Mystery still surrounds the death of a backpacker whose body was found at a hotel in Vietnam.

Daniel Frost, 28, of Crescent Road, Tollesbury, died after taking a "lethal cocktail" of morphine and alcohol on February 6.

Mr Frost - a chartered accountant - had gone travelling around Australia and south east Asia.

An inquest at Colchester town hall heard that while he was in Laos, Mr Frost fell down some stairs, badly hurting his foot and cracking his ribs.

He went to a hospital there and was given what are believed to be morphine-based painkillers before travelling to Hanoi in Vietnam.

While he was there he went out with some friends around several bars and drank at least half a bottle of vodka.

Statements by his friends Steven Buckley and Ifan Ramage, read out at the inquest, said they put Mr Frost to bed in their hotel at about 3am.

"He was extremely drunk. I helped carry him up the stairs and put him to bed. Dan was snoring all night which kept me awake," Mr Buckley's statement read.

In the end his friends could bear his snoring no longer and left Mr Frost - known as Dan the Snorer - alone in the room.

In the morning they found him face down on the bed with his face on the pillow. He was not breathing and despite giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation he was pronounced dead.

A post mortem examination revealed he had more than twice the potentially fatal morphine dose for a non-user.

Essex coroner Dr Malcolm Weir said: "There is nothing at all to say he was dabbling in drugs. The most likely scenario is he has taken the tablets to ease the pain from his fractured ribs and exceeded the dose without knowing it. Couple that with the alcohol and you have got a lethal cocktail.

"The evidence suggests it is purely an accident. We don't even know if he knew the painkillers were morphine.

"If you are a backpacker and you are given some tablets for pain you don't usually ask what they are."

Dr Weir recorded an open verdict.

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