Healthy Vegans in Hoi An

One of the problems of being in country where there is so much good vegan food to eat is that it’s hard not to over indulge and stay healthy. Hoi An in Central Vietnam (our Vegan Food Quest meets Vegan MoFo 2014 base) offers the travelling vegan the opportunity to be very healthy because its easy to get your hands on healthy vegan food.

Happy faces because there’s a lot of great vegan food in Hoi An

We’ve been really surprised by the different braised eggplant dishes we’ve had in Vietnam and we recently discovered this dish; eggplant cooked in soy and tamarind. Rich in iron, thiamin and niacin, as well as magnesium and phosphorus, tamarind is a super tasty, tangy, sweet and sour fruit that we are happy to see in any of our food. This eggplant dish had the tamarind pips left inside so you’d come across a mouthful that had a deliciously intense tamarind hit every so often.

Zingy with super sour tamarind and full good things vegans need to stay healthy

We also really loved this pumpkin with ginger, coriander, chilli and peanuts. It was sweet and soft with the pumpkin but the spices and crunchy peanuts really balanced out the flavour. The beautiful orange colour of the pumpkin comes from beta-carotene which helps protect against inflammation. Pumpkin is also rich in potassium and zinc (good for bones and your immune system), magnesium (good for bones and your teeth), vitamin C (good for your immune system) and vitamin A (good for your eyes and immune system). So good to eat something so tasty, that’s cruelty free and tastes good too isn’t it?

Healthy vegan pumpkin and it tastes good too!

And these oyster mushrooms with chilli, garlic and lemongrass? This chilli, garlic and lemongrass combination seems quite common here in Vietnam and we really love it. Lemongrass has wonderful anti-microbial properties which means its good for preventing the growth of some bacteria and yeasts (great stuff for vegan travellers). Chilli and garlic are so packed full of good vitamins minerals and other healthy stuff that there’s not enough room to write about it here but who won’t be pleased to know that eating these yummy food flavourings is good for you?

Easy to make, easy to eat, full of good stuff = happy, healthy vegans in Hoi An

Add these to light, noodle soups (the famous pho) or fresh noodle salads and steaming hotpots (we’ll tell you more about them on another day) and it’s easy to be healthy vegans in Hoi An.

The other reason that it’s easy to be healthy vegans in Hoi An is because there are so many wonderful places to cycle and so if you do over indulge you can cycle it off afterwards. We’ve slipped into a habit of cycling around for hours exploring the countryside or the old town and then filling our faces with some tasty vegan food (and maybe a few tasty vegan ‘bia hoi’ (fresh beers) which although not achieving superfood status are definitely the healthier drinking option because they are so light on actual alcohol (2% or 3% usually)… that makes them practically healthy right?