One of the more popular day trips from Luang Prabang is a visit to the Pak Ou Caves. The caves are accessible by river, and the two-hour trip by boat inevitably includes a stop at Ban Xang Hai, the Whisky Village.
We set out on a slow boat early in the morning. These ubiquitous wooden longboats, seating about ten people, sit low in the water and sputter up and down the Mekong. They are used as ferries across the river (there aren't any bridges in town) and to shuttle tourists along to and from Pak Ou and on sunset cruises.
The morning was cool, and the air was fresh. We plied the Mekong slowly but steadily, passing the occasional village. Laos is a very rural country, and there's not much in the way of infrastructure. We passed a single bridge on the two-hour journey, but it was still under construction and only half finished.
Two hours after leaving Luang Prabang, the boat docked at Ban Xang Hai, the infamous "Whisky Village". This small and rural village earned its place on the tourist map because of its main local product: lao-lao.
Lao-lao is a type of alcohol made from sticky rice. Next to Beer Lao, it's the most popular drink in the country. It's produced locally by fermenting the rice into a rice wine, or distilling it into a type of "whisky" that's probably more like moonshine. Despite the way it's written, it's not the same word twice. "Lao" means alcohol, and "Lao" (pronounced differently) means "Laotian".
As we stepped off the boat (at 9:00am, I might add), a local man was standing by the docks handing out tiny samples of his red and white lao-lao.
Each cup was tiny - smaller than a thimble. The first was a red rice wine with 15% alcohol. It was smooth and a little sweet.
"Next, the strong one." he said. It was the clear one. I barely tasted it, but the eye-watering home brew pretty much punched me in the face. Turns out, it was the village's (in)famous 100-proof moonshine.
Not my thing.
What was even less "my thing" were the several bottles of "snake wine" that were for sale alongside the rice wine and whisky.
Snake wine is not uncommon throughout Southeast Asia (we saw a lot of it in Vietnam), and nowadays it's mostly sold to tourists as a souvenir. Supposedly, preserving snakes, spiders, scorpions, and other creepy venomous creatures in whisky creates a sort of health tonic and energy drink. I don't buy that...
As a matter of fact, I didn't buy anything at the Whisky Village. Cobra and ginseng whisky just didn't sound that appealing to me.
We even saw several local women weaving silk in the traditional way, not to sell to tourists, but as a real home workshop industry. I think that's pretty neat.
As we walked through the village, we could even see the clay jars that held the fermenting sticky rice that would eventually turn into that awful industrial hooch. While I'm not a fan of the product, I do appreciate the hundreds of years of tradition that go into making lao-lao.
The Whisky Village is an unavoidable and unwanted, but ultimately interesting detour on the trip. It's just a part of the itinerary, and even though I was really just interested in the caves, it turned out to be a sort of strange and unique experience, and something that I was glad to see.
Twenty minutes later, we were back on the river, and back on our way to the Pak Ou Caves, our real destination for the day.
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