Traveling as Vegan in an unknown country

This was the first time I was traveling out of country after going vegan. My biggest fear was the kind of food I would find. We had planned to travel to Bangkok(Thailand), then many places in Vietnam and visit friend’s place in Singapore. I did my initial research by going through happy cow website http://www.happycow.net/ and noted down the restaurants in the cities we were going to visit and also spoke to my Husband’s friend who is vegan to know more. This post is mainly to mention about the vegan restaurants and food that I tried.

BANGKOK : Bangkok was a common point to meet friends to travel together to Vietnam. We spent just a day so haven’t explored many vegan restaurants there.

Oriental Smile B&B(Bangkok) : We stayed in a place called Oriental Smile B&B and the host could understand English and helped us with Vegan food. Breakfast was mainly fruits as otherwise it was bread, butter and jam so I preferred eating fruits. Pineapple rice was bland but was good. They asked us if we eat bokchoy and garlic and made simple stir fried green veggies with rice.

Pineapple fried rice

Steamed rice with stir fried green veggies

 

Mango Vegetarian restaurant(Bangkok) : I wanted to try some Thai dish so we ordered Pad thai, but it was not so great, Spring rolls was tasty. Lava cake was the best dish of that day. We tried a dessert of Litchi, it was mainly Litchi soaked in sugar syrup, it tasted good. Coconut ice cream was tasty. Food for two costed around 450 THB.

VIETNAM : The best way to survive here was to use the translator as many of them didn’t know English. This is the phrase which I had to use everytime in non English speaking place : ‘No meat, No egg, No fish, No cow milk or dairy, No honey’ to ‘Không thịt , không trứng , không có cá, không có sữa bò hoặc sữa, không có mật ong’ and yes it did help a lot.

My breakfast in Vietnam was mostly Fruits and we got very tasty fruits in Vietnam especially Mangoes and Watermelons. Couple of places served fresh Orange juice. Many of the Vietnamese food had lots of greens and sprouts included.

Ha Noi ->

Swan Vegetarian restaurant : It is part of Noble and Swan Boutique Hotel(Nha Hang Chay Thien NGA). This is Vegetarian/Vegan restaurant with many mock meat options. But they do use honey in some foods. This one was closer to Hotel where we stayed. We went very late around 10pm in the night and lady who cooks was ready to leave but since we asked if it’s open, she came back to serve us. She didn’t know much English but she was too quick in serving food we ordered and it tasted good too. We visited this place twice.

Food ranged between 25000 to 75000 VND each .

Fried Spring rolls or Nem Ha Noi

Xeo cake or Banh Xeo(Pancake)

Eggplant fritters or Ca tim chien

Mango salad or Gaoi xoai xanh

Hoan Kiem lake salad

Stewed fish or Ca kho(Mock fish)

 

Loving hut ‘The Gioi Chay’ : One of the vegan restaurant which has outlets in many parts of the world. This was the restaurant which my non vegan friends also liked. We ordered variety of food here. Vietnam Porridge was very tasty. We were eating Pancake like dosa(Indian style) but the old lady in the restaurant guided us the way to eat it, roll the pancake inside rice sheet by filling it with sprouts and greens salad, it tasted much better. Mock meats also tasted yummy.

Vietnam Porridge

Sushi rice

Tofu, vegan snails, Herbs Soup

Summer Rolls

Banh Xeo(Pan cake)

Fried Spring rolls

Stir fried Mushroom or Nam rom Kho nieu

 

Ha Long Bay ->

We had decided for 2 days, 1 night Cruise trip to Ha Long Bay and we chose Dragon legend Cruise, Indo China junk. They had asked us for food preference well in advance and they had rechecked twice before we even reached the cruise. I had low expectations on the food, thought it would be mainly salads and fruits. But to my surprise, they served us the tastiest vegan foods and many varieties. Sweet potato in orange sauce, Garden and papaya salad were my favorites.

Tofu soup

Green Garden salad with Lime dressing

Sauteed tofu with black bean

Pho, Mushroom with rice noodles.

Tofu with Soya sauce

Fried Sweet potato

 

Hue ->

Hotel Charming : This is where we stayed, they served us with yummy Mango juices. We had juice couple of times as the mangoes were very tasty.

As vegan breakfast option , there was Rice dumpling which tasted good with pineapple jam.

Quan Chay Thien Phu : We headed for dinner around 9:45pm and Lien Hoa restaurant was about to close and they didn’t let us in. Once we searched around, we found this small restaurant, there was a lady who was watching hindi serial in Vietnamese language. Fried rice and salad were simple and good. Cassava cake was not so great. Total bill was 2,80,000 VND for 5 people.

Vegetable noodles

Vegetable fried rice

Lettuce, Tofu and Mushroom salad

Mushroom Potato porridge

Cassava cake

Mushroom chilli pepper

 

Lien Hoa : We visited here for lunch as we had missed it previous night as it was late. Sesame Jackfruit was the dish of the day. It was crispy jackfruit tossed in jaggery syrup and topped with sesame. Stir fried Mushrooms was tasty as well.

Jackfruit with sesame, Fried rice, Rice dumplings, Green veggies, vegan dips

Stir fried mushoorms

 

 

Ho Chi Minh city ->

Hum Vegetarian lounge and restaurant : This restaurant serves eggs and vegetarian and vegan food. We mentioned initially to serve only vegan foods. No matter what we ordered, it tasted awesome and got over in few minutes. Yummy salads, different varieties of fried rice and starters.

Salad a la ‘..hum'(Papaya salad)

Mushroom salad

Square deep fried spring roll

Zucchini, Bell Pepper and Asparagus sticks in sauce

Banana blossom salad

Holy basil fried rice

King oyster mushroom with green apple sauce

Bird nest roll

Watermelon, salted lime and ginger

Pineapple rice

Brown rice in lotus leaf

Ginger tea

 

Even though we stayed in Vietnam for 10 days, there was never a day when we had to struggle to get the vegan food. Even in small restaurants, we could get rice and green veggies if nothing else was available and fruits was available everywhere. Vietnam was surely a paradise for vegans with many vegan and vegan friendly restaurants.

Vietnam is surely a must visit place!

 

A week in Beijing

Here comes a blog post after a long break!

I always wanted to travel outside India and finally got a chance to travel with my husband when he had to head to Beijing for official work for a week.

Our journey started with lot of excitement of visiting a new foreign place, we were surprised to get welcomed by the unexpected cold breeze outside the airport.

Our room was booked in Hotel Crown Plaza, very well maintained hotel with very nice and spacious room.

On the first day my husband headed towards client location for work and I spent my time inside room browsing all the tourist places and subway routes to each place and marking in the tourist map to make it easy for us to visit the places.

I wanted to make good use of our stay so went outside alone the next day, roamed around in Hutong (Hutongs are a type of narrow streets or alleys, commonly associated with northern Chinese cities) and had lunch in a Chinese Vegetarian restaurant Xuxiang zhai.

My husband joined me after his work and we visited Yonghegong Lama Temple, Buddhist temple and monastery. Here they gave us a bunch of incense sticks for free to light it in a small chamber outside the temple hall and pray. Temple is very beautifully built, you will have to walk and pass through couple of halls where you can see various forms of Buddha statues. We were blessed by one of the lama and he gave us Apples(he didn’t give it to anyone else around ;)). Another lama was speaking to me in Chinese and broken English and wanted to know name of Buddha in India. I said Siddhartha but he said Shakyamuni which I didn’t know 😦 (I learnt it now :P)

One of the lama in Yonghegong Lama temple

Our hotel  recommended a vegetarian restaurant Tian Chu Miao Xiang and we tried to go there via subway, after talking to few Chinese guys to know about the address, one of the guy helped by walking with us till restaurant as he couldn’t converse well in English. Food was really good and tasty.

Next in the list was Tiananmen square, Forbidden city and Jingshan Park.

Near the entrance of Tiananmen sqaure, we saw couple of soldiers doing march fast. We entered the beautiful Chinese imperial palace, we walked through each buildings which was used by the emperors of Ming dynasty in Beijing. Long walk through 100’s of halls leads to the end where we can see tower of Jingshan park from where we can get the entire view of forbidden city.

Beautiful architecture in Forbidden city

Very important to be careful about some scams which happens here like tea ceremony scam(art students, rickshaw scams) where some students talk very friendly and ask you to have some special teas for which you may end up paying lot of money.

From Jingshan park, we got nice view of forbidden city but because of the harsh light we couldn’t click much pictures and we could sight Stupa at the other side and headed towards that place.

View of Forbidden city from Jingshan park

The park was huge with many trees, frozen river, different type of stone structures, temples. White Pagoda(Stupa) is built inside Beihai park. It was less crowded, and we got awesome sunset view.

White Pagoda

Sunset view from Beihai Park

Top on the list was visiting Great wall of China. One of the nearest one was Badaling Great wall. After some research we decided to take public transport instead of taxi as they were charging hefty amount of 400+RMB. We had to go to Deshengmen Tower from where we could get direct buses to Badaling great wall(12RMB per person). After 90mins of journey, we reached the place and decided to hike. Badaling is 7,600 meters (4.7 miles) long. There were around 12 watch towers which we will come across in Badaling great wall. Some places were too steep to climb or slippery while getting down. With some breaks we could reach the top and get down from another direction. We got picturesque view of surrounding hills and got to see great wall stretched to long distances. We were astonished by the difficulty taken to built the great wall.

Couple hiking down the Great wall of China

After the tiring hiking trip to Great wall, next day’s plan was to visit Temple of heaven, also known as Tiantan park where mostly locals spend their time very early in the morning playing games in groups, exercising. We entered from east gate side. There are multiple religious buildings and long pathway to the temple. You will come across different halls where emperors used to pray for good harvest and rain, couple of museums showing the vessels used, photos of the Ming dynasty emperors, architectural details.

Temple of heaven

There is a echo wall , but we couldn’t hear any echoes 😛

There is a circular mound altar which is concentric circle of marble stones, emperors used to stand at the centre and pray for favorable weather. We reached the South gate exit.

Kids playing around Imperial vault of heaven

Many of the local old people spend time playing and chatting in Tiantan park

We shopped liked crazy at zoo market and Yashow market, got lot of jackets, sweaters, bags for much cheaper price.

We had to miss Summer palace due to time constraint but nevertheless we could cover many of the places possible and had a great time learning couple of Chinese words, being like a local roaming in subway, bargaining in markets, trying Chinese vegetarian foods.

It was a lovely experience and I recommend these places to everyone who plan to visit China 🙂

 

Safari in Bandipur National Park :

Weekends is more of trips and photowalks these days. Excitement was high since it was my 1st trip to Bandipur and also my 1st visit to a National park. Haven’t travelled much all these years in my life. Lately, I am getting lots of opportunities to travel, credit goes to my friends. This time 4 of us planned to go on trip on 1 of the weekends and also to celebrate 1 of  friends birthday. We started at 5am on a sunday morning and headed towards Bandipur and we had booked the rooms in Jungle lodges, Bandipur http://www.junglelodges.com/.  Stopped for breakfast at Kamath on the way and then started our journey again. We reached the lodge at around 1040am and few of us were bit disappointed since we had thought the lodge will be somewhere inside the jungle but it was on main road and also before the boundary of Bandipur starts.  Since there was time for the checkin, we decided to go on a ride till Madhmalai and come back during checkin time. We felt bad to see less grenery around and it was sunny as well. We were enjoying the nature. We saw few monkeys on the way which were running around and jumping. We crossed Karnataka border and reached Madhmulai. We didn’t go for safari there since we had already made plans in Bandipur. We spent little time there and could found few birds and clicked few monkey pics.

Monkey protecting his baby

People there were kinda forcing us to go on safari and it will be good etc. We escaped somehow by telling we will be coming back tomorrow for the same.

We headed back to Bandipura from there. On the way we found beautiful Indian Roller on a tree. After checkin we went to our rooms and liked the place since it was full of greenery and rooms were very spacious. Plan was that we will have lunch and then rest for sometime and leave for safari at 4 PM. We got the place at the back of the jeep and were excited to get a glimpse of animals and birds. We found many deers on the way.

Journey inside the jungle was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. We were searching for the animals around and found a peacock inside the bushes. Every time we found something, my heart used to jump with joy. We crossed the main road and entered another part of  the forest and jeep stopped and then we found elephant at a distance, it heard the noise of the jeep and went inside the bushes. We waited there for sometime but couldn’t see it again. With little disappointment we moved forward and fortunately we could find a herd of elephants eating grass, and plants. There was 1 cute little one with parents and they turned their back towards us, not letting us click their pics. After taking few pics, we moved forward and stopped the jeep. One of the parents which observed us for long time became furious and started chasing the jeep to scare us.

Furious elephant chasing our jeep

Our heart beat was raising. Jeep driver didnt start the jeep, elephant came very close to our jeep and we started clicking the pics since it was very close. Finally, we moved ahead with happiness of getting close glimpse of elephant and also with the scariest memory.

The scenic beauty, cool breeze made us enjoy the ride. We found a Common Hoopoe, a beautiful bird. It was bit difficult to find this bird in Bangalore but we could find a lot of Hoopoe’s in the forest and many more birds like Bushchat, Myna, Bulbul, Lapwing, white throated kingfisher etc.

Our eyes were searching for the glimpse of tigers or leopards but we couldn’t find one. We found a sambhar deer with huge horns after long time since our meetup with Elephants. Sambhar deer started running far away after seeing us. There were few other groups for the safari. It was bit irritating to see few foreigners shouting inside the forest  and giggling loudly.

After moving forward, we found many Sambhar deers. One of them was continously posing till we left the place. Watching the Sun go down inside the forest was a good experience. Peacocks were found at many places. The evening safari came to an end and though we were bit tired but wanted to spend more time in forest. Though the next days plan according to the Naturalist of Jungle lodge was that we will be going for a walk/ trekking we decided that we should go for 1 more safari since this one was exciting.

We informed that we are interested for the safari next day and we were told that there will be wild life movie played before the dinner. The movie was mainly about tigers. It was very disheartening to see how tigers were killed. There was a message from the movie that we should protect tigers and for that all of us should contribute by avoiding poaching of tigers, making small groups of wild life enthusiasts to spread the message, not just enjoying the safari and troubling the animals and their habitats. Our politicians should come forward to help in conserving wild life and to avoid the intrusion of people and mining etc should be avoided. Movie ended with an awesome message :

The tiger perishes without the forest, and the forest perishes without its  tigers.

If we cannot save our national animal, what else can we save?

Though we didn’t find a tiger, watching the movie about tiger was very helpful.

Check the website : http://www.truthabouttigers.org/home/ and the movie which was played for us : http://www.youtube.com/truthabouttigers

After such a inspiring movie, we headed to dining hall for the dinner. Loved the food there. There was camp fire put near the dining hall and we 4 of us had a chat till it was 11:30, though I was more of a listener as always, I enjoyed the conversation.

We had a plan to surprise our friend by celebrating his birthday so went back to rooms and celebrated the birthday and had good time. We had to go to bed since we should be ready by 545 am next morning for the safari. All excited by the previous days safari, we got ready and had a cup of tea before heading for the safari, we wanted to catch the back place of the jeep to enjoy more so we went early.

We were glad we chose the early morning safari during the jeep ride by seeing mist all around. It had enhanced the beauty of the Bandipur.

Early morning fog inside the forest

Though the journey was awesome, we were thinking if we are going to find a tiger/leopard, then we could find pub marks which we followed but we missed it somewhere in between and couldn’t find the leopard. There were small water bodies but no animals around. It was more foggy inside the forest and it was so soothing and enjoyable experience. We moved forward and there they were the most beautiful creature on the earth, peacocks, walking on the roads, few sitting on tree branches.

Peacock resting on the tree branch on a foggy morning

Looked like they were enjoying the foggy early morning walk. The funny and crazy creatures monkeys were seen on top of many trees doing their usual kothi cheste. As we moved forward, we found a mongoose searching something on the ground. It was roaming around and ran into the bushes hearing the jeep sound. We were enjoying the fog as there were droplets of water on eyelids as well. Never had we experienced this amount of fog. The peacocks were found again, the beauty and the amazing colors and patterns all over the body makes us wonder if there can be any other beautiful creation like this.

Found a Crested serpent eagle on a huge tree enjoying its solitude. We stopped jeep to click the pics and it was there posing for our camera for long time and then flew away and sat on a nearby tree which helped us get a good glimpse.

Early morning safari

We reached the end of our safari and found a lot of deers with cute little ones with the parents. With a bit of disappointment of not finding tigers, we headed back towards the lodge and the jeep got punctured just few meters away from the lodge. We got down and waited for driver to do his work and found brahminy starling and few birds around.

Beautiful flower in jungle lodges

It was an amazing experience of traveling inside the forest. The stay and the food at the Jungle lodges was good as well. This place is worth the visit. Hope the number of tiger increases in near future and such beautiful creatures are present for further generations as well.

My race with the birds

HSBC organizes an event called as Bird Race every January. Before you imagine that it is a flying competition between birds, let me explain what it is! It is our race of finding the birds. It is an event where several teams of 5 members each explore the birding places in and around Bangalore and try to sight as many birds as possible.

This was the 1st time I was participating in HSBC Bangalore BirdRace 2011 event, which was on 16 January 2011. ( http://birdrace.dhaatu.com./ ). Though I didn’t have much knowledge about birds names. I joined group of friends to participate in this with our group name – paradise flycatchers. Before the D-day, I went through the website http://www.indiabirds.com/ to make myself familiar with bird IDs. Many of the birds looked similar to me and I was confused about the names since there were around 500birds. Never knew that these many bird species are found in India.

The event was supposed to start from 6am and end at 6pm. We had to cover 2 places in Bangalore west and we started our journey towards Manchinabele dam. It was the 1st time I was visiting that place and was too excited about this event.

Though it was a very cold winter morning, I was enjoying the ride. We stopped at a place for tea and I saw that there was something which I wanted to eat from many days i.e., bun and gulkan, I used to eat this so much when I was a kid and it got back childhood memories. While I enjoyed eating it like a kid, my friend was wondering looking at my excitement.

On the way to Manchinabele, saw big banyan tree. There were many birds around. I don’t know what was wrong with me that day but crows were looking like some other birds and I irritated my friend showing crows many times. Sunrise was amazing that day. It looked like a painting. We did some sunrise photoshoot too.

Beautiful sunrise

I saw the smallest birds which I had never seen. Found many birds sitting on the wires ,bushes and trees. Chirping of birds was so soothing.

White-browed Bulbul. Photo courtesy : Prashant Kulli

We didn’t know ID of few birds, we clicked pics of those birds and also recorded the chirping of birds so that we can check it out later. Before reaching the dam, we had found many birds – common kingfisher, flycatchers, sparrows, fowls, pigeons, doves, bulbul, myna etc.

Grey heron, patiently waits for its prey

I was amazed at the beauty of the dam, greenery around. We walked around the birds’ places silently without disturbing their habitat.

Grey-breasted Prinia. Photo courtesy : Prashant Kulli

After observing as many birds as we could, we sat down to note down all the birds we found. We clicked few landscape pics. There was 1 more group with huge zoom lenses clicking pics.

People boating in Manchinabele dam

We headed back towards our next destiny since it was getting late and we had found quite a lot of birds. Next we went near a lake but found just 1 or 2 birds.

Next we decided to go to Ragihalli and found quite a lot of birds around like green bee eater, wabblers etc. This place comes in the vicinity of Bannerghatta National park and we walked through fields and also places which looked like jungles to find the birds.

Yellow wagtail. Photo courtesy : Prashant Kulli

It was a beautiful experience looking out for birds everywhere and enjoying the nature’s beauty. This event is organised to create awareness and I think it served the purpose atleast in my case. The results were to be announced after 6pm, We had found around 82 birds and we stood 28th. Looking forward for the next bird race and hoping for better results next time and to learn more about birds.

Sports day at SRMAB

Sri Ramana Maharshi Academy for Blind(SRMAB)  (http://www.srmab.org.in/index.php) is a school and hostel for visually impaired kids.

Pic 1:  Sri Ramana Maharshi Academy for Blind(SRMAB)

I was very excited to be a part of this day and help as a volunteer to conduct the sports. I had to update office related work too on the same day before I could join the fun at Sports Day. It was supposed to start at 9am and I reached the venue at 10am after completing office work.

Kids were divided into groups depending upon which class they were studying in. I was made volunteer for a group of small kids since all other groups were already assigned to different volunteers. Kids were very excited and were happily participating in most of the events. Teachers instructed volunteers about the games’ rules etc. Volunteers were helping kids with games and instructing them about rules of the game. I had a camera too in my hands and I was enjoying clicking and captured different games.

High school kids played shotput, long jump, ball in the bucket, running race, gunny bag race, book balance to name few. Primary school kids played lemon and spoon, memory test etc.  Only boys were allowed to participate in shotput and long jump.

Pic 2: Shot put

Kids were allowed to practice the games before the actual ones started since they had to be aware about the distance they were supposed to cover and also about game rules. Few kids fell while playing gunny bag race but they had the enthusiasm to participate which kept them going and not quitting.

Pic 3: Lemon Spoon

It was memory test game and I had to tell kids to touch and feel the items and know what it is and they were supposed to remember all those names and tell it to a teacher.

Pic 4: Memory Test

Few kids were touching the camera and wanted to learn how to take pics. I could teach few of them and they were very excited about it and also were posing happily for the pics with their friends.

Pic 5: Kids trying their hand with photography

I had read somewhere that visually impaired can take up photography as a hobby, they can click pics based on sound. It looks interesting. Small kids were given biscuits and juice for eating game. Overall, It was a nice learning experience to see that even if we have some limitations, we can try whatever we wish to.

Pic 6: Friends

“Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.”

Photography

Chandrataal lake

I was never so much interested in photography. Only after I started looking at pics taken by 1 of my friend, I started getting interest and now, it has become my favorite hobby. I just spend lot of time reading about technicalities of it or take out the camera and take lots and lots of pics and experiment.  I don’t own a camera now. Hoping to get one soon. I have started uploading the pics which I have clicked in either flickr or facebook or picasa  and ask few photographer friends to comment or give suggestions so that I can improve and learn more.