This transcript is AI-generated and [lightly] edited by a human.

Karina Inkster:

You're listening to the No Bullshit Vegan Podcast, episode 179. Brighde Reed of World Vegan Travel joins me to share nine pro tips for Traveling the World as a vegan.

Hey, welcome to the show. I'm Karina, your go-to, no-B.S. vegan fitness and nutrition coach. Thank you so much for joining me today. Our amazing client Steph recently posted a wonderful message on Facebook. She wrote, “Balance has been one of the things Parkinson's has impacted the most in my life for many years now. Yesterday I did a workout that included a whole lot of lunges for the first time in many years, I didn't have to hold onto something for balance support, not just for one lunge, but for all 90 of them. I spent the entire rest of the day giddy with joy. I've been focused on nutrition and exercise for a couple years and made a lot of progress. But last winter, I kept feeling like I wasn't eating the right combination or the right quantity of food that my body wanted and my gains in strength, endurance, and mobility were plateaued.

After a lot of research and then diving into content for the few trainers and nutrition folks I found who were vegan, I hired the fantastic coaching team at karinainkster.com in early May. They are weight neutral, LGBTQ+ inclusive, body positive, and have years of experience in coaching. Coach Karina and Coach Zoe were exactly what I was looking for to help me get unstuck, fine tune my nutrition, and seriously up my strength training. Oh, and Karina's podcast is fantastic.”

Well, thank you so much, Steph. Thank you for your kind words and kudos to you for putting in such consistent hard work. It is definitely paying off in a lot of different ways. So if you, dear listener, are thinking about getting your own kick in the butt and support system for strength training and plant-based nutrition, check out our coaching programs karinainkster.com/coaching.

Introducing today's guest, Brighde Reed. Brighde is one of the founders of World Vegan Travel, a company dedicated to creating luxurious immersive group travel experiences for vegans and the vegan curious.

Based in Squamish BC, Brighde lives with Seb, the co-owner of World Vegan Travel. Before embarking on her journey in the travel industry, Brighde was a dedicated teacher. Her love for exploration has taken her across the globe. Having lived in Thailand, Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and now Canada. Brighde and Seb started World Vegan Travel in 2017. World vegan travel offers enriching travel experiences to a variety of destinations, including Thailand, Italy, Rwanda, Vietnam, and Japan. Each trip combines cultural immersion and exceptional plant-based cuisine. When she's not planning trips, Brighde enjoys hiking and immersing herself in nature. And her favorite meal is beyond sausages, mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas. Here's our conversation.

Hi, Brighde. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for speaking with me today.

Brighde Reed:

Thank you so much, Karina. It's a pleasure to be on here.

Karina Inkster:

I'm looking forward to having a discussion about vegan travel because weirdly enough, it's not actually something that's been talked about on this show a lot. It is good timing for me because lately I've heard a lot of, well, I'm vegan except when I travel or well, except I eat eggs when I have to travel for work because that's the only option, and it's just like this trend in my conversations recently and I kind of want to call bullshit on it. That's why you're here. But first of all, I'd like to know a couple of things. Vegan story is one thing and generally how you would describe to folks what you do is the other thing. Let's start on that one. How would you describe your elevator pitch? What does Brighde do?

Brighde Reed:

Okay. Brighde is originally from the UK, but now living in Canada and is owner of World Vegan Travel. We put together and run premium vegan group travel experiences for vegans and vegan curious, and we go to a number of different destinations around the world.

Karina Inkster:

That's amazing. How cool is that?

Brighde Reed:

It's very cool.

Karina Inkster:

And I assume you folks take care of everything, so someone signs up and then travel, accommodation, food, the whole thing is part of the deal, right?

Brighde Reed:

Yeah. So not many people necessarily understand much about group travel unless they've done it or they happen to know about it. But basically you book a trip and depending on the type of company that you travel with, it will be different budgets and different niches. In my case, it's like a luxury vegan travel. You can have a lot of activities included. You could have just a few activities included. Usually at least though there would be a tour leader that's kind of helping facilitate things, accommodation and transportation at the very least, but sometimes there'll be extra things as well.

Karina Inkster:

Got it. Wow, that's super cool. There's definitely a need for that. I do want to talk about other styles of travel too, but this is very, I don't know if niche is the right word, but it's definitely filling a need for a lot of vegan folks.

Brighde Reed:

Yes, for sure.

Karina Inkster:

So how did you come to veganism? What's your vegan story?

Brighde Reed:

Yeah, so I have been vegan for 15 years now and I was vegetarian before that and I had traveled a lot and lived in a lot of different countries before that time. But 15 years ago was when I was living in Vietnam and my partner purchased for me the first iPhone. He bought me a gift. It was very cool, very exciting at that time. And there was this thing called podcasts on there. So this was back in 2009, so before the explosion in podcasts. And I've always really enjoyed listening to the spoken word through audio books and things like that. So I thought podcast, what's this? And then I went and had a bit of a look at what was available and I found this podcast called Vegetarian Food for Thought, which now is called Just Vegetarian Food for Thought. And it was a podcast by Colleen Patrick Audre.

I started listening and the ideas just absolutely blew my mind. It was before we had an abundance of incredible and helpful content online about going and vegan and why you would go vegan. And here she is. She put it all on a podcast and I was so blown away by this information. I swear I listened to every episode about 10 times as I tried to really change my worldview. So I became vegan very quickly. I not that slowly, quickly ate all of the non-vegan. I didn't have a lot of money at the time, so I ate all of the non-vegan things in my house, and then it was like, right, and I'm vegan now. I took to vegan cooking with Gusto. Really enjoyed that. My partner went from meat eater to vegan about six months later as soon as he listened to Colleen's podcast on protein and the protein myth. And then he was just convinced he never wanted to eat animals either. He just thought he had to. So yeah, that was when I went vegan really.

Karina Inkster:

That is so cool. Now interestingly, you network and collaborate with Colleen now 15 or 16 years later, right?

Brighde Reed:

Absolutely. It's kind of like a full circle moment I guess. But as I mentioned, I was a huge fan of Colleen's work. I loved it, and I was listening to her on social media when it was on its infancy. Then Colleen put a shout out for some supports and volunteer work, and I put my hand up and through helping her with some bits and pieces, we became friends, and then we became such good friends that we started traveling together, doing a lot of travel around the world. We don't have kids. She didn't have kids. They love to travel. We love to travel. So we started just traveling with them for fun. Now I will say that as well as living in lots of other countries and traveling for fun, both Seb and I did have a background in the travel industry as well before we became vegan.

In fact, that was how we met. We were tour leaders for a travel company Intrepid Travel, which I'm sure some of listeners will know about or have traveled on. It's another kind of group tour company. So we did already have a lot of experience in that, and Sev also had a lot of film production experience as well, which requires a lot of spreadsheets and logistics, things like that. And at that time when I started volunteering for Colleen, I was also in education as well. I was an international school teacher. So over a few glasses of wine, over a few different instances, we just kind of thought to ourselves, well, why don't we try and put a trip together for your audience, Colleen. And we did. And we did our first trip in Thailand in 2017 with Colleen, and we continue to work with Colleen. She does about three or four trips per year with us, and we run our own trips and we collaborate with other people as well. So Colleen is still very much part of well, vegan travel for sure.

Karina Inkster:

That's so cool. Her Joy of Vegan Baking cookbook is my favorite vegan cookbook on the entire shelf of vegan cookbooks. Wow. I refer to it so much. It's amazing. I don't know it exactly what it is about it, just like the fool proofness of each recipe maybe. But yeah, she's an institution, let's put it that way.

Brighde Reed:

She's been around for a long time now, saying a lot of really cool things for a long time now, and yeah, she's great to collaborate with too.

Karina Inkster:

How cool. Well, thank you so much for sharing. It's always interesting to hear how people come to veganism and sometimes there is this one catalyst, like a podcast or nowadays it's YouTube videos or random things that we didn't have back then. So the world is different now. I went vegan in 2001, so we didn't have any of those things back then. No podcasts, no social media, but it's definitely changed.

Brighde Reed:

It really has for the better. Thank goodness there's more information out there created in lots of different platforms with lots of different voices so that anyone can find someone they can connect with.

Karina Inkster:

Totally. Actually, wait, I got my math wrong. 2003, not 2001. Anyways, a long time ago. 21 years. Yeah, that is a long time. Yeah. Awesome. Well, let's go into some travel tips. So you've traveled the world, you've also lived the world, Thailand, Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam. You've lived in all these places, which is pretty amazing. So you have on your website, which we will link to in our show notes, of course, a travel tip resource that we can use to share with folks and to have a discussion about vegan travel. So you've got nine travel tips specifically for vegans, and they're not just, well go look on Happy cow. Let's kick it off. What's your first travel tip for vegans? This is applicable to everywhere, right? We're not talking about a specific area of the world.

Brighde Reed:

Exactly. Yeah, applicable to everywhere. I really dug deep to get these travel tips put together. So I really hope that they are useful for people. And so my first tip is adjusting our mindset. And I think this also is maybe helpful for the people that often say, well, I can't eat vegan when I travel, for example. Some people often say that when they are thinking about traveling as a vegan, particularly when they're early on in their journey, and you just really have to adjust your mindset and sort of change the lens through which you look through. 

So if we look through, and this is a Colleen quote actually, if we are the type of person that looks through a lens of lack, I'm never going to find anything. Oh, this menu is awful. Oh, there's nothing on the menu. That is generally what our experience will be, not always, but definitely we will tend to end up that way rather than looking at it more positively. But if you kind of change your attitude to being more like, I wonder what there is, I wonder what places are out here. I wonder what I might ask in order to get what I want. And this kind of attitude shift is just really, really helpful in just really changing what your overall experience is. So I don't know whether that resonates with you, Corina, and whether that's been your experience of whether you maybe used to think more negatively, but now you think more positively. I mean, what do you think?

Karina Inkster:

Well, that's a good question and thank you for bringing that up because interestingly, this is my approach to veganism in general, not just vegan travel folks who are going vegan. And we have a lot of clients who come to us because they're long-term vegans and they just want a fitness coach who gets it. But on the other hand, we have a lot of folks who need help with the actual transition to veganism. 

And so we often say, if you're coming from a mindset of avoidance and deprivation, oh, I can't eat that. Oh man, that used to be my favorite food, but I can't have it anymore. I need to subtract these things from my diet, et cetera, et cetera, it's not really going to work well for you. Whereas as you just mentioned, this mindset of abundance, what are all the amazing foods I can try, I was vegetarian for years before I went vegan, but half the food I eat now I didn't know existed before I went vegan.

So I think all that to say, I think the mindset piece, it's very important and I like that you started with this and it's not just kind of an add-on at the end. This is actually starting your advice with making sure our minds are in the right place. I mean, we can talk about this down the list, but I never really think about not being vegan. If it's not vegan, it's not food to me. So I just do what it takes, and yes, I'm coming from a place of privilege because I get to travel places and I get to pack my own food, et cetera. But the mindset piece is huge because I'm going into it with certain expectations and it's kind of an adventure.

Brighde Reed:

And it's also climbing a learning curve as well. At first, it is harder to remember to pack some snacks if you're going to a place that's not going to be great or making sure you've got the apps downloaded and all of that. But once you've climbed that learning curve, everything gets easier. Just like with everything in life, doing a squat gets easier doing anything, learning a language gets easier the more you practice those neural pathways and you learn those things for sure.

Karina Inkster:

A hundred percent. I love that. Okay. What's tip number two?

Brighde Reed:

Well, this is when I do mention using certain apps and sites and of course Happy Cow is amazing, but I'm not going to spend too much talking about that because I think most people know what that is. There are some very cool features with Happy Cow that I don't think many people use. So I really like filtering results. A lot of people don't realize that you can filter based on a number of different things. And one of the things that I really like to do is to filter based on newest listing. So I'll just share a couple of little happy cow tips. So if you're going to a place that you've gone to before and you want to know whether any really cool places have opened since you last went, go to Happy Cow and just filter by newest, that's really going to help you find the latest and greatest restaurants that are out there. 

And another thing that I like to do is you can actually set up Happy Cow alerts as well. So if there is a destination that you go to quite a lot, you can set up alerts where you'll get those new listings and they'll come to your inbox. And for me as a tour operator that's planning travel for people, I have basically this set up in Happy Cow for every single city that we go to on our trips so that I get this email, and next time I'm planning a trip, we are planning Kyoto, for example, in Japan. I've got a list of all of these new restaurants that we should check out because the restaurants that we went to last time may have gone downhill. There may be new ones that are better, and this is a very helpful thing. And the last thing I want to share about Happy Cow is you can actually create trips on Happy Cow. 

So if say for example, you're doing a trip around Italy and you're going to go to let's say Milan and Rome, you can actually create trips and add restaurants to that list so that you can have them there so that you're not just constantly looking through all of the Happy Cow listings, Milan, let's say. Right? That's a good tip. So that is Happy Cow.

Another one is that there are a lot of country specific apps and websites, particularly in countries whose first language isn't English. 

So it can be interesting to check those out as well. An example is, and I don't have many examples, but I do have one for France, it's called Vego Resto, and it's like a happy cow for French speakers. What I really like about that is you don't need to speak French to be able to access the listings. It all looks very, very similar. Everything's become so intuitive now in terms of using things that it's really good and French people are recommending restaurants on this site, whereas they might not necessarily be recommending them on Happy Cow and their criteria to be able to list a restaurant may be different on these sites versus on Happy Cow as well. So you might uncover something that's just not in happy Cow.

The last app about restaurants that I would love to share is a billion. Do you know a billion? 

Karina Inkster: Never Heard of it. 

Brighde Reed: Okay. So a billion is kind of a little bit hard to describe, but it's based in Singapore. And one thing that they do for every time a user contributes a review, a billion will actually donate a dollar to a animal sanctuary or an animal organization. Oh wow. And it's true they do, because I have met one of the organizations that a billion supports and they get like $600 a month from this. So basically a billion, it's like a review site for restaurants, vegan products. It's got a big sort of community feature as well, and even dishes within restaurants, so you can get people who have reviewed those kinds of things as well. So this is a really, really cool thing too. 

Karina Inkster: That's awesome.

Brighde Reed: It is a bit of a social networking site as well. A couple of other ones that I would love to share more like a website for vegan hotels. So there is definitely a rise of in the vegan hotel movement. And where can you find them? So there are two websites that will be helpful to find them. Are veggie hotels and vegan Welcome. They list 100% vegan hotels, vegetarian hotels and accommodations. I shouldn't just say hotels, it's accommodations like bed and breakfasts and things like that. And also very vegan friendly places as well. 

Vegan Welcome and Veggie Hotels are kind of like sister sites, but I'm not quite sure what the difference is. I've tried to figure it out and I can't. And the last one is veg visits is really an Airbnb for vegans, so this is really fun. If you want to go and stay in a vegan's home, for example, it's kind of more like what Airbnb was about 10 years ago before everyone was just renting like a whole apartment.

These really are just vegans that are just listing the spare room in their house. So that can be really nice because of course then your money is going to be going to vegans and not, so that's quite fun. 

And then there is the vegan stay, or as it's now called veggies, they also kind of have an Airbnb kind of listing as well, but they also list sanctuaries accommodations. So a lot of micro sanctuaries and larger sanctuaries actually they're listing, they have accommodation available on the premises and they're listing it on booking.com and on their website and on Airbnb even. But the problem with that is that these sites take a commission from these sanctuaries, so the vegan stay or veggies, they are actually donating that booking fee to those sanctuaries or to a pot that will then go and support sanctuaries as well. So there are actually quite a lot of vegan hotels out there. Not in every city unfortunately, but whenever I'm traveling I always like to go on there and just make sure I haven't missed a vegan hotel that I might love to stay in.

Karina Inkster:

Amazing. Those are mostly things I have not heard of, so I think you're going to be enlightening some of our listeners for sure. I'm thinking maybe we should have a list of these resources. I mean, it's on your website too, so maybe we'll just link to that resource on your website in our show notes, and then folks can go and just read and make notes at their leisure.

Brighde Reed:

Absolutely. For sure. They're very welcome.

Karina Inkster:

Awesome. Okay, what's next?

Brighde Reed:

Alright, so this is something I did a lot when I first went vegan, less so now depending on the types of travel that I'm doing. And that is consider packing some supplies or tools that are just going to make being vegan a little bit easier. So Tupperware, I know that sounds really weird to pack some Tupperware. I have some collapsible Tupperwares that I like to use. And this is good for transporting foods because very often when we are traveling as vegans, we often self cater. We often like to make picnics, which also is saving money as well. And all of these kind of picnic supplies can get a little bit gross in our bags. I'm thinking of vegan cheeses and vegan deli meats, for example. I don't like that. I would like to keep them in a Tupperware, really nice and organized. Another thing I like to have is a sharp knife to be able to get into all of these packages to be able to cut fruits and vegetables when I am having a picnic.

Make sure you don't have it in your carry-on luggage of course, but having a sharp knife is helpful. And I always like to carry a tea towel or at least two or three DT towels and I do this this nearly all of the time. I have a little pencil case except a little bit larger and I call it my kitchen in a bag. And that's what I put the sharp knife in. I put a spoon, a fork, a knife, those kinds of things. And I also put a tea towel in there because it makes a nice sort of surface to make your sandwiches if you are in a park for picnics, it allows you to wrap up any dirty cutlery that you've used and then you can wash it when you get to your destination. Those kinds of things. Another thing that I like to take as well is a small cool bag with a blue brick so that you can keep those things that you are carrying around.

Your vegan cheese is cool. If I'm staying in a hotel that doesn't have a freezer, I'll often ask the hotel to freeze it. Sometimes I might lie and say that it's for medication, so they'll be more likely to say yes, but sometimes I'll do that. And also having a little cool bag allows me to bring back home any food related souvenirs or gifts for friends. So I like to do that. 

And I also like to bring, depending on where I'm going, I have to do this a lot less now, but some shelf stable non-dairy milk. I'm one of these people that really, really loves to have non-dairy milk with my coffee in the morning and maybe cereal. I'm finding that I'm less needing to do that these days. I'm finding that non-dairy milk is almost standard Up until five years ago it was not. But if I think I'm not going to get to non-dairy milk, I will take it. And I also like to take some healthy stack snacks, some nutrient dense snacks as well. And I have even been known to take small appliances, whether it's like a little travel blender, an instant pot can be really, really helpful if you are self-catering or even if you're camping, if you have access to electricity because it just means that you can make food, nutritious food for that matter really, really quickly and easily with minimum hassles. So those are my suggestions of things to consider. Packing, what do you pack Karina?

Karina Inkster:

Love that. Well, I'm thinking of my little hack here, which is a $3 and 99 cents milk frother battery operated that I use to mix protein powder into any sort of glass because as we all know, if we're protein powder people, it's basically impossible to stir it without making a giant mess if you're using a fork or a whisk or something or you have to pack a separate shaker bottle with one of those little whisk balls in it. And then I don't want to pack extra things. So this little thing, you can use any glass you want, it takes four seconds to perfectly mix your protein powder, and it's like $4. I got mine at IKEA.

Brighde Reed:

That is such a good idea because those protein shaker bottles, they're enormous.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, they're massive. And I mean maybe some folks are using them for other things and you're bringing it anyways, but I don't usually have another use for those. So anyway, that's one of my hacks. And yeah, lots of what you mentioned depends where I'm going. My husband and I went to Australia for three weeks with no check baggage, so we had minimal space, but 80% of my luggage was food.

Brighde Reed:

Really? What did you take?

Karina Inkster:

Well see, because I also have food allergies on top of being vegan, so I can't trust that if something is vegan, I can have it. Raw fruit is off the table, all tree nuts are off the table and lots of other things, avocados, random things that I've had reactions to, chamomile tea of all things. I had a massive hive reaction anyway. So for me, I have to get comfortable being completely outside the box and asking restaurants for things that are off menu and packing all my own food. So I'll take protein items, protein powder, dry roasted edamame, vegan jerky, protein bars, anything I can pack in there. But I'll also take things like oatmeal packets where all I need is hot water and depending if I'm flying or not, sometimes you can't take liquids if you're only carry on. 

But the soy milk thing, for me, it's soy milk for my husband, it's almond milk. But the non-dairy milk of choice is very huge, very key for the coffee and a whole bunch of other things. Snacks will have trail mix for my husband. He can have nuts and yeah, I mean, oh yeah, instant soups, like the little packages that are miso soup or split pea that you just have to add boiling water to. I used a lot of those in a 14 hour flight to Sydney.

Brighde Reed:

Yeah. A little flight hack that we've started using is we often find that our vegan meal is pretty terrible on flights usually. I'm sure we can all relate to that. I'm usually okay with eating it. Seb doesn't like it at all, but Seb will take a vegan ramen. There are a few fun vegan ramen brands out there now, so that's quite helpful.

Karina Inkster:

One of my favorites is Chef Woo because it has 20 grams of protein just in the noodles. So it's not just something that'll keep you full for three minutes, you're getting 20 grams of protein. And then if you're adding some things like little toppings or whatever, you could have 30 grams of protein in your lunch on the go.

Brighde Reed:

That's amazing. I've not heard of Chef Woo. I'm going to check that out. Thank you.

Karina Inkster:

They’re really good and they're fully vegan. So the names of the products are like chicken flavor or beef flavor, but they're all vegan. Don't be alarmed.

Brighde Reed:

Oh wow. I'm writing that down.

Karina Inkster:

Awesome. Okay, Brighde, what is the next tip?

Brighde Reed:

So my tip number four is really to try if you can, to consume nutrient-rich foods a few times a day. So I don't know about you Carina, but when I travel and I travel a lot for my job, it could very easily turn into a calorie bomb and a nutrition lack.

Karina Inkster:

For sure. Oh yeah. You're not alone there.

Brighde Reed:

And I do want to indulge in some cases if it's worth it, if it's worth the calories, but if I'm going to a place and there's amazing options, I probably am not going to be that great at eating nutrient dense things. So I do have a couple of things to share. The first of all is consider packing a greens powder. I think there's lots and lots of brands out there, but obviously it's not the same as eating a salad with 10 cups of kale. Obviously that is better, but having some green powders is really helpful, especially if you are doing a longer trip. I've always thought about doing this when you are trekking in Nepal, for example. So a lot of people will trek in the pal for several weeks or at least a couple of weeks. And unfortunately, especially for the Nepalese in the mountains, there are not a lot of vegetables.

So even for non-vegan, it's not very nutrient dense. So making sure that you have a greens powder is helpful and that you can buy them in single sachets as well. Another idea is some freeze dried vegetable snacks, kale chips, although they have a tendency to disintegrate quickly or some fruit leather, this is really great if you are backpacking, camping, that kind of idea, and this is one thing that I'd really love to do when I am traveling to a place where produce is so amazing, is getting a ton of produce and keeping them as snacks. So some examples of these are in Italy in the south of Italy where you can just pop cherry tomatoes like candy. They're just so good. And another one is in Thailand or Vietnam for example, where you can really buy sliced up fruit on the street and it's very clean.

I've eaten it for many, many years and I've never got sick. Using that Tupperware that you brought with you and just going to one of the vendors there and just asking for some incredible pineapple guava, all sorts of things and just snacking on that when you want a snack, this is really key. I think another one is, I don't know about you, but when I stay in a non-vegan hotel and breakfast is included, it's usually not great. Usually the options will be like a bread jam, some cereals, maybe there'll be some soy milk for example, but it is not exactly nutrient dense at all. So what I really like to do and considering this breakfast is an exciting anyway, then just load up on the fruits and vegetables for breakfast so that you know that if you have that at breakfast, then you've got some of your nutritional bases covered throughout the day. And that kind of helps me feel better. I don't know. What about eating something a little bit more indulgent later on in the day, particularly if I'm doing travel for more than a few days?

Karina Inkster:

That's a great point. I like the greens powder. It's never really been on my radar like, yeah, we don't really need it, but in this particular context I think it could be super helpful. So I like that. Yeah, yeah. Very cool. 

Alright. And also I like the front loading idea. I'm all about front loading your workouts if you can earlier in the day front load, that thing you need to do to work on in your business or whatever it is. The earlier you can do it, the better in general. So I like the breakfast nutrient dense breakfast, even if it's all foods that you've brought yourself genius.

Brighde Reed:

And then you can go to the restaurant at lunch or at dinner and know that you have got your bases covered.

Karina Inkster:

A hundred percent. Awesome. Okay, what's tip number five?

Brighde Reed:

Alright, so this really is for the foodies amongst us. I am definitely guilty of this in that I don't travel to eat. I don't want to say that, but it is a big part of my travel experience. I really do want to enjoy the local cuisine. I want to not have to cook for that reason. I do travel partly for the food, partly for culture and experiences and all of those things. But if you are a foodie, then this might be a good tip for you. 

Try to do a little bit of research before you go and find the places that you really want to hit, whether it's with Happy Cow or these other places. Maybe make a trip like I mentioned before, and choose those places that you really want to go to or at least consider. And then I really invite people to go and star these places on Google Maps.

So I don't know if a lot of people use this feature in Google Maps or whatever map that they use when they travel. I use Google Maps, but I like to go and add in these places and then I star them. You can even create a custom field if you really want to go down that far, but I at least star them. What it means is that when it starred, these places that you really want to check out in Paris are stard. It means that when you go into Google Maps, you see those stars on the map of Paris that you're looking at. So you can come out of the Eiffel Tower, for example. It can be lunchtime and you can just look at your Google Maps and you can see, oh my goodness, there's actually this place that I really wanted to check out and it's just like 400 meters from here.

This is the perfect time. So I definitely think starring these, making a little bit of a wishlist is a really good idea. And whether it's on Happy Cow, you find these places or whether it's on blog posts. So what a lot of bloggers, travel bloggers are doing is they are creating blog posts on let's say the best vegan restaurants in Paris. You can find this by searching them. And what I really like about this is because of search engine optimization. As a business owner, I know about this, but in order for them to continue getting traffic, they have to keep those blog posts updated and current. So you can often find restaurants there that are new and also often the blogger has a lot to say about these places as well. So do all of that before your trip. You don't want to be wandering and figuring that out during your trip and just kind of use that to get excited. So that would be my suggestion for writing a wishlist.

Karina Inkster:

I like that. I never even considered this visual option. Usually I just make a list. I'm like, okay, so these are the four vegan friendly or entirely vegan, whatever the case may be, establishments that I want to visit, and then I'm relying on their addresses or putting them in each time like, oh yeah, there was this one that was called such and such. And then I'm putting it into Google in the moment. So this is smart. This is thinking ahead. I was born and raised in Vancouver and so lived there my entire life until we moved up to Powell River in 2018. So now every time we go back to Vancouver, it's the foodie trip. It's the foodie tour. How many of our favorite places can we go to in a 48 hour span? But there's also new places that crop up all the time. 

There are, and I don't know where they are necessarily, so I might have to use this feature. Well first of all, I might have to sort happy cow by newest listing as you mentioned. I'd be like, oh, there's three new places and then I'm going to plot those, star them in Google Maps so I know exactly where they are. Yes, genius use of technology.

Brighde Reed:

If you were to see Seb’s and my Google Maps, you would just see stars all over the place because we even add stars If we know we are going to be going to Rome at some point, chances are we star it there and then we know it's there. It's like, oh my goodness. Oh, I remember finding that restaurant last three years ago. I wonder if it's still there. Fantastic, let's go.

Karina Inkster:

Awesome. Cool. Alright, what's next on the menu?

Brighde Reed:

Sure. My sixth tip is to consider letting your accommodation know ahead of time that you are vegan and that you are coming so that they can prepare. I would not bother doing this if I was in a city because chances are I'm not going to be eating at the hotel restaurant for dinner anyway because there's a ton of other places that I really want to go and check out. And chances are if it's a fairly big hotel, they're going to have soy milk if breakfast included. So I probably wouldn't bother in that type of scenario, but if I was going to be going to a place where I would be eating the majority of my meals there, for example, a resort or a hotel in the middle of nowhere, I might let them know so that they have the chance to get the vegan milks in and maybe to give a bit of thought to the menu, those kinds of things.

And if I'm feeling really keen, I might ask to speak with the food and beverage manager when I arrived, just sort of check in with them. This can be really helpful. And of course giving really positive and constructive feedback throughout your stay is going to make them really like you and make you want to do more and more. So a lot of people feel uncomfortable doing this and on one level I understand why you might feel uncomfortable for asking things, but a really important key thing that I think we often forget is that people in hospitality have the nature of wanting to be hospitable. That's their job. That's what they do. That's why they chose this career. So really you are asking if they don't want to accommodate you, that's fine, but it shouldn't stop you from at least asking for what you want and also giving that feedback as well will help them do better the next meal or the next time a vegan comes along as well. 

So you are entitled to feel looked after and cared for. Just like someone who has allergies, just like someone who has a particular need, they might not say yes, but you have the right to ask for it. And in my experience, a lot of chefs do want to try something new. It might not be the best option. It might not be a really well thought out to dish, but they often really want to look after you.

Karina Inkster:

That's a good idea. I think maybe that's the main thing that makes travel difficult for people is they just assume they can't ask or they assume the menu is as is with no other options. There's a lot of assumptions around like, oh, I can't do that, or no, that's uncomfortable. And so when someone tells me that they're traveling for work, they're traveling within the US here. So yeah, of course some places are way less vegan friendly than other places. But in what place in the states can you not bring a bag of protein powder and some oats? It's not that complicated. I understand not everyone has the same access and not everyone has the same privilege, but then we're talking about people who are traveling by choice most of the time or who have jobs that they've signed up for that involve travel. They knew about this ahead of time. So I dunno, there's always a part of my brain that's like, yeah, but it's not that hard.

Brighde Reed:

You’ve got to become desensitized to asking as well. If you are somebody that never likes to express what they need, and there are some people out there it you've just got to practice it. The more you practice it, the more you do this and you get some really positive responses and maybe a couple of negative responses. I have become much better at speaking up as I've become vegan. And actually it's helped me in many areas of my life, not with just getting vegan food, getting, and it's just a case of practicing and realizing that it'll probably be okay. They're probably going to be fine with it.

Karina Inkster:

Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Let's move to the next piece of advice you've got for our listeners.

Brighde Reed:

Yes. So my seventh tip is to learn or have access to a little of the language in the destination that you are going to. So of course I'm not suggesting that you need to become fluent in let's say Thai when you go to Thailand. I'm absolutely not saying that, but there are some really cool things that you can do for just a little bit of effort that's going to make communication a lot easier. 

So first of all, you could go into Google Translate. I'm not sure if people have really dug into this app or not yet, but a few things that you can do. You can enter some important phrases that you think you're going to need and then you can star them and then they'll be there. So you're not in the moment having to type them all in and everything. You can even have speak into Google Translate and it will turn what you're saying in English into Thai, and then you can play it for that person. There's even a conversation feature and there's even a camera feature so that you can scan the ingredients list or a menu item. And it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. You can get a bit of a sense as to what that is. So this is really helpful. Another tip is to download the language pack on Google Translate as well, so you can download Thai so that if you are in a place where there's no internet, it's still going to be able to translate for you.

Karina Inkster:

 Oh, interesting. Okay.

Brighde Reed:

Another one for this is having a few language lessons. Like I said, you do not need to learn a language fluently in order to be able to use this, but you can find a teacher, I've used Italkie as a platform. You can find them and just say, look, I just want to learn how to pronounce these phrases. I want to learn what these phrases are in Thai and I want to learn how to pronounce them. This is particularly helpful in tonal languages or languages that are really hard to pronounce because you can think that you're pronouncing it perfectly, but if the tone is wrong, then they're not just not going to understand it because it's a completely different word. And you can also ask for a few little fun phrases as well that's going to really endear you to the waiter or your host or whoever it is.

Like, oh my goodness, you did an amazing job with a vegan meal or something like that. And if a Thai chef who didn't speak English heard that from someone in Thai, I think they would just be thrilled. So yeah, these are some ways that you can learn the language as well. And you can even just go old school and have a language sheet. So we have a few of these resources on our website, but you can create your own with Google Translate. Think about the kinds of phrases that you're going to use. Put them on one half of a table and then use Google Translate to translate them. It's got really good now. So for basic phrases, it's going to be really good. Then you just copy and paste it into the other side. You print it out, you keep it in your pocket, pull it out when you arrive in a restaurant, and there you are. You can say a lot of things and communicate clearly, even if the server doesn't speak much English.

Karina Inkster:

The only time that's ever happened to me was when I was in Shanghai where I was not prepared. It was actually a last minute overnight delay for my flight. So this is way back in 2007. So we did not have Happy Cow, we did not have social media, and I was flying the long way to Australia, so through Shanghai and then into Sydney took forever. 

Brighde Reed: Yikes. 

Karina Inkster: Anyways, on the way back, it was supposed to be a four hour layover, but it ended up being overnight. So they put us up in a hotel and it's all fine, but I had to figure out the food situation, and I remember being in the airport still and looking at this menu that was, it had parts of it in English and it said seasonal vegetables, like I can eat seasonal vegetables. That sounds all right. So I order it and it's literally a plate of steamed bok choy with nothing else, just like three pieces of bok choy. And I'm like, well, I probably should have figured out how to communicate a little more than just pointing at random things on a menu, but it would've come in handy if I had been more prepared.

Brighde Reed:

Yeah, actually I think you're being too hard yourself. I don't think you could have predicted that one.

Karina Inkster:

Well, I wasn't planning on being there overnight, but I guess you never know. Alright, what else you got for us? 

Brighde Reed:

I've got another tip, tip eight, which is leverage social media. This is a pretty quick one. Eunice raised from Rated V food told me this one, she's amazing at finding vegan food is looking up hashtags on Facebook, but also Instagram as well. So if you are heading to Valencia, let's say search the hashtag vegan Valencia, and you'll see all sorts of things that come up, not just vegan restaurants, but you will also find non-vegan restaurants. You'll find events, you'll find all sorts of really, really interesting things that's going to maybe not be on the other apps because it's much easier to just hashtag vegan Valencia than it is to write a whole happy cow listing if you found a new really great place. And also as well, Facebook groups or other online communities. I'm not a huge Facebook fan, but certainly I think Facebook groups are still really important.

So for example, I often like to go onto Facebook groups when I'm researching our trips, particularly when it comes to checking the legitimacy of animal friendly experiences and whether they really are a sanctuary, for example. So an example would be in Thailand, there's a lot of vegan Facebook groups in Thailand for people that live there, Thai and non-AI that live there. And there are tons and tons of places that call themselves elephant sanctuaries, but I happen to know that not all of them would meet my standards. So I'm able to go in there and I'm going to be able to say, I saw this place on the internet, I'm just not quite sure about it. Has anyone got any insights to share? 

Because of course it's not the end of the world. If I end up participating in one of those experiences, I certainly can use my voice to make sure that others don't make that same mistake.

But if anyone can tell me what their experience has been about this particular place, then that can be really helpful. I always tend to limit my questions for those Facebook groups for very specific things rather than very general things. I often see in these groups a lot of like, oh, can anyone tell me some good restaurants in Bangkok, for example? And then the responses are go to Happy Cow, go to Happy Cow. So for specific questions, I really like that. And meetups.com is another website that can be really good for finding vegan events, activism opportunities if you really want to do that when you're traveling. So these are some really great sites too.

Karina Inkster:

Amazing. I've had some success with Reddit too, of all places.

Brighde Reed:

I don't use Reddit.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah. Well it's definitely anonymous, so you don't really know who you're speaking with, but I think that's part of the point. I'm not on it a ton, but I found a lot of very niche advice about food allergies, really about places to go in terms of accessing aboriginal art in Australia. And it's been useful for the vegan scene as well. Before moving to Powell River, for example, I went on the Sunshine Coast subreddit and I asked very specific questions about vegan foods and folks who live here and events, and I got a lot of really interesting feedback. So if that's not on someone's radar and they're on Reddit anyways, it could be something to check out. 

Brighde Reed:

Well I think I might check it out. Obviously I hear people talking about Reddit all the time, but I've never actually gone on there. I'll give it a look.

Karina Inkster:

Awesome. Alright, so we've come to the last tip for traveling the world. Yes. I have a feeling I know what it is.

Brighde Reed:

Yes, you speak in travel professionals if you don't want to do any of those things that I just listed, which of course requires some effort, definitely that effort will pay off. Definitely do those things if you like to travel independently, if you want to save money, do all of those things. Great. But there are also really a large number of vegan travel professionals out there now that do a ton of different things. So first of all, there are vegan travel agents. So we wouldn't really consider ourself a travel agent. We are more like a vegan tour operator, but vegan travel agents, there are quite a few, like I'm thinking about green earth travel, I'm thinking about vegan vacations in Canada. There's a few out there, and they can really help you find hotels and experiences that will align with your values. So for example, they're probably not going to put you up in that resort in the Caribbean that has a dolphin area attached to it.

They're probably going to communicate on your behalf to the hotel to let them know that you are vegan. And please make sure there's some options there for you. And they'll often know about resorts and places that are more vegan friendly so that if you are going to go to Carbo for example, they'll be able to recommend a place that they've had good experience in. And often, not always, often it is at no extra cost to you. Some travel agents these days, because it can be hard for them to make commissions, sometimes they will charge a service fee, but with that service fee, you will probably get quite a lot and I think it's worth it. The last one is consider going on a vegan group tour. 

Obviously there's well vegan travel, we run luxury premium vegan group tours to a few places. But if our budget is not for you, if we don't go to destinations that you want to go to, there are lots of other vegan group travel companies that are doing different kind of niches, niche with niches within the vegan group, travel going to different destinations that we are not going to at different budgets, different styles of travel.

So there's a lot to be said for traveling in a group because you don't have to do all of that research, especially if you're a solo traveler, you're not traveling by yourself. And if you're somebody that really doesn't have time to do, not just the research to travel as a vegan, but just research, otherwise creating an itinerary that's going to take you around the north of Italy and navigating websites for booking Italian trains and figuring out how to get from the train station to your hotel and going through the masses of activities, trying to find a good one. Then group travel is really fantastic for that. So you could consider it.

Karina Inkster:

I think folks should, I haven't done a lot of group travel. The only one I've done was for three days around Uluru in Australia because they have rules about you need to be with certain tours and I think it all makes sense for who can visit there. But it was great. I mean, it's not my usual style to be honest. I traveled to get away from humans. So when my husband and I went in 2017, we were in Northern Australia, so the Darwin area and Kakadu National Park, we took a week in that park, didn't see another human. It was pretty amazing. And so that's what I'm going for. But it did take a load of pre-research and work. And at this point I travel to places where I can make my own food for the most part. And then eating somewhere else at a restaurant is just kind of a bonus.

So I have to book a place that has a full kitchen. That's just how it works. And so we're doing that, but we're dealing with wilderness camp kitchens and barbecues, and you never really know what you're going to get. So it would've helped to have either a travel agent who gets it, who could have booked some of these things, or maybe a smaller group tour as part of the larger three week adventure. Exactly. So it doesn't even have to be a full thing. I mean, you could go on your own for a bit and then also do a tour.

Brighde Reed:

Yeah, absolutely. I remember before I got my job within Intrepid Travel, I kind of was a little bit judgy about people who went on group tours. I was kind of say to them, in my mind, I'm like, what? They can't travel by themselves. And then when I started tour leading and just realizing how great it was for people, I was like, this is fantastic. If you're traveling by yourself for a whole year, then of course you've got the time to do that. But if you are a really busy person, you don't have all the time or the inclination to do all of that research, then just go on a group tour. They're probably going to take you to the best places anyway. They really know where the best places are. They've done research and had experiences that likely you have not had. And like you say, if you're going to, let's say Thailand for a week, you might want to do a group tour of some hill tribes, for example, and do a trek around there and then just do your resort and your beach time independently, something like that. So there's day group tours, there's multi-day tours, there's all sorts of things. And of course there's these vegan ones, too.

Karina Inkster:

Amazing. Well, Brighde, it was great to speak with you. We'll have show notes where folks can go and connect with you and access your resources and check out Vegan World Travel. Thanks so much.

Brighde Reed:

Thank you.

Karina Inkster:

Thanks again, Brighde for joining me on the show. Access our show notes at nobullshitvegan.com/179 to connect with Brighde and check out her upcoming trip options. Thanks for tuning in.