A 23-year-old man who was poisoned after ingesting methanol-laced drinks in Laos last year has spoken of seeing a "kaleidoscopic light" before he went blind.
Calum Macdonald was one of several tourists who drank methanol-tainted alcohol at the Nana Backpackers Hostel in Vang Vieng, Laos last November.
Two Australian teenagers, a British woman, an American man and two Danes died and many other were sickened, including a New Zealander.
Macdonald survived the ordeal, but was left blind.
Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles died last year after drinking free shots of vodka and whiskey at a hostel in Vang Vieng. (Source: 1News)
Sharing his story for the first time, he told the BBC he first noticed something was wrong with his vision at the Vietnamese border the day after consuming free whiskey and vodka shots offered to guests.
"I remember having this sort of kaleidoscopic, blinding light in my eyes and to the point at which I couldn't see anything."
His friends agreed it was strange, but thought the cause may have been "food poisoning and the light I was seeing was some kind of sensitivity".
He said when the group arrived at the hotel at Vietnam, he knew something was seriously wrong.
"We were sitting in the hotel room, my friends and I, and I said to them: 'Why are we sitting in the dark? Someone should turn a light on'." The lights were already on.
Macdonald said the deaths of the two Danish girls he had met on a night out put his blindness in perspective for him.
"[The deaths] made me realise that I was very lucky and I felt very grateful that, although I had some difficult consequences, a lot of people did have it worse.
"I felt, given that I was lucky enough to survive, I have a bit of a responsibility to try and prevent the same thing from happening to other people."
He was now learning to use a cane, and hoped to apply for a guide dog soon.
Methanol is an alcohol similar to the familiar ethanol consumed in alcoholic beverages, but the two have different chemical properties which alter how they are absorbed into the body.
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