Fish sauce is in everything, “vegetarian” often means “no big pieces of meat”, and soy sauce contains wheat. Here is how to eat well for two weeks in Asia without living on plain rice.
The email nobody wants to send
It arrives a fortnight before departure, phrased as an apology. I am coeliac, is that going to be a problem. I am vegan, will I be able to eat anything. My wife cannot have nuts and I know that is difficult in Thailand.
None of these are unreasonable and all of them are solvable, and the reason they get asked apologetically is that a lot of operators handle them badly. The honest position is that a special diet in Asia is easy if the office knows six weeks out and awkward if the tour guide finds out at the first roadside stop.
So here is what actually happens on the ground, country by country and requirement by requirement, and what to tell your operator.
Vegetarian: easier than the reputation, harder than it looks
Southeast Asia has a large Buddhist population and a genuine vegetarian tradition, so the concept exists everywhere and does not need explaining from scratch. Thailand has an annual vegetarian festival, a recognised word for it, and yellow-flagged stalls in every town during that period.
The complication is that “vegetarian” in local usage frequently means “without visible pieces of meat”. The stock is still chicken. The vegetable stir-fry still has fish sauce in it. The curry paste has shrimp paste in it, because almost every Thai curry paste does.
This is not deception. It is a genuine difference in category. Fish sauce is a seasoning in the way salt is a seasoning, and a cook adding it is not thinking about meat any more than they are thinking about the salt.
What works is being specific rather than using the label. Not “vegetarian” but “no fish sauce, no shrimp paste, no meat stock”. A tour guide can convey that in five seconds; a foreign rider pointing at a menu cannot.
The practical upside is that once it is understood, the food is excellent. Thai and Lao cooking without fish sauce is a smaller repertoire but not a poor one, and Indian and Nepali food is the easiest in the world for a vegetarian.
Vegan: manageable, with two hard countries
Add dairy and egg to the list and most of Southeast Asia stays workable. Coconut milk does the work dairy does elsewhere, and a great deal of Thai, Lao and Vietnamese cooking is naturally dairy-free.
Two places are genuinely difficult. Mongolia is a pastoral economy where the diet is mutton, flour and dairy, in that order, and where a vegan is asking for something that does not exist in the local food culture. It is solvable, and the solution involves carrying food rather than requesting it, which means telling the office months in advance so the support vehicle is stocked.
Bhutan is the other, because the national dish is chillies cooked in cheese and cheese appears in most things. There are options and they need arranging.
Japan is the surprise on this list. It looks vegan-friendly and is not, because dashi, the stock underlying an enormous proportion of Japanese cooking, is made from dried fish and kelp. A bowl of vegetable noodles is sitting in fish stock. Buddhist temple cuisine exists and is superb, and it needs booking rather than stumbling into.
Coeliac and gluten-free: the soy sauce problem
Rice is the staple across almost all of this region, which sounds like good news and mostly is. The trap is soy sauce.
Standard soy sauce is brewed with wheat. It is in marinades, dipping sauces, stir-fries, noodle dishes and a great deal else, and it is invisible. Oyster sauce frequently contains wheat too. So does hoisin. So does the seasoning on things that look like plain grilled meat.
For somebody with an intolerance this is an inconvenience. For a diagnosed coeliac it is a real medical issue on a trip where you are eating three meals a day in places with no ingredient labelling.
What works: rice noodles rather than wheat noodles, which are the default in a lot of Vietnamese and Thai dishes anyway. Grilled and steamed food rather than sauced. Tamari carried from home in a small bottle, which sounds excessive and is what experienced coeliac travellers actually do. And a translation card, which is the single most useful item on this entire list.
Japan is hard for coeliacs because soy sauce is fundamental and cross-contamination in a tempura fryer is universal. It is doable with preparation and it is not casual.
Allergies, which are a different category entirely
Everything above is a preference or a manageable intolerance. A genuine anaphylactic allergy is a medical emergency waiting for the wrong bowl of soup, and it needs treating as such rather than as a dietary note.
Peanuts are the difficult one in this region. They are ubiquitous in Thai and Vietnamese cooking, they are used as a garnish, they are ground into sauces, and peanut oil is a common cooking medium. Cross-contamination in a wok that has just done a satay is a certainty rather than a risk.
Shellfish is the other. Shrimp paste is foundational to Thai curry pastes and to a lot of Vietnamese cooking, and it does not look like shellfish by the time it reaches the plate.
If you carry adrenaline autoinjectors, bring two, keep them on your person rather than in the pannier that travels in the van, and tell the road captain and the tour guide where they are and how to use them on day one. Heat degrades them, so they need to be out of a hot top box. And know that the nearest hospital on a mountain road is measured in hours, which changes the risk calculation compared with home.
The translation card, which solves most of this
A printed card in the local language explaining your requirement, carried in a pocket and handed over at the start of a meal, does more work than any amount of pointing.
It should say what you cannot eat in specific ingredient terms rather than in category terms, name the ingredients that hide, and say what happens if you eat them, because “I will be very ill” changes how carefully a kitchen reads it. Laminate it. Have one per country you are visiting.
Phone translation apps are a poor substitute at a roadside stall with no signal, and a screen handed to a cook mid-service gets a glance rather than a read.
On a supported trip the tour guide is a better version of the same thing, because a local explaining to another local carries the nuance a card cannot. The card is what covers you at the stop the guide is not at.
What a good operator actually does with the information
Worth describing so you know what to expect and what to ask for.
The office collects requirements at booking rather than at arrival. Hotels on the route get told in advance, which matters because a hotel restaurant in a small town cannot improvise a vegan dinner for one person at eight in the evening but can absolutely plan one if asked a week earlier.
Lunch stops are chosen with it in mind. On a route where lunch is at a roadside place chosen that morning, the guide knows which of the local options will work.
The support vehicle carries a buffer: fruit, nuts, bars, something that will do if a stop turns out to be impossible. That is not a substitute for meals, it is insurance against the one day the plan does not survive contact with a landslide diversion.
And the guide checks rather than assumes, every time, because the same dish is made differently in the next province.
Country by country, the short version
Thailand is the easiest. Vegetarian is understood, the ingredients are visible, and there is enough variety that nobody eats the same thing twice.
Vietnam is straightforward for vegetarians and good for coeliacs because so much is rice-based, with the caveat that fish sauce is everywhere.
Laos and Cambodia are simple food cultures with fewer options, so a restricted diet means a narrower menu rather than a problem.
Nepal and India are the best in the world for vegetarians and very good for vegans, with dal bhat available everywhere and unlimited refills.
Japan is deceptive: apparently accommodating, actually difficult, and worth arranging in detail in advance.
Bhutan and Mongolia are the two that need real planning, for the reasons above.
The hidden ingredients, listed
A working list of the things that are in food in this region without appearing on any menu, because knowing the names is most of the battle.
Fish sauce, nam pla in Thai, nuoc mam in Vietnamese. In almost every savoury dish across Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, used as salt is used elsewhere.
Shrimp paste, kapi in Thai, prahok in Khmer, belacan in Malay. Foundational to curry pastes and to a great deal of Cambodian cooking. Pungent, and invisible once cooked.
Oyster sauce, which is in a very large proportion of stir-fries and which contains both shellfish and, usually, wheat.
Dashi in Japan, made from dried bonito, which underlies miso soup, noodle broths, simmered dishes and a great deal else that looks vegetarian.
Ghee and paneer in Nepal and India, which catch out vegans in what is otherwise the easiest region in the world for them.
Chicken or pork stock as the base of soups and rice dishes everywhere, including ones that arrive containing no visible meat.
And peanut oil as a cooking medium across the region, which matters enormously to anybody with that allergy and which no amount of dish selection avoids.
Learning six words
The single highest-value preparation for a restricted diet is not a card or an app. It is six words in the local language, said badly.
In Thai, mai sai nam pla means no fish sauce. Jay is the word for the strict vegetarian tradition and it carries more weight than any explanation, because it is a recognised religious category rather than a foreign preference. Saying jay in a Thai kitchen communicates something a sentence in English does not.
In Vietnamese, chay is the equivalent. In Japanese, learning the words for wheat and for fish stock is more useful than learning the word for vegetarian, because the category does not map.
Six words, learned on the plane, delivered badly with a smile, will get you further than a laminated card and considerably further than pointing. It also changes how you are received, because effort is noticed.
On a supported motorbike tour the tour guide handles this at every stop, which is a real advantage and which does not remove the value of being able to do it yourself at the fuel station where the guide is filling up.
The thing about eating on a riding day
Separate from dietary restriction and worth saying, because it affects everybody on a big biking tour.
What you eat at lunch determines the quality of your afternoon riding more than most people realise. A heavy meal at one in the afternoon in thirty-five degree heat produces exactly the dip in alertness you do not want on a mountain road at three.
The riders who feel good all day eat lighter at lunch than they would at home, drink considerably more water than they feel like, and eat properly in the evening when the riding is done. Local eating patterns tend to support this: a bowl of noodle soup or a plate of rice and a couple of dishes is a lighter lunch than a European sandwich-and-crisps equivalent.
The other one is skipping. A rider who skips lunch because the options did not suit them is a rider whose blood sugar drops at four in the afternoon, and that is a safety issue rather than a comfort one. Which is a large part of why the food question matters operationally at all.
Water, ice and the thing that actually makes people ill
Adjacent to diet and worth including, because on a motorcycle tour the consequences are operational rather than merely unpleasant.
Tap water is not drinkable anywhere on these routes. Bottled water is universal, cheap and safe, and any decent operator carries it in the support vehicle rather than making you buy it at every stop. Refilling from a large container rather than buying small bottles is both cheaper and considerably less plastic.
Ice is the question people worry about and it is largely a solved problem in Thailand, where commercial ice is produced to a standard and delivered in sealed bags. The tubular ice with a hole through it is factory-made. Crushed ice of uncertain origin in a rural village is a different proposition.
Raw vegetables and cut fruit washed in untreated water are a more common source of trouble than either. A salad garnish is the thing that catches people out, not the cooked food.
The practical consequence for a rider is that a day of gastric trouble in full gear at thirty-five degrees is a dehydration problem, and dehydration is a safety problem. Which is why rehydration salts belong in the personal kit and why a rider who is unwell should be in the vehicle rather than on the bike.
Being a good guest about it
A note on tone, because it makes a difference to how well this goes.
Asking clearly and early reads as sensible everywhere. Announcing a complex set of requirements at the table, in front of a host who has cooked, does not. In homestay situations in particular, where a family has prepared food for a group, a requirement that surfaces at the meal is a genuine problem for them and a loss of face.
The riders who eat best on these trips are the ones who told the office at booking, reminded the guide at the briefing, and then said nothing at all at the table because it had already been handled.
And where something has clearly been made specially for you, eat it and say so. That courtesy travels further in this part of the world than almost anything else you can do.
What to send your operator, and when
Six weeks out, in writing, in one message. Name the requirement precisely rather than by label: not “vegetarian” but the list of ingredients. Say whether it is a preference, an intolerance or an allergy, because those get handled differently. Say whether you carry medication and where.
Then ask two questions back. Which nights are homestays or fixed group meals where the options are limited, and which days have a lunch stop that cannot be predicted. Those are the days worth carrying something for.
An operator who answers those with specifics has done this before. One who says “no problem at all” without asking anything has not.
Breakfast, which is its own problem
The meal nobody plans for and the one most likely to defeat a restricted diet, because hotel breakfasts in the region are built for a Western expectation and delivered with local ingredients.
The standard offering is eggs, toast, processed meat, sweet pastries and fruit, with a rice porridge alternative that is almost always made with chicken or pork stock. A vegan gets fruit and toast. A coeliac gets fruit and eggs. Neither is enough fuel for two hundred and fifty kilometres.
The fixes are simple and they need arranging the night before rather than at the buffet. Ask for plain steamed rice, which every kitchen in Asia has at any hour. Ask for the noodle soup without the stock, or with vegetable stock. Carry your own oats or bars for the mornings where the answer is going to be nothing.
Riders on restricted diets who eat properly at breakfast have an ordinary day. Riders who pick at fruit and then hit a mountain road at nine in the morning discover by eleven that blood sugar is a safety variable.
Riding Asia for real
Every Big Bike Tours departure collects dietary requirements at booking rather than at arrival, briefs the hotels along the route in advance, and runs with a tour guide who can explain to a kitchen in the local language and a support vehicle that carries a buffer for the day the plan changes.
For a first trip where the food is a large part of the point and the options are widest, the ten-day Amazing Thailand is the easy answer, and the twelve-day Great Laos Ride is the one where you eat with families more often. The full range is here. Tell us what you cannot eat on WhatsApp before you book a guided tour and we will tell you honestly which routes handle it easily and which ones need work.
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