Bread, Coffee and Cheap Beer in Hoi An

Yesterday we posted about our lovely local Vietnamese vegan restaurant called ‘An Nhu Quan Chay’ – today we have a few more reasons that are leading us to the conclusion that Hoi An, in Vietnam, is one of our favourite vegan travel destinations.

Firstly, the bread is amazing and unlike most bread in Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia (where we’ve spent the last 9 months), it’s VEGAN!

Introduced by the French in 1859, the Vietnamese baguette is made with rice flour and wheat flour making it supremely light and tasty. It’s available everywhere (because of the national obsession with ‘Banh Mi’), and it’s gorgeous.

Our wonderful homestay host made us some fresh mango jam which is particularly heavenly, being full of the flavour of mangoes grown in the hot Vietnamese sun and not overpowered with gooey sugar.

The combination of the heavenly mango jam and the supremely light and tasty bread is one that has been etched into our happy food memory bank forever.

The bread is amazing in Vietnam and this mango jam sent us to vegan food heaven

Secondly, the coffee is amazing too (also unlike Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia) and actually tastes like liquid chocolate.

Being lovers of a nice cup of coffee, we have sought out some pretty acceptable brews during this year of vegan travelling and Caryl even developed a tolerance for the silty Indonesian coffee, where your cup is left with an inch of coffee sludge at the end. But the coffee in Vietnam? It’s a whole other level of awesome.

Merci les Français puor un autre hėritage savoureux… (which we think means thank you to the French for another tasty legacy).

The Vietnamese drink great coffee all day long, it’s really strong and tastes of chocolate

Thirdly, two words: ‘bia hoi’. Famously found in the North of Vietnam in Hanoi, ‘Bia Hoi’ or ‘fresh Beer’ is alive and well in Hoi An too.

It’s a daily brewed, very light and very cheap lager that gets delivered from the factory (where it’s production is largely unregulated by the government) to bars and restaurants who then dish it out to happy customers all day long.

Any leftovers are thrown away at the end of the day so at least knowing it’s fresh makes up for the fact that there are no controls on how it is produced. That and the price of course. Many people say it’s the cheapest beer in the world and at anywhere between 2000- 4000 VND for a glass (£0.05 – £0.10 / $0.09 -$0.18) we have to agree.

Cheap beer in Hoi An – the cheapest beer on the planet?

Now we’re aware that so far, today’s post has just painted a picture of a vegan lifestyle that involves eating white bread, drinking strong coffee and guzzling cheap beer. This is a slight misrepresentation of our vegan travel in Vietnam because in addition to this we have continued to eat some exceptional local cuisine.

Check out Vegan Food Quest Meets Vegan MoFo 2014 post #5 where we show you some vegan Vietnamese delights (including real vegetables and tofu too)…