Ya dong 101
A primer on the truest Thai drink, and where you can try it.
A decade ago, I lived in a condo on Sathorn Soi 10. The Mahanakhon building was still being built then, and the street was always full of vendors who sold stuff—snacks, fruit, pre-made meals, toys for some reason—to construction workers.
The most popular? The ya dong vendor.
Ya dong is a fascinating drink with a unique and often disparaged drinking culture. It’s Thai moonshine made by fortifying lao khao1 with pungent roots and herbs believed to enhance your “health.” Meaning, provide a NOS boost for your libido.
Recently, a friend gave me a bottle of his homemade ya dong. It was not a thing I thought one would casually make in their condo, but it had a Proustian effect, and here I am, tumbling down the rabbit hole again. So let’s talk about ya dong, the drinking culture and stigmas that surround it, and where you can try it.
“To your health”
Like palm toddy, chacha, or pálinka, ya dong is a working-class drink. Like so many types of alcohol, including the three I just mentioned, its most ardent enthusiasts also swear by its health benefits.2 Its name translates to “pickled medicine,” in fact.
There are a few tried-and-true variations, with names like gamlang suea khrong3 (“Bengal tiger strength”) and ma gratueb rong4 (something like “horse stomping in the barn”). The dozen-plus botanicals, for lack of a better word, used to make these variants are believed to have medicinal properties. Thai black ginger, elephant’s foot,5 goji berries, Anjelica root, ginseng, Indian snakeroot. If you’ve ever walked into a traditional Chinese pharmacy, you’re likely imagining the aroma right now.
Almost all of these recipes are supposed to boost your libido, make you virile, give you that animal strength in the sheets. Which says a lot about who’s drinking ya dong.6
Ya dong is not for you
Ya dong jars line the shelves at Studio Lam. / Photo courtesy of BK Magazine
There’s a long history of the food and drinks of the working class being co-opted by the affluent. Lobster, Spam, gin, tongue meat, tripe, and coq au vin, to name a few.
Working-class drinking cultures are no exception today.
Across Southeast Asia, you’ll find vendors hawking oddities like cobra-infused whiskey to the adventurous.7 The angsty spirit of lower-class Thai teens—graffiti, sexualized imagery, big “fuck-the-man” energy—runs through the branding of Teens of Thailand, a bar whose signature drink is a THB 440 ($13) Thai tea G&T.8 Even Hanoi’s bia hoi corner has become more tourist attraction than local hangout.
Ya dong entered the mainstream when Tep Bar and Studio Lam put it on their drink menus. More recently, Thai immigrants in the US began to sell ya dong, too.
Unlike gin, ya dong is not going to make anyone fabulously wealthy, and its moment may have already come and gone. But it’s still worth your time to try it if you appreciate drinking cultures, because arguably nothing is more Thai than ya dong.
Where to find ya dong in Bangkok
When I lived in Sathorn, a staggering number of construction workers would patronize the ya dong stall when they ended their shifts.9
Said stall was a makeshift street bar strung up with Christmas lights, as they all tend to be, run by a lone transwoman. The customers—again, pretty much just dudes—would order one of four murky concoctions that the vendor extracted from big glass jars with a ladle. Each shot came with chasers like chili, sugar, and salt powder or pickled mango. You wouldn’t take it like a shot, though. It’s meant to be sipped.
These set-ups still exist, but you have to look for them, and if you’re like me, you might feel wrong intruding into a space made for someone who is not you. But I digress.
Where construction sites exist, especially on the city’s margins, you’ll likely find ya dong. One stall sets up in front of an empty lot in the depths of Sukhumvit Soi 22 (and there’s possibly another near the top of the street, close to Sukhumvit Road). You’ll get the “scooped from a jar” experience, so don’t expect refined quality. And make sure you’re not drinking the toad-infused booze, unless you’re into that sort of thing.
These other bars are far cries from street stalls, but then again, their ya dong won’t kill you. (Methanol and *skims the lede* toad juice? Yep, no thanks.)
On Soi 11, an outsider-appropriate street bar called La Paca serves ya dong with lime slices. You can also get another working-class favorite, Sangsom and soda, for THB 50.
At upscale Tep Bar, Thai Buddhist imagery and classical music meet Mekhong cocktails and ya dong. If you’re in Thonglor, you can drink ya dong cocktails while listening to molam funk at Studio Lam. And at 11 Tigers, a live music bar in Silom that’s popular with Thai first-jobbers, you can get ya dong with pandan-water and pickled mango chasers in a space drenched in red light. It’s kitsch but fun.10
An experiment in the works
At the pharmacy, picking up the colonel’s secret herbs and spices.
Inspired by my friend, I have my own ya dong steeping in the kitchen. Stay tuned, and I’ll share how to make it and where to get the ingredients in Bangkok.
“White spirit,” you’ll recall, a catchword for any clear type of alcohol.
Many also swear that the best stuff is homemade.
กำลังเสือโคร่ง
ม้ากระทืบโรง
The flower, not the animal part.
I.e., men.
Adventurous tourists, although [pick-your-animal-or-animal-part] whiskey, believed to lift libidos in some societies, has its adherents. For lots of reasons, it is not my cup of tea.
Teens of Thailand also specializes in gin, which, as noted above, was born as a drink for the laboring class.
This happened at about the same time that a school kiddy-cornered from the Mahanakhon building let out, which made for quite the juxtaposition.
My inspiration for this write-up is a co-owner of Luka on Sukhumvit Soi 31, and he introduced me to the “strong man” stuff—potent but herby and delicious. Ya dong isn’t on the Luka 31 menu yet, but you can try cocktails made with lao khao infusions (cacao nibs, coriander seed, citrus rind—that sort of thing).