Ban Xang Hai - café — Attraction in Luang Prabang

This place is a tourist trap that they drop tourists off as part of the slow boat ride from Luang Prabang to Pak Ou Caves. The drop-off is mandatory, you don't get to say no, and they advertised this place as homemade whisky village. After what happened at Vang Vien, I don't need to tell you about the dangers of homebrewed alcohol.

There are also numerous stalls selling scarves, which are a few times overpriced as compared to Luang Prabang night market. We're lucky that we were at the market the night before. And if you want to use the toilets here, it's 2000 kip per pax and it's dirty and smelly.

The small whisky bottle also costs 50,000 kip, which can be bargained down to 40,000. Not very expensive, but then again, it's homebrewed. Like as much as I want to support the people here, this place is just sus and you'll get more authentic deals from...

Your experience will depend on your your group or whether you take yourself. My group got rushed through those village too quickly and missed most of it. We did get to see the "Whiskey" being made though, which was really interesting to see. Tried the local wine and "happy water", which was their "whiskey", which is not actually whiskey but it's distilled fermented rice. The "medicine" is distilled, fermented rice, put in a bottle with an animal preserved in it. Snakes, scorpions, hands, lizards, etc. There's also a lot of shops with hand woven cloths. Most shops sell similar things but at drastically different prices, shop around before you commit. Having said that, I'm not really one to haggle over a couple of bucks, but when you can buy a scarf at one place for $5 and the next place sells the same thing for $20... Yeah, just worth...

This place makes rice whiskey (50%), red and white wines (15%). The business supports the local community along with textile products. 1* because they put dead animals in their alcohol (no animals options are also available). My biggest problem is the bear paw-infused alcohol. It's absolutely heartbreaking to see endangered bears chopped up and put in alcohol bottles. This kind of nonsense need to stop now. I realise that this is a cultural practice but bears are endangered partly because they are either killed or kept captive for supposed medical purposes. Tourists need to stop buying into these practices. If there's no demand there will be no supply. Animals don't deserve to be treated...