Staying vegan while backpacking - help!!

VeganCoco13

Help! Veganism issues.

Myself and my (also strict vegan) boyfriend are backpacking for 1-2 years, currently SE Asia.

Ok, so I’ve been in Thailand for 8 weeks and I'm starting to realise that it's a difficult country to be vegan in.

There have definitely been some issues here, I don’t know what it is about Thai’s and disguising all of their food but the fish looks like tofu, the pork looks like crushed peanuts and the fish sauce is never labelled! I have accidentally eaten non vegan food much to my disgust (including both the creepy 'floss' pork and the weird tofu fish!) I also ate bread that had milk in (because seriously all bread in this country does and because I couldn’t read the packet it just didn’t occur to me!) and soup with chicken in (because apparently chicken is a key ingredient in ‘vegetarian minestrone’) and I’m sure there are countless sneaky fish sauce issues that I don’t even know about that find their way into my food (the blooming water has fish sauce in over here!) even though we ask not to have it!

Food aside, cosmetics are the main issue. Literally every damn thing here is Unilever. The only saving grace is Boots which comes from Thailand and doesn’t test on animals, however it is not vegan.

I buy everything possible from Boots but only big places have them and then I have to improvise! I was using Sunsilk because I didn’t recognise the name and I thought maybe it wasn’t tested but then I looked closer and BAMN! Unilever. Goddamn it.

This place is a total mine field, Thai is impossible for us to read (apparently it's a sort of short hand and coupled with the fact that we can't make out the letters we are not doing well!) and in most of the places we go nothing is written in English.

I am a really committed vegan (I make mistakes now and then, but I have not intentionally eaten non vegan food for 3.5 years - cosmetics and such I’m 95% of the way there and figuring out the rest) but I am already feeling the pressure. I am so sick of eating the same food day in, day out and there just is no alternatives! Places like Bangkok are fine (fantastic in fact!), but for a backpacker in the quieter places where nobody can say the word ‘vegetable’ and there isn’t even a Thai word for vegan it’s getting rough.

I can’t say I haven’t been tempted when a piece of fresh fish looks so much healthier than my third Pad Thai of the day…

We have another 5 months here and then moving on to Australia, NZ and Fiji (which are apparently great for vegans) and I was wondering if anyone’s been to Thailand/Laos/Vietnam and has any advice/tips?

There is no way on earth I want to break vegan, especially not in a country that treats it’s animals this way. But I feel like if nothing changes I’m going to cave and have a pizza or something and then hate myself!

So this is what we already eat regularly (hostels have no kitchen except kettles so no cooking meal suggestions please!):

Fresh fruit and veg (actually not that widely available, fruit is fine, veg is a pain) There is a 7/11 on every street corner and none of them sell anything remotely fresh.
Plain peanuts and almonds.
Peanut butter on toast (or we were before we realised all of the bread has milk - but we have peanut butter and we eat it on apples)
Pad Thai/Fried rice/sticky rice (No egg, no meat, no fish, no fish sauce - 90% of the time this works ok but my god it’s getting boring and is really carb heavy, I've taken to ordering extra tofu and veg, less noodles but it doesn't help the boredom!)
Curry (almost always has fish sauce and although we can ask for this not to be in it it’s impossible to ask what base the stock was (they just don’t understand what you’re asking!) so I avoid these if I can.
Tom Yum and Tom Ka soup, same issues as above.
Cereal bars
Tofu burgers if available - some might be bound with egg (‘nope no egg’ here doesn’t necessarily mean no egg as we’ve found!
Fresh juices and shakes


I really want to avoid weight gain while backpacking (currently I'm still losing, but I'm not eating much) and variety is one thing that keeps me on track, losing it has been difficult.

Even if you’ve never been abroad (brainstorming is always useful!) if anyone has any ideas for thing that we could eat on the road that would be incredible?

Thanks so much!

Kat

(PS: Please no 'just eat eggs/fish/milk etc' that isn't a viable option )

samfleming96155

Not really much help, but wanted to sympathise. My Husband and I went backpacking in Thailand around 4 years ago, and although I am not Vegan, he is. He had exactly the same issues as you, and ended up just eating as veggie as he really couldn't find a way around the fish sauce issue! Its literally in everything over there! Still ended up with a little sprinkling of chicken or pork on his 'vegetarian' rice or noodles. I think the Thais just felt sorry for him and thought they had to sneak in a bit of meat so he doesn't miss out!

We went to India after Thailand and that was really easy to eat vegan. They have 'pure veg' restaurants everywhere that don't use any animal products whatsoever. NZ should be easy for you, you might get a few funny looks in the more rural areas, as I don't think vegetarianism and veganism is a widespread, but at least there wont be a language barrier!

I'll keep an eye on this thread though as would love to get some tips for him for next time we travel anywhere difficult.