Imagine finding a travel companion who shares your great passion for food. Both solo travelers for many years, Victoria and Adam finally met in Laos in 2013 and have gone on several vegan world travel adventures together since then. They both run the Vegans With Appetites site. In this interview, they graciously shared with us insights into their vegan travels, the food they have tried, about doing volunteer work in disaster-stricken areas, and so much more!
Q: How long have you been vegans? What made you become vegans?
Victoria: I’ve been vegan for 6 years now. I first went vegetarian in 2011 and then transitioned to being vegan several months later that same year. I started to learn more about the dairy industry and realized that even as a vegetarian I would still be supporting the companies exploiting and hurting animals. Then, I saw an undercover investigation from Mercy for Animals where a dairy cow was being beaten by a pitchfork and having her baby calf torn away and it crushed me. I couldn’t touch the stuff anymore and became vegan.
Adam: Like most vegans, I started off as a full-blown meat eater before I first met Victoria four years ago. However, just a few days into our relationship she forced me to watch Earthlings and that was all it took to get the wheels spinning. About two weeks later I stopped eating meat and never looked back. After that, it took about a year before I fully committed to being vegan, although, I mostly ate vegan up until that point since I was traveling with Victoria.
Q: How did you first get into blogging? What inspired you to start your blog?
We were inspired to start our blog because we felt an urge to share the experiences and stories we’ve collected from several years of long-term traveling. We also felt like challenging this perception out there that you can’t really travel the world as a vegan and that if you do, you will be limited and confined to only eating boring food. It couldn’t be further from the truth and we wanted to share that with people and let them know that they don't have to comprise their values or lifestyle.
Q: Tell us about your most memorable trip.
That’s almost impossible to answer because every trip is memorable in its own way, and since we travel for extended periods of time it can be hard to pinpoint one specific thing or “trip.” With that said, Sri Lanka was an amazing experience both travel and food wise and in a lot of ways it was a true adventure. Laos will always hold a special place in our hearts since that is where we met and started traveling together. Then again, we just spent six months slow traveling in Europe, living for at least a month in each place and it has taught us so much more than we could have ever expected.
Q: What is the biggest challenge for you as vegan travelers? What is the biggest satisfaction you get from it?
I’d say the biggest challenge as vegan travelers is coming face to face with the reality of how animals are treated. We mentioned in our Vegan Cooking Class in Bali article that at the market we witnessed baby pigs being thrown into sacks while they were screaming. It was brutal and obviously deeply disturbing. In the West, you are sheltered from these very real realities but elsewhere it is more in your face. The biggest satisfaction we get from traveling as vegans are discovering amazing local food that is either already vegan like a masala dosa (a favorite dish of ours) or can easily be veganized.
Q: Can you name the most vegan-friendly places you've visited so far?
It depends on how you look at it. In terms of vegan-friendly cuisines, nothing is easier than Southern India and Sri Lanka. Eating vegan and "pure vegetarian" is just a part of everyday life for most people and it is never a struggle to find good vegan food. We also happen to have an unquestionable love for the food in the region, which makes it the perfect destination for us.
When it comes to the Western world there are a few places that really stick out. Warsaw was, to our surprise, one of the most vegan-friendly cities we’ve ever visited with an impressive amount of really good all vegan restaurants serving food from around the world. Then, of course, there are cities like New York City where there are new vegan restaurants opening up weekly.
Q: Is there a place that you find particularly challenging to visit as vegans? Can you tell us about what made it difficult for you?
Central America proved to be quite challenging for us since the cuisine itself is very meat-heavy and the few vegetarian dishes we found were usually cooked in lard. Because of this, we ended up cooking most of our meals in the guest houses we stayed at. However, we were not the only ones having issues with the food in the region and most people we met cooked food themselves instead of eating out. Compared to Asia and Europe, the food in Central America was uninspired and overpriced, even for those eating meat, so most guest houses and hotels come with fully equipped kitchens that everyone can use.
Q: Victoria, you volunteered in disaster relief in the Philippines. Can you tell us more about it?
Yes, I volunteered twice on two separate occasions in 2013 in the Philippines with All Hands Volunteers, an amazing organization! The first time was after a typhoon had hit Cagayan de Oro. We, volunteers, worked side by side with the local Filipino workers to rebuild houses, and it was one of the most humbling and meaningful experiences of my life. These were guys that had lost everything family members, friends, all of their belongings, and homes and yet they were some of the happiest people I’ve ever met. They were always smiling, singing, and dancing. Later on that same year I also volunteered with All Hands after an earthquake hit Bohol. The project in Bohol focused on deconstructing unsafe homes, cleaning up tons of rubble, and distributing emergency tents to the community. It was interesting to be a part of two phases of disaster relief, the first rebuilding and the other deconstructing and cleaning up.
Q: How many countries have you visited in Southeast Asia? How vegan-friendly is the region?
We’ve spent most of our 20’s in Southeast Asia haha. Together we have visited Laos (where we met!), Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Bali. Adam has been to Vietnam on his own. We have tried to visit Myanmar twice, we even have the visa in our passports, but something always gets in the way of us visiting.
The region is quite vegan-friendly although some countries are more so than others. For example, Malaysia has a huge South Indian influence so you find a ton of vegan options there – Penang especially has some of the best food in the world! Bali also has some amazing vegan food as well of course.
A lot of these countries understand the basis of veganism because they have something similar called gin jae which is a type of Chinese Buddhism that excludes animal products, so if you learn some local phrases it’s relatively easy. The Philippines is probably the hardest place in Southeast Asia for eating vegan!
Q: What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned so far traveling as vegans?
Learning a few phrases and words in the local language goes a long way in helping others understand veganism and the ingredients you want to exclude. Most people we have encountered have been very accommodating in their attempts to feed us. In fact, we’ve never felt like it’s been impossible to be vegan anywhere or that we’ve ever beenforced to compromise our values.
Q: What was the worst experience you’ve had so far on a trip and why?
Honestly, considering how long we’ve traveled we have been lucky enough to not encounter too many problems. There have only been a handful of incidences and only two worthy of mentioning.
The first incidence happened when we were bargaining for a taxi ride in Lombok, Indonesia. One of the drivers that was trying to convince us to go with him got so worked up that he physically attacked both of us before the other taxi drivers dragged him away and stopped the situation, otherwise it could have ended up really bad. We think he must have been on something like yabba, a form of methamphetamine. This happened as soon as we had gotten off the boat from Bali and it was enough for us to decide to leave the next day and escape Lombok.
The other worst experience we’ve had on a trip was when we were staying at a guest house in Goa, India. We were renting a bamboo bungalow on the beach and since the bungalow was fairly basic, the owners told us to keep our valuables in a locked locker behind the counter where they worked. The locker was only ours and we were told that we were the only ones that had the key. This was on New Year's Eve and before we left to go out and celebrate we locked all of our important belongings in the locker thinking it would be safe. The next day we woke up to find out that someone had opened the locker and stolen Victoria’s iPad and then locked it again. We confronted the owners and they refused to take any responsibility claiming, “they had no idea how it happened” even though they had been there all night and must have had the spare key. The situation escalated to the point that we decided to contact the local police who, unsurprisingly, were of no help. They wrote the so-called report on the back of an old dirty paper that was just laying around the decaying police station which was located on the site of the town's dump. Oh, and there was a cow standing two feet away from us while we reported the theft. Only in India.
We never saw the iPad again but managed to disable it online making it useless for whoever stole it.
Q: What’s the best vegan meal you’ve had so far and where?
That is such a tough question! I don’t know if we can pick just one. We’ve eaten some of the best food in the world in Sri Lanka like jackfruit curries and we’ve also had the most incredible masala dosa in Penang. In the same respect, our local Ethiopian restaurant in Connecticut blows our mind every time and we have constant withdrawals from the croissants (cornetti) in Italy!
Q: What was the last place you’ve visited? What vegan-friendly dish would you recommend for vegan travelers who may be heading there?
The last place we visited was Rome. Vegan travelers will have a ton of choices in Italy and the Italian capital. We recently wrote an article about starting your day with a vegan croissant (cornetto) and cappuccino and it’s easily one of the things we miss the most! Then there are so many amazing pasta dishes to choose from as well. Right now artichokes are in season and the Italians make a lot of completely vegan dishes with them such as carciofialla Romana! Oh and let's not forget pizza and gelato! There is just so much good food that is already vegan or easily veganized. We would recommend vegan travelers to try it all, Italian food is easily one of the most vegan-friendly and delicious cuisines in the world!
Q: You both did a lot of solo traveling before. What would be that one piece of advice you'd give to a new or aspiring solo traveler?
Victoria: Just go for it. It sounds hard, and it probably is one of the hardest things you will ever do but if you don’t go now, you never will. If you always wait for the perfect time or for a friend to come along it will never happen. Traveling alone can be terrifying but it will be one of the most exhilarating experiences of your life. You will learn things as a solo traveler that you could have never learned if you were traveling with someone else, which is why we are both happy we got to solo travel on our own before we met. So my advice would be not to hesitate but instead to book that flight to the place you’ve been aspiring to go to!
Adam: The beauty of traveling alone is that you can do exactly what you want every day without having to consider what someone else feels like doing. So my advice would be to go with the flow and listen to your gut feeling. It is, of course, good to have a rough idea of where you want to go and what you would like to do and see, but make sure you're flexible and ready to change your plans whenever it feels right. You never know who you’ll meet or if you’ll hear about a magical destination that you hadn’t thought about, so don’t lock yourself to an exact plan. And don’t rush it. It’s better to visit a handful of places and truly experience them than to visit 25 places spending a day in each always being stressed about where to go next. Trust me, you will want to go slow otherwise you’ll get burned out quickly.
Q: What surprising/valuable/unforgettable lessons have you learned in your travels?
To leave your preconceived notions of how a place should be at home. To be patient, open-minded, and tolerant of others without evaluating the "rightness or wrongness" of a culture because it's different to what you're used to. If you can be accepting of a culture, you’ll have a much better time.
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Website: www.veganswithappetites.com
