A tourist has warned others to be vigilant after a drink in Bali left her blind, claiming she only survived the ordeal thanks to access to top-notch medical care outside Indonesia.
American tourist Ashley King had been visiting the tourist spot when she ordered a vodka mixed drink at a Kuta bar in 2011.
The tourist, who was living in Australia at the time, told The Project on Sunday that she had made a near-fatal mistake on her last night on the island paradise.
“(It) was no different than any other night I had gone out,” he said.
But over the next two days, while traveling to New Zealand, King began to feel unwell.
“When I finally got to my accommodation I went to bed and when I woke up the next morning, I noticed that there was very little light in the hostel,” he said.
—Which I just attributed to cheap, hostile lighting. And about 10 minutes later I couldn’t breathe anymore and I was short of breath.”
Ms King has shared her story more than 10 years after it occurred in the wake of the mass methanol poisoning in Laos that left two Australian women and four other people dead.
Ashley King (pictured) from the United States ordered a vodka-laced drink in Bali in 2011 that left her with just two percent vision.
The tourist said that when she rushed to the hospital her vision had deteriorated and she felt like she was “in the dark, blind.”
“It was something (doctors) hadn’t seen before, and it was kind of a puzzle for them to figure out what was wrong,” he said.
King said medical staff eventually discovered he had a large amount of methanol in his body.
He said the hospital in New Zealand called his parents and told them to take the next available flight to the country because his chances of survival were not good.
Despite being lucky enough to survive the ordeal, 13 years later, Mrs King still lives with the consequences.
He was left with only two percent of his sight and said it was “the most traumatic and difficult thing” he had ever gone through.
The tourist said she had to learn to function as a blind person and said that “acquiring a disability is really difficult.”
Ms King said she had compassion for the families of Australian women Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles who died in Laos after drinking shots of alcohol laced with methanol.
Ms King (pictured) told The Project on Sunday night that the only reason she survived the methanol poisoning was because when she became seriously ill she was in New Zealand and received treatment there.
The American believes she is alive only because she drank methanol last night and was treated in “a first world hospital” when she became seriously ill.
But Mrs King’s ordeal in Bali was not the only one of 2011.
In eerily similar circumstances to Ms King, Jamie Johnston, who was 25 at the time, was holidaying in Bali from her hometown of Newcastle when she downed a cocktail laced with methanol on her last night on the island on 20 September.
The 25-year-old momentarily lost her sight and suffered brain damage and kidney failure, spending weeks in intensive care units in Indonesia and at her home in Darwin. The Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time.
The nurse and her mother had ordered a jug of arak, a popular rice wine mixed with fruit juice, at the Happy Café restaurant in Lombok.
It took six weeks for Ms. Johnston to be able to speak again, and in late 2011 she spoke to The Newcastle Herald warning Australian travelers about the dangers of methanol poisoning in Bali.
“Don’t drink anything that doesn’t come in a bottle or doesn’t have a lid,” he said.
‘Stay away from local rice wine. What happened to me could happen to anyone else.
The drink Arak was also blamed for killing eight locals in 2010 in Bali and a staggering 25 people in 2009, including four foreign tourists on the island.