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!
How do you go about booking a vegan friendly home stay? And is possible to do that for a few days rather than a month?
Hi Tanysha,
We found the awesomely vegan friendly Jolie’s homestay online – most have postings through the usual AirBnB, Booking.com, TripAdvisor but Jolie also has a website. To be honest, we booked with her because we liked the sound of it and it wasn’t until we got there that we discovered how helpful she was going to be to our vegan travels, showing us the best vegan places in town, bringing us little local treats and arranging a vegan breakfast for us. If you are heading to Hoi An then we’d recommend Jolie’s as would fellow vegan travellers Colina and Victoria from Uprooting Our Lives (they wrote about their vegan say there too if you wanna check their site). We loved it so much we’re going back this year!
It’s much more usual to stay for a couple of days – we have the luxury of being able to travel slowly so can spend longer in places but short stays won’t be an issue at all – just contact the hosts and see about availability.
If you are looking for advice in general then we often ask people on the ‘#vegantravel – share your vegan travels’ Facebook Page, people are really friendly and will share what they know about great places to stay and visit in different locations. And of course you can always pop into the vegan travel twitter chat to chat ‘live’ with other vegan travellers. Check out our new blog post about using social media when you travel as a vegan for more info.
Where are you planning to travel to? let us know if you need any help 🙂
Thanks so much!
Travelling to HCMC – then either Phu Quoc or Nha Trang – Dalat – Hoi An – Hanoi.
I think my friend wants to stay in hotel rather than homestays – we’ve talked and planned a fair bit since making this post, but we’ve so far only booked our stay in HCMC. We both agree we want to stay away from guided tours and to do our own thing. I kinda feel like a homestay might be too prescriptive? What do you think?
Thanks for your help 🙂
Hi Tanysha!
Sounds like a great trip, we’re just about to head to Nha Trang again and then up to Hoi An for a month too! The homestay we stayed in wasn’t prescriptive at all, more like a bed and breakfast – plus they own a hotel and we got to go and use the pool too – the best of both worlds. The hotel is called Kiman Hotel and the homestay is called Jolie’s homestay if you want to look at their websites. You can spend as much or as little time as you like with the family (they are all pretty busy doing their own things anyway) but we found it was a nice way to get some great local information and we really enjoyed their company (which is why we’re going back to visit them for a month this year!) We’re just abut to publish our Vegan Guide to Saigon so watch this space and we put together a more general Vegan guide to Vietnamese food that you might find helpful too… give us a shout if you want any more info – always happy to help!
Caryl
sorry just realised I’d already told you the name of the homestay and that we’re going back!