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!
Life 