The idea of this post is to help first time, non-Vietnamese speaking vegetarian travellers who are going to Vietnam.
I travelled to Vietnam for about 3 months last year, and I tried to eat vegetarian food a lot of the time I was there. First, I’ll explain what I found to be the general situation with vegetarian food in Vietnam. Then I’ll give some ideas on what vegetarians can do to make their lives easier.
I think most of the info you find online about being a vegetarian traveller in Vietnam is actually very misleading. I thought I’d try and write a blog post that’s realistic and honest. Most of the travel blogs and a lot of online information is just tacky, meaningless nonsense. Otherwise, it doesn’t take into account what it’s really like for travellers who go to Vietnam with no experience of how things are in Vietnam.
As I said, I went to Vietnam last year, myself. I stayed there 2/3 months, and this included cycling from Saigon to Hanoi.
If you’re interested, I wrote another post about cycling from Saigon to Hanoi.
I’m Not Actually a Vegetarian
First things first, I’m not actually a vegetarian. I just am sometimes when I want to be healthy. I was a bit fat when I started my trip in Vietnam, and so I thought I’d cycle the country and eat vegetarian food the whole time to get healthy.
What I actually found out is that vegetarian food isn’t exactly easy to get hold of in a lot of places in Vietnam.
What I ended up doing, myself, was actually just swapping to eating a mix of fish and vegetarian food instead of making a big effort to find vegetarian food all the time. In the end, I ate much more fish than vegetarian food. So, I’m not really a committed vegetarian or anything, although I think this post will still be helpful.
Is it Easy to Find Vegetarian Food in Vietnam?
From my experience, what I found to be the general situation with vegetarian food in Vietnam is that…
- Vegetarian food that provides balanced, complete nutrition is not standard at all, and you have to make an effort to find places that provide it.
- It’s easy enough to find good vegetarian, and also vegan food, in the popular tourist destinations.
- If you go off the beaten track, it’s much harder to find vegetarian food when you’re a new traveller there and you don’t know how things work.
If you want to travel to Vietnam and eat vegetarian food, don’t trust the blog posts and people who say it’s easy. You actually need to be well prepared. Even in the popular tourist destinations, you need to know where to go and you’ll have to break the mould a bit to get good vegetarian food. Outside of the tourist destinations, in rural areas and things like that, you really need to know what you’re doing to get vegetarian food.
Vietnam has a heavily meat and fish based diet.
Another article I found that gives a realistic perspective on is this whole subject is this one here by A Little Adrift.
You Can Still Go to Vietnam
I hope this article doesn’t put any vegetarians or vegans off going to Vietnam. It’s slightly negative, but it is possible to be a vegetarian or vegan in Vietnam with the right planning. Vietnamese food is also really nice, and when you find vegetarian Vietnamese food, it’s very nice.
Also, Vietnam’s a nice place to travel in General, so it’s worth the effort. I hope I don’t put off vegetarians and vegans who really want to travel to Vietnam.
Vietnam Has Vegetarian Food, But it’s Confusing When You First Go There
I’ll point out that some of the problems relate to the fact that it’s just difficult to understand how things work when you’re a first time traveller.
People who speak Vietnamese will probably be able to find vegetarian food in lots of places fairly easily. Non-Vietnamese speaking vegetarians who have previous experience of travelling in Vietnam will know what they’re doing as well.
The trouble is that if that’s not you, then it can be quite difficult.
The whole problem backpackers and travellers have is that they’re new, and so they don’t know what they’re doing. You also change locations frequently, so one minute you’re in one place with one local cuisine. The next you’re in another with a different cuisine. Plus, people and systems of organisation are just different in different places.
As well as this, travelling can generally just be a bit chaotic and disorganised. All kinds of stuff happens to mess up your plans and make things confusing.
Why is it Hard to Find Vegetarian Food?
Here are some of the problems I had when I tried to find vegetarian food.
The Language Barrier Can Be a Challenge
When you go off the beaten track, and even in a lot of urban areas, people often don’t speak English or it’s hard to have a complicated conversation in English. Vietnamese is also a hard language to speak yourself. It’s difficult just to say basic, short phrases and to be understood. As a result, there’s often some difficulty with language.
You can get over this to a certain extent with things like Google Translate or with the few phrases you can say. The problem, however, is that getting vegetarian food usually needs a bit of discussion or you need to be able to clearly explain what you want. This adds a level of complication to your conversations that can make things difficult.
One time I thought I’d perfected asking for vegetarian food in Vietnamese, and I got a massive plate of pork.
There Usually Aren’t Vegetarian Options in Normal Restaurants
A lot of restaurants don’t seem to have any vegetarian options, or it’s usually limited to just veg fried rice or veg fried noodles. The diet seems to be based on fish and meat, and there isn’t much attention paid to vegetarianism, as standard. I think kitchens need to be equipped for vegetarian cooking, and they either are or aren’t equipped.
One thing to note is that while you’ll find a vegetarian section on most restaurant menus, the problem is that these are really just side dishes. They’re not dishes with the sustenance you need to keep yourself going long term.
As standard, it’s largely just meat and fish based dishes, unless you can find a place that is already prepared to cater for vegetarians. So…
You Need to Find a Vegetarian Restaurant
You need to go to a vegetarian restaurant if you want good vegetarian food.
You can find these without too much trouble in the popular tourist destinations like Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Da Nang, Hoi An, Hue, Ninh Bing, Ha Long Bay and Hanoi. Plus in other tourist destinations as well. In other places, however, they’re hard to find. Sometimes, this might be just because the vegetarian places aren’t shown on Google Maps or in English anywhere. So they do exist, but without the language skills, you can’t find them.
In lots of off the beaten track locations, in my experience, you simply won’t find a restaurant that is prepared to cater for vegetarians.
Eggs Are Included in Vegetarian Dishes
Another thing is that eggs are often a standard part of vegetarian dishes. Unless you ask not to have it, eggs usually come in veg fried rice and veg fried noodles, for example. Sometimes, it can also be difficult to explain that you don’t want eggs.
What You Can Do to Find Vegetarian Food
Just to reiterate, in the popular tourist destinations, you shouldn’t have too much trouble. You’ll have to look around, and you’ll have to make a trip to the right place, but you’ll be able to find vegetarian food. So don’t worry too much if you’re going to places that are known to cater for foreigners.
Otherwise, you need to be well prepared, and you need to plan what you’re going to do about food ahead of time.
Eat Veg Fried Rice and Veg Fried Noodles
One safe bet (although it often comes with eggs as standard) is to have veg fried rice and veg fried noodles. You’ll get this pretty much everywhere. Most normal restaurants do both of these dishes.
There are a few other common vegetarian dishes as well, like veg spring rolls.
Use Google Translate
You can use Google Translate to tell people what you want.
This is something you’ll probably have to work on a bit because there’s often trouble communicating where things need discussion.
Download the Happy Cow App
I met quite a few people who used the Happy Cow app to find vegetarian food. I didn’t actually get it myself, but I think it’s pretty good. It just shows you where vegetarian and vegan food is in a particular location. I’m not sure how well it works if you go to smaller towns.
Check it out here.
This isn’t an affiliate link.
Look for Chay Signs
Chay means vegetarian in Vietnamese. If a restaurant has this on the board, then it’s vegetarian.
Use Google Maps
You can search for “chay”, “com chay” or “quan chay” (com = food, quan = diner and chay = vegetarian) or just “vegetarian restaurant” in English on Google Maps.
Just be aware that I found Google maps is often out of date. It looked to me like vegetarian restaurants spring up and then close a lot. I’d go to a place from Google Maps, but it would be closed. Just look at the reviews to check if there are recent ones before you go.
Look Near Buddhist Temples
There are often vegetarian restaurants near Buddhist temples. These will be cheap, local kind of eateries with good food.
Wait for the 1st and 15th Day of Each Month (Lunar Calendar)
On the 1st and 15th day of each month on the lunar calendar Buddhists eat meat free food and so restaurants will be more accommodating.
Look for Indian Restaurants
One good tip that works in a few places is to look for Indian restaurants. They’re not always listed on maps as vegetarian, but they still usually serve vegetarian food.
Look for Western Restaurants
I only really found western restaurants in tourist destinations, but where you find them, they might have a vegetarian option or two.
Find Accommodation With Cooking Facilities
You can look for accommodation with a kitchen or kitchenette and just cook for yourself. This is something I’ve done in a few places, and it sort of solves all your problems in one nice go. You’ll want to go out as well, but it can help.
Booking.com has filter option where you can just search for places with cooking facilities. Accommodation is very affordable in Vietnam, which helps.
Take a Packed Lunch or Dinner
Another nice, simple option is just to take your own food to places.
You’ll often find vegetarian banh mi (banh mi chay), and this is a good one for just taking away as packed lunch for your next meal. Since I’ve left Vietnam, I often buy oatmal and travel with that. I’m not sure how easy it is to find in Vietnam, but it’s something you just need to add hot water and some sugar to cook. You can also get bread and peanut butter in Vietnam.
This is a particularly good idea for things like a long bus journey.
Ask at Your Hotel
Your hotel will always want to look after you, and they’ll know the local area well. You can ask them for help.
A Note About the Internet on Veg Food in Vietnam
In my opinion, most of the internet is confusing and misleading when you research the situation with vegetarian food in Vietnam. It’s actually one of the things that gave me the idea to start the Open Travel Blog.
If you search online about vegetarian food in Vietnam, you get all these tacky blogs that have absolutely no thought or experience put into them. They basically just tell you that Vietnam’s a vegetarian country and there’s nothing to worry about because that’s the easiest thing to do. All they care is that you read their page and maybe click on a link.
Vietnam’s a great country, and vegetarians and vegans can find the food they need and travel there, but things aren’t simple for vegetarian foreign travellers at all. It’s quite difficult to get good vegetarian food in a lot of places when you don’t have experience of how things work.
In my opinion, these articles aren’t helpful at all…
https://travel-lush.com/vegetarian-in-vietnam/
https://vietnam.travel/things-to-do/vegetarian-guide-vietnam
https://khyatimaloo.com/vegetarian-vegan-food-guide-to-vietnam/
I searched on Reddit as well, and Reddit sort of seems to be sort of policed by people with loads of experience of being vegetarian in Vietnam. Backpackers and travellers who fairly ask for help on Reddit get shouted down sometimes by people with lots of experience of being a vegetarian in Vietnam.
This Reddit post here is probably typical of a lot of people’s experience when they’re a first time traveller in Vietnam. Most responders are actually helpful here, and there are a few useful pieces of advice. It’s worth looking at.
The Open Travel Blog
You can write for the Open Travel Blog, and you can say anything you want.
You can disagree with this post if you’d like.
The idea of the Open Travel Blog is to give travellers and backpackers the chance to blog about their travel experiences and earn money doing so. You get realistic, honest, first-hand travel information from people who know what they’re talking about.
