Vegan in Vietnam
We’ve had a pretty successful month here in Vietnam blogging for Vegan MoFo. There’s been so much vegan food to eat at every turn and we’ve been really pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to be a vegan in Vietnam.
One of the reason’s we’ve been so successful is because of the very lovely people we’ve met along the way and so our main tip for being vegan in Vietnam: start meeting the locals and then let the good (vegan) times roll.
Meet Jolie, who we’ve been referring to as “our lovely homestay host” throughout the month. She hooked us up with our local vegan restaurant, gave us tons of info about how to communicate with people and about local food and also gave us those amazing green bean sweets we talked about in our vegan Vietnamese desserts post.
Thank you Jolie x
On top of this she welcomed us into her home where we were part of family life for our time in Hoi An giving us some lovely memories that we will treasure. She also arranged for us to have some amazingly good food at the Kiman Hotel which was a real treat, and we got to try food that we’d never have found on our own.
Vietnamese salad with a sweet, rice vinegar dressing and full of fresh crushed garlic
The family who ran a vegetarian restaurant in Hoi An Ancient town called Minh Henh looked after us during our numerous visits to their restaurant during our stay. So much awesome vegan food, always served with a smile so it’s no wonder we kept going back.
We enjoyed our evenings at Minh Henh vegan restaurant
The noodle soup at Minh Henh was packed with flavour – yum
These ladies were far to busy to pose for a photo as they turn out nearly 1500 of the world’s tastiest banh mi baguettes every day. Their operation is literally a non-stop conveyer of banh mi and they really don’t have time to stop for chatting.
No time for chatting
We are eternally grateful to them for creating a vegan banh mi which has to be the best vegan sandwich we have ever eaten as it meant that one of them would have to disappear into the back of the shop to prepare the tofu that went inside. But we showered them with our charming vegan smiles and they must have taken pity on us as they would always make us this awesome sandwich when we visited.
A big smile goes a long way
When we were in Nha Trang our hotel receptionist, Miss Loan, saw that we were in danger of being ‘vegans in distress’ at breakfast as there was hardly any food we could eat.
Miss Loan with Paul just before we were leaving…
She magically co-ordinated a huge pile of food for us, then bought us hats to keep the sun off our head and even gave us a lucky penny to keep us safe on our travels. Awesome huh?
Freshly prepared tofu dish for breakfast
Last but not least, the lovely ladies at An Nhu Quan Chay (our local vegan restaurant in Hoi An) never failed to amaze us with their vegan food, dished up with the kindest smiles we encountered in the whole of Vietnam.
They introduced us to the joys of the mushroom hotpot with firey homeade chilli sauce and our new food addiction, fermented tofu. They made us delicious spring rolls, noodles, soups and more. In fact they even made us food to take with us on our travels so we didn’t go hungry on one of our long train journeys.
So glad we got to eat so much of Miss Lien’s amazing food
The key to successfully being vegan in Vietnam, and in fact every other country we travelled to in the world, is definitely meeting local people who are wiling to help you. The internet, fellow travellers and a guide book are all great but there’s something special about filling your vegan adventures with vegan friendly people like this.
It certainly meant we ate well during our time in Vietnam!
