Vietnam’s famous alcohol aphrodisiac can boost your sex drive – but do you have any idea what’s in it?
Ruou thuoc is said to have healing properties, from reducing aches to improving virility, but choose your brew with care. Do you really want to support the illegal trade in wildlife parts by having one containing cobra blood or bear paw?
“Wait a minute. Did you say snake blood?”, Leonardo DiCaprio says in the opening scene of the film The Beach, just after his arrival in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok. He then takes the challenge, and slams down a shot of alcohol mixed with snake blood offered to him by strangers.
The 2000 film certainly helped to hype the drink among visitors to Southeast Asia. Seven years ago, Michelin-starred chef Gordon Ramsay swallowed the still-beating heart of a cobra at a restaurant in Vietnam for his television series Gordon’s Great Escape.
The activity, an exotic dare for young, thrill-seeking travellers, became so popular that tours to snake restaurants are offered to backpackers in Hanoi. In those restaurants, waiters slit the snake open alive at the table to extract the heart, blood and bile and mix them with rice liquor.
The drink, ruou thuoc, is believed to enhance virility – “one night five times”, as Ramsay’s hosts at the restaurant said.
Is this a fun way to experience authentic Vietnamese culture? “Most Vietnamese have probably never eaten a snake, let alone drunk its blood,” says Tuan Bendixsen, Vietnam director of the animal welfare NGO Animals Asia Foundation. “It is not a significant part of our culture, and the fact that it survives at all is largely down to the tourist trade.”
Animals Asia advises Vietnam visitors not to eat snake or drink snake blood or bile to avoid causing animal cruelty and fuelling the consumption of wildlife.