing
from your life?
Speaker 1 (56:57):
You can't, I think, is the answer to that.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
You just can't but the way that my grief counselor
explained it is that you sort of build up your
life around the grief. So the grief sort of stays
the same, but you build up your life around. So
I guess doing this kind of work, advocacy work, campaigning,
it's building stretching what I would normally be doing. So
it's just a way for me to help the situation
(57:23):
but also to process what's gone on.
Speaker 4 (57:25):
It's interesting because I think in the face of extreme
loss and grief you kind of have two options, and
you can crawl away from it or you can run
towards it. And I have to thank you on behalf
of the for really young travelers who will be benefited,
(57:47):
possibly saved by the work that you're doing in this space.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yeah, I just hope people sort of sit up and
listen and think more about what they're putting inside the bodies. Really,
you know, I'm sure people still think, oh, this cocktail
will be fine.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
You know, I've been here before. You just don't know.
Speaker 3 (58:06):
It's happening in so many different countries around the world,
and there was recently I found out that the Vietnam
are putting their tax on alcohol from sixty five ninety
percent on spirits, so it's only going to start happening.
Speaker 4 (58:18):
More so, is your concrete advice to travelers only drink
from sealed bottles? What form does the advice take?
Speaker 3 (58:30):
I think seal bottles is difficult because I know of
the case Chesney Emmons, she bought some gin from a
shop in Sumatra and she died. So there's a lot
of counterfeit alcohol out there, especially places like Ballei. I
won't be going back to Bali, so I can say that,
but yeah, not just there, it would be in a
(58:50):
lot of different places too, but it's just sort of
knowing where, and you don't know where. Unless we're getting
investigative journalists to go out to these places and buy alcohol,
we're never going to know beer. Beer is safe. Yeah,
so especially out of the can, Yeah, absolutely, or like
pre mixed drinks out of a can.
Speaker 1 (59:09):
You know you can sort of get like not smurn
off eyes.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
I think that comes in a bottle, but you know
that kind of thing where you can see it's like
a smirn Off, but it's come out of a can.
Siders out of a can, anything like that should be
safe because no one can really get anything else in there,
So that is.
Speaker 1 (59:28):
Just really open bottles of spirit.
Speaker 3 (59:31):
That's particularly dangerous because anything could have been put in there,
It could have been topped up with something counterfeit.
Speaker 1 (59:38):
And even wine.
Speaker 3 (59:39):
I think there was an issue with wine in the
nineteen eighties somewhere in Europe where a lot of people
died from that. So nothing's one hundred percent safe, but
I think we can say that cans are relatively safe.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Where will your next trip be.
Speaker 3 (59:56):
Back to the UK for Christmas? I've spent so you're
in Brisbane now? Yeah, yeah, and I'll go And how
is it December?
Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
How is it? Being away?
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
In some ways good because I think there was just
so many memories back in Orpington, which is where we're from.
Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
In London in general.
Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
You know, we lived in we lived together at one
point in the Isle of Dogs, which is kind of
near Greenwich, and you know, she had a flat over
in Greenwich. You know, there's just so many memories in
that part of the world. And so for me being
over here, I mean, she did come here once, but
at least it's much less than at home, and I've
(01:00:38):
got that bit of space to kind of think about
other things as well. It's just not good for you
to be thinking about memories all the time. So I
can choose to dip back into that when I want.
We're at home, i'd have constant reminders.
Speaker 4 (01:00:53):
Yes, well, Bethany Clark, thank you so much for joining
us on No Filter. Thank you for having me, and
thank you for introducing us to your beautiful friends and mine.
Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:01:11):
Last night I couldn't sleep, and it was partly because
I had to get up very early to do this
interview with Bethany Clark, but it was also because of
who she was that I knew that I was going
to meet someone who had lost their best friend, and
who had lost their best friend in the most extraordinary
of circumstances, which was celebrating the joy of life. The
(01:01:36):
conversation that I had with Bethany will stay with me
for a long time. She could have chosen to stay quiet,
she could have chosen to grieve privately. Instead, Bethany Clark
is telling her story not just for her, not just
for Simone, her girlfriend that she lost, but for every traveler.
Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Who deserves to come home.
Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
Like I said, this is a conversation I will never forget,
and I don't think you will either. The executive producer
of No Filter is Brown and the senior producer is
Bree Player. Audio production is by Jacob Brown and I
am your host, Kate Langbrook.
Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
Thank you for listening to No Filter.
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