For Australian friends Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles it was their first big trip to explore the world.

Like many 19-year-olds, they were drawn to the romance of backpacking through Southeast Asia – where the food is great, the people are friendly and the scenery is breathtaking.

They had “saved enough money after school and university for their trip overseas, as so many of our children do,” said their football team coach Nick Heath. “And off they went.”

They ended up in the riverside town of Vang Vieng, in central Laos, on November 12.

The two checked into the popular Nana Backpacker Hostel, where guests often get a free shot upon arrival. Days later, both were on life support in hospitals in Thailand.

Jones’s death was announced on November 21, and Bowles’s a day later. The death of a British woman, 28-year-old Simone White, was also announced on Thursday.

They are among six foreign tourists killed as a result of a suspected mass incident of methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng.

Two Danish women, aged 19 and 20, died last week, while an American man also died. They have not been identified.

It is unclear how many others have fallen ill, but a transnational police investigation into the deaths is now underway.

Much of the attention has been focused on the hostel where some of the victims were reportedly staying. The girls had taken free photos there before heading out for the night.

The hostel’s manager has denied blame and said the same drinks had been served to at least 100 other guests that evening, who reported no problems. The manager was taken by police for questioning on Thursday.

Mr Heath, who spoke to the media on behalf of Ms Bowles’ family, said they knew it was methanol that made the girls sick. But “no one really knows how and where it got into their system.”

To understand what happened, the BBC spoke to backpackers and a diplomat about the area.

Our reporting found that the city where travelers fell ill remains a party hotspot, despite previous attempts, with some success, to clean up its image, and that while the risk of methanol poisoning is known to consulates and tourist operators, travelers seem largely ignorant.

Vang Vieng – a small town on the Nam Song River, surrounded by limestone mountains and rice fields – is known for its scenery.

It is also known as a party town – a reputation Laos officials have tried to shake over the past decade.

Located a four-hour bus ride from the capital Vientiane, it has long been the stop on the Banana Pancake Trail backpacking route between Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before heading north to the ancient temples of Luang Prabang.

In Vang Vieng, hostel beds are advertised for less than €10 per night, while a bucket of beer can cost half that. Drugs such as marijuana and mushrooms are widely available and openly advertised in cafes and diners.

During the early 2000s and 2010s, the city was known for its hardcore parties and river tubing. But after several tourists were injured or died, efforts were made to increase safety standards.

“To combat river deaths, they demolished a number of bars along the river where buckets of vodka were sold to people floating by,” a Western diplomat in the region told the BBC.

Laos officials wanted to re-center the city as a place for ecotourism rather than just a hub for the young and drunk.

“And it worked,” they say. “It’s changed quite a bit in the last ten years, they’ve cleaned it up, it’s much more modern than it used to be.”

But that’s why: “I think it can be very easy for young travelers to miss that this is still a very poor country with lax regulations and safety standards.”

The diplomat said methanol poisoning – where alcoholic drinks are contaminated with a toxic substance – is known to consulates and tourist operators.

Consulates quite regularly deal with cases of tourists falling ill from dodgy drinks, the diplomat noted.

Southeast Asia is documented as the worst region for methanol poisoning. Local producers who make cheap alcohol often fail to properly reduce the toxic levels of the methanol produced in the process.

According to Doctors Without Borders, thousands of deaths are recorded in the region every year.

But among tourists, awareness of toxic alcohol is low.

British backpacker Sarisha told the BBC’s Newsbeat program that she never thought about the risk of free drinks when she recently stayed at Nana Backpacker.

Like most other hostels, happy hours were a daily part of the venue, as were free shots of local vodka as a courtesy, she said.

“It’s a very party town,” she said.

Tourists still in the city are now taking extra precautions following the shocking deaths.

On Friday, Miika, 19, a Finnish backpacker staying at a hostel just a 10-minute walk from Nana Backpacker, told the BBC that he and his friends had arrived in the city two days ago. They now only ordered bottled beer and reconsidered the river tubes because they included shots.

“Knowing this, we didn’t really want to go there,” he said.

British Natasha Moore, 22, told the BBC she canceled her booking for Nana Backpacker after hearing about the deaths.

“It’s just so scary, I feel so overwhelmed… I feel like I’ve escaped death, almost like survivor’s guilt,” she said in a TikTok video warning other travelers.

Her group arrived in the city two days after the poisoning, where “it was still a bit quiet, no one really knew much about what was going on.”

She knew many travelers decided to skip town and said there were signs at the hostel warning them to be careful with drinks.

She said she “couldn’t even count how many free drinks” she had during her travels, but for five nights in Vang Vieng, she and her friends had no free drinks or liquor, only bottled alcohol.

“I feel so, so sad and angry for all the friends and family and the people still in the hospital. It’s just so unfair, we were just trying to have a good time,” she said.

“We worked hard to save up to travel, like it’s such a brave thing to do, and then something like this can happen.”

Additional reporting by Gavin Butler, Amy Walker and Jack Gray