I have over 2100 articles on this website going back nearly 14 years. Almost all deal with personal safety in some context. While most consist of personal safety advice to protect against criminal violence, we are also vulnerable to other threats.
If you travel internationally, have you ever considered that the alcoholic beverage you consumed might be inadvertently contaminated with methanol? Have you thought that someone might intentionally spike your drink with a drug to either rob or seduce you?
This topic might not be as fun as practicing gunfight tactics, but dead is dead. It wouldn’t be cool to be killed by a poisoned tropical fruity drink in a foreign country.
I am reminded of this fact after reading the recent warnings issued by the British government about methanol poisoning in numerous foreign locations.
Travelers Urged to Avoid 8 Countries After U.S. Tourist’s Death
“The United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has warned that tourists visiting Ecuador, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Russia and Uganda may face a risk of methanol poisoning from counterfeit or contaminated alcohol,” Fox News reports.
“The expanded list builds on existing guidance for countries including Thailand, Laos and Vietnam,” the FCDO added.
Your intrepid writer has consumed home made alcohol (and survived) in eight of the eleven countries listed. In the article below, I’ll share my successful experiences from more than two decades of consuming homemade and locally made alcohol in third world countries. To establish my drunken bona fides, throughout the article you’ll see some photographic evidence of my taste for third world hooch.
Roadside moonshine in El Salvador
Drinking local rum with a friend on the street in Cartegena, Colombia
I have no idea what the bartender is pouring down my throat. Medellin, Colombia
After the shots from the photo above, we set the bar and ceiling on fire with local moonshine.
Despite all of these insane adventures, I’m still alive. Here’s my personal strategy when evaluating the local stuff.
Assessing Home Made Moonshine
As a person who has enjoyed local brews on six different continents, I can tell you there is a safe way. You don’t buy this stuff at your resort or at a tourist liquor store. You ask a local to take you to the person who makes it. Taxi drivers, hotel concierge staff, and tour guides know where to get the local homemade brew.
When you arrive you ask to sample a shot. Of course, you are polite and offer to buy the seller a shot as well so that he drinks with you. If he won’t drink his own brew, run away. If he drinks with you (out of the same bottle) you are probably pretty safe. I’ve done this a lot of places and I’m not blind yet.
Hanging with a roving beach bartender on Copacabana beach
Guifitty, a local rum/herb mixture in Honduras.
My 40th birthday party drinking shots of the guifitty (photo above) mixed with tobasco sauce in Honduras. Yes, it was every bit as bad as it looks
Stay Away from Tourist Bars
Almost all the alcohol poisonings I see in the news are tourists drinking at tourist bars or all-inclusives. I don’t see nearly as many locals poisoned by methanol. The tourist bars know that most of their patrons will never return. What is their incentive to sell the highest quality alcohol? By the time the tourist gets sick, he’s already on the way home.
Local bars have the same recurring customers every day. If they get sick, the word spreads quickly and the bar goes out of business when the locals stop buying alcohol there. Besides, you didn’t go to a foreign country to hang out with tourists. You’ll meet far more locals if you go to the local bar to drink.
Drinking home made rice wine on the street in Saigon, Vietnam.
With my bartender in Tanzania drinking home-brewed banana beer
A “Moscow mule” made with lemon and mint in Kigali. Not recommended.
A better use of mint was this $7.00 pitcher of mojitos in Havana
Tip Your Bartender Well
Tip your waiter/bartender well and he or she will usually treat you right. I find in the developing world $10-$20 a day per person to be a decent tip. You’ll get your money back with your drinks being constantly refreshed and usually heavier pours. It’s money well spent and it helps change the perspective of the “Ugly American” who doesn’t tip, especially at all inclusive resorts.
Good tipping doesn’t guarantee quality alcohol, but if you were the bar tender, would you rather poison the dude who is tipping well or the guy who doesn’t tip at all?
Mixing moonshine and Tang to create a beverage that tasted OK despite no refrigeration on an un-named island off the coast of Panama.
Cambodian bottled beer with a pop-top cap
Buying moonshine straight from the still (in an old Jagermeister bottle) in rural Costa Rica.
Bring your own mug to all-inclusive resorts
One of the things that I hate about all-inclusives that serve free alcohol is that the cups in which they serve the drinks are universally tiny.
Here is the tiny cup containing the margarita I ordered poolside in Mexico. It’s difficult to see the scale, but it’s only slightly larger than a urine sample cup you’d get at the doctor’s office. Suboptimal for a professional drinker like me.
Here’s a secret I learned more than two decades ago. Whenever I occasionally go to an all-inclusive resort, I always bring my own large cup. I use a big plastic cup I got at a local festival years ago. Some folks use insulated Yeti-style cups, but I don’t like packing the extra weight in my bag. The big plastic cup I use weighs next to nothing.
Much better. I can get about four of the tiny margaritas into a cup this size. It makes it easy to stay hydrated (or intoxicated if you prefer) and limits your waiter’s trips to the bar.
Additionally, the larger cups help prevent a bartender from intentionally drugging your drink. He can’t pre-make a drink to target you and then serve it to you when you order.
Furthermore, it makes it hard for the bartender to use contaminated cups. Bartenders who are actively drugging customers know they will get caught if the tourist watches them pour some kind of a liquid into the drink from a bottle that had been stored in the bartender’s pocket.
To avoid that, crooked bartenders will put the drug in the cups first. Then when he reaches under the bar for one of these drugged cups and fills it with your drink order, you won’t know the cup already has the drug in it.
Bringing your own cup solves that problem.
Drinking a local craft beer from a seaside Japanese craft brewery
The strange hooch you can find in Rwanda. This did not actually contain any cannabis. It didn’t even smell/taste like weed. To the best of my knowledge it was vodka with green food coloring added.
Don’t drink cheap well liquor.
All the poisonings I see are usually from the cheapest alcohol the bar serves. There are fewer bottles of the high dollar stuff and they are harder to contaminate. You’ll find that imported liquor is very expensive in other countries. Don’t order a fine Kentucky bourbon in Central America. It will probably not be contaminated, but it will cost you an arm and a leg. Instead, order the top shelf version of whatever local alcohol is popular.
Bottled/canned beer and wine are even safer options.
If you do this, your chance of drinking contaminated alcohol is minimal.
Drinking in a four-seat local bar on the side of a dirt road in rural Uganda
Some fruity frozen concoction the bartender mixed up for us on a deserted beach on Little Corn Island, Nicaragua.
Additional Resources
Getting a poisoned or drugged drink is relatively rare, but it certainly happens. Check out the two articles linked below that provide additional tips to avoid being poisoned. These articles discuss public databases exposing bars that poison tourists as well as how to buy drug detectors for your drinks.
How to Drink Safely On Vacation
Know the Risks When Drinking Spirit-Based Alcohol Away From Home
Stay hydrated, folks.
It’s safest to buy your own alcohol at the duty free shop in the airport, but where’s the fun in that? If you want to try something a bit more adventurous, remember my strategies.
