Concerns
When I tell relatives that I intend to travel alone, their first question is without fail “is that safe?”. Obviously personal safety is a concern of everyone regardless of where they are in the world, but it wasn’t the main thing I was worried about when I first started thinking about this trip. As a vegetarian, eating in some countries may be very difficult, at least communicating the fact will be, especially in those countries that use fish and meat in absolutely everything. In addition to learning some essential phrases for each country, I am going to buy a Vegan Passport to help get over the language barrier. The Vegan Passport provides a detailed list of vegans can and can’t eat in many different languages. The idea is that you hand it over to a waiter and they can use it to ensure that what your receive is safe for you to eat. Its not a fool proof plan, but its better than nothing.
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You’ll probably also want to learn how to say “no meat, no fish, no chicken, no seafood, Vegetables only”. The number of fish eaters & white meat eaters falsely calling themselves vegetarian means that you may sometimes be offerred fish or chicken if you simply say you’re a vegetarian!
The Lonely Planets SE Asia phrase book was a god-send for me in Thailand, Malaysia & Philippines! Key food phrase for Thailand was “Maa Naam pla” – No fish sauce, crucial as everything, including the innocent boiled rice, is generally cooked with fish sauce.
If the parts of Africa you’ll be visiting cook similarly to Nigerian cusine then everything will generally be cooked with some sort of meat or chicken stock! And be prepared for them to wonder aloud how you can possibly survive without meat, lol! The one place I’d ever had difficulty with food was when I was back in Nigeria, I ended up rationing myself on a packet of instant noodles a day, & biscuits I’d taken over from UK plus the local fruits, lost a dress size in weight in 2weeks!
You may want to take some vacuum packed soy or vegetable products (as found in oriental stores) as emergency back-up, just in case.
Oh good food tip – in Africa & SE Asia, look out for hawker stalls selling boiled (in salty water)groundnuts still in their shell. They are a yummy cheap snack & a good source of protein. Also try & find local markets to buy fruits, nuts etc from.
I’ll email you the local names of some yummy veggie foods/eateries to look out for in Thailand & Malaysia.
Most of my fondest SE Asia memories are associated with the yummy local veggie/vegan foods I came across.