Vegan in Sydney

There's something about visiting cities with iconic buildings that really floats my boat. NYC, Paris, Barcelona, and now Sydney are all up there with my favourite cities in the world and that's what links them in my mind. The other thing they all have in common is amazing vegan food!

Sydney can be a challenging place for a traveller on a budget but the good news is that the centre of the city is very walkable. We walked from our hostel, YHA's Railway Square hostel, up George Street towards the Art Gallery of New South Wales, harbour bridge, Museum of Contemporary Art, botanical gardens, and the opera house almost every day during our stay. Their super central location means that you're literally inside the station surrounded by pricier accommodation options but paying a fraction of the price. It really is considerably cheaper than anywhere else in the area. As well as being by the train and bus depots which will whizz you to vegan destinations all over the city it's basically on top of a Lord Of The Fries (the chicken and chips is a total bargain by Aussie standards and I love their $5 mini chicken burger), in amongst multiple bubble tea spots (Coco forever!), and close to Brew Street for your breakfast muffin and coffee. 

MAKER Sydney

Sydney based coffee bar / bakery MAKER is one of the coolest vegan businesses in the world and I'm here to tell you why! Firstly, look a this sign. Self love and vegan treats are basically what I'm all about. I visited another popular vegan business in the city and they had a sign letting me know that their products are guilt free. Nope! Not cool. Eating isn't something that we should be made to feel guilty about and businesses buying into damaging rhetoric about guilt free foods and clean eating makes me super angry. Bring on the self love and vegan treats!

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Secondly Maker are a social enterprise. Annabelle who makes beautiful bespoke cakes at My Little Panda Kitchen, and Kate of The Vegan Teahouse who specialise in vegan cafe classics, got together to run a 100% vegan commercial kitchen where anyone can join in and make and sell epic baked goods. I mean really?! How perfect are these people? I want to move to Sydney and be a part of this.

Vegan in Adelaide and Broken Hill

After exploring Perth and Fremantle Nick and I flew east to Adelaide. It's a smaller and less touristy city than Melbourne, Sydney, or Brisbane and I really enjoyed it. On our first night there we went for a walk and saw protesters showing the earthlings experience, drank bubble teas, and went to Zen House for vegan yum cha. It was the perfect first glimpse into the city and we were excited to return. We stayed at the Adelaide Central YHA hostel which worked out great for us, it really is very central which is a theme with YHA hostels, when they say they're central they really are. It's within an easy walking distance of vegan eats, there was good wifi which is a must as a travel blogger, a huge lounge area, a book swap (so great!), and a decent sized kitchen which was always very clean. It was the perfect jumping off point for a trip into the outback as they even have a car park out back where we were able to park our rental car whilst we loaded it up with food, water, and our backpacks.

Our road trip was taking us six hours north of Adelaide to Broken Hill where we planned to stay in a cabin for a couple of nights.

Vegan in The Gili Islands

When Nick and I were planning our trip to Bali I knew that we had to visit the Gili Islands. These tiny islands seemed like the most amazing place to live out our dessert island fantasies so we blocked out ten days and got researching. We decided that Gili Trawangan wasn't for us, it's too loud and too much of a party hotspot and it definitely doesn't have the chilled out vibe we were looking for. We decided to split our time between Gili Air and Gili Meno spending a few nights on mellow backpacker hotspot Gili Air and then the majority of our time on the even smaller and quieter Gili Meno.

Our trip to the Gili Islands didn't start wonderfully as I started to feel unwell on our last morning at the resort we were staying at on Lombok. I wasn't sure if it was food poisoning, a stomach bug, or a colitis flare up at this point but it wasn't great. We managed to get to our Airbnb on Gili Air without too many dramas but because I wasn't feeling good we took a speedboat which cost far more than we were hoping to spend on the journey. It got us from A to B as quickly as possible though which was all I cared about.

Blissed Out in Bali

After volunteering at the farm animal rescue for two months followed by a fun filled and action packed road trip up the Australian coast from Brisbane to Cairns Nick and I decided that Ubud in Bali would be our next stop. We chose Ubud because it has a reputation for being a laid back kind of place with plentiful vegan options and it's not too far from Australia. It sounded like a great place to rest and recharge our batteries and I'd say that it exceeded our expectations quickly becoming one of our favourite places in the world. 

We chose to stay in Penestenan at an amazing Air BnB located a little way into the rice terraces. We were about a 40 minute walk from Earth Cafe in the centre of Ubud but if that's not your vibe taxis were around 70,000 and we took them once or twice. The area is beyond gorgeous and I think that we'd have had a very different experience if we'd chosen to stay in the bustling, traffic filled, touristy centre of Ubud.

Cherish Hotel in Hue, Vietnam

After a not so comfortable delayed 16 hour day train from Hanoi our arrival in Hue was a breath of fresh air. We sped to the hotel in five minutes in a taxi and despite the fact that we were scheduled to arrive at the reasonable time of 8pm the front desk staff at the Cherish Hotel happily checked us in well past 10. We booked our City View Deluxe Double at the Cherish Hotel via Agoda for £21 so to say that I was somewhat surprised and overjoyed when I saw the room would be an understatement. It really did look like the pictures online! I happily collapsed into our super comfy double bed and awoke refreshed and ready to explore the city.

Photograph courtesy of the Cherish Hotel management team

Because we'd arrived so late and were a little dazed from our epic train journey both Nick and I forgot to mention our dietary requirements to the front desk staff upon check in. I always recommend this as it gives a hotel some time to prepare something for you if they're so inclined. After scoping out the options on offer at the Cherish's frankly enormous buffet station I piled up as much mango as I felt polite taking and located the restaurant manager to ask some pressing questions about whether there was fish sauce in the veggie fried rice.

The answer was of course yes but after a discussion about what we could and couldn't eat restaurant manager Michael, we were on first name terms pretty fast, said he was going to pop to the kitchen and make us something. He came back a little while later with a whole plate of veggie fried rice, no egg, no fish sauce, and even insisted on serving it to us at the table.

We were pretty impressed at this point as usually you have to spend a whole lot more before anyone's going to go out of their way to make you a special vegan breakfast. 

The next morning Michael was happy to see us again as he'd made us something else special for breakfast! Vermicelli with vegetables with a side plate of sautéed courgette and mushrooms. I might have used the word hero that morning! 

He was also excited to chat with us and practice his English and recommended that we visit DongBa Market where we could get an idea of where the locals shop. We went immediately after breakfast and had a great morning wandering around marvelling at the sheer amount of dissimilar things being sold alongside each other. You really can buy anything at DongBa Market, from tools to clothes and from industrial kitchen equipment to jewellery. It's definitely a must visit spot in the city and I wasn't surprised to read that it's the biggest commercial centre in Hue province.

On our last morning when Michael popped up again to tell us that he'd made us some noodle soup with vegetarian broth my mind was kinda blown. This was a delicious and filling start to the day and I was beginning to wish that we were staying here forever! 

The view from the Cherish Restaurant isn't too shabby either and whilst we didn't have dinner there I'm sure that with a little advance notice they would be able to prepare an amazing vegan meal for you. 

I really can't recommend this the Cherish Hotel highly enough, the staff went above and beyond, the food was wonderful and I loved getting to stay in 4* luxury for a bargain price. 

As I mentioned in my last blog post Hue was the tipping point between me enjoying exploring Vietnam and really starting to fall for it. The wide Perfume River and it's cosmopolitan south bank dotted with eateries including the veggie and very vegan friendly Bo De was a joy to amble along and I adored the afternoon I spent exploring the Imperial City.

Hill House, Koh Yao Noi

After settling on Koh Yao Noi as our first stop in Thailand we wanted to find somewhere comfortable, convenient and affordable to spend the first week. Our accommodation budget for SE Asia taps out at around 1100THB which works out at around £21 / $32. I'm sure we'll spend less a lot of the time, I'm writing this from a 700THB / £14 / $21 room by the beach in Koh Lanta, and a little more on occasion when we're feeling the need for a fancier bathroom or hear of somewhere spectacular or with great vegan breakfast options. We stumbled upon Hill House during one of many Google / Trip Advisor searches and it sounded perfect and just squeezed within the confines of the budget.

It was exactly as beautiful as it looked online. Oh how I love it when that happens! We stayed in Bungalow Lek 1 which is located right at the top of the hill meaning it has truly amazing views out across the bay. I spent a lot of time reading in the hammock on our balcony or just watching the squirrels running, and in some cases flying, in-between the trees.

The room itself is pretty open to the elements with open walls in the bathroom as well as slatted windows and sliding doors. We loved this after we got over the initial five minutes of mosquito / bug panic. The bed was huge and comfortable despite being quite hard and the mosquito net they provide is great and more like a tent than a regular mozzie net. We liked that there were curtains across the back of the room separating the bathroom and wardrobe area from the rest of the space which meant that you could get dressed without worrying about shutting all of the other windows, doors and curtains.

Breakfast isn't included in the room rate but it is available for 160THB / £3 / $4.50 and for vegans it includes fresh fruit, mango sticky rice and unlimited tea or coffee.

Sadly all of the bread on the island (and almost everywhere else in Thailand so far) seems to have eggs, milk or honey so there was no toast for us. We only partook in breakfast a couple of times because as non coffee / tea drinkers (I tried that first day as you can see in the picture!) it worked out a little better for us to buy fruit in town. The mango sticky rice was totally delicious though and these breakfasts definitely sparked a new love affair for me.

The view from the cafe area is ridiculously beautiful whether the tide is in or out. In this photo the tide is in but sometimes it goes all the way out to the little island you can see in the middle of the picture.

One thing I read over and over in guidebooks and on websites before visiting Koh Yao Noi was that the beaches aren't that great. We thought they were pretty epic especially the one right outside Hill House, yes sometimes you had to walk quite far to reach the sea but it's all sand and not stone or rocks like on some of Koh Yao Noi's other beaches so it's totally walkable and I had one of the most serene and breathtaking moments ever when I floated out there in the shallows with Nick at dusk one evening. The sea was super still and there was just something amazing about the light and the way that it illuminated the limestone karsts that dotted the horizon. It was almost unbelievably beautiful. You'll have to go and check it out for yourself one day.

The lovely people at Hill House were also happy to rent us a scooter for 200THB / £4 / $6 a day despite seeing Nick get off to a pretty shaky start trying to ride the thing. I braved getting on the back and aside from some minor incidents (You totally cannot put your feet down to stop when travelling at speed on a scooter, it is not like a bicycle! Dirt tracks are dangerously bumpy! ) it wasn't too terrifying and it made getting around the island super easy. Koh Yao Noi is actually a great place to learn to ride a scooter because it's relatively quiet and there aren't that many other new-to-scootering tourists haring about the place. Here's Nick getting gas...

One day they also organised for us to borrow a kayak for a super reasonable 500THB / £9 / $15 for the whole day. 

We set off around 9am and kayaked both into the wind and against the tide for a couple of hours before stopping at a secluded beach which also happened to be a- totally empty and b- a nature reserve. It was covered in crabs, big and small, and it was so fun to watch them scurrying about doing whatever it is that crabs do. 

After a quick dip in the sea to cool off we were off to the next beach which was just around the corner and again it was not only mind blowingly beautiful but almost totally empty. There was one other couple at the far end of the beach but we couldn't even see them from where we were sitting. It was the perfect place to enjoy the lunch our hosts had made us. They totally understood our request for a strict vegetarian meal with no egg, fish sauce, oyster sauce or shrimp and clarified that soy was okay. This simple looking veggie fried rice dish was super delicious, seasoned with white pepper and lime juice it's one of the best things we've eaten on the trip so far.

It was so good that we decided to eat dinner at the Hill House cafe one night, they do food to order but you need to let them know what you'd like for dinner at breakfast or lunch if you want dinner that day and at dinner time if you'd like lunch the next day. The menu is in the pink folder under the desk in reception. We wished we'd eaten dinner there sooner because the veggie fried rice and veganised Pad See Ew meal we shared was wonderful and I could have happily eaten there night after night.

As you can tell I really loved Hill House, our stay there was the perfect welcome to Thailand and we'd love to return one day. If you'd like to read more about our experiences in Koh Yao Noi you can check out my earlier blog post here.