The quickest ways to ruin a vacation is to get sick! As a traveler in a new country, it can be difficult to know what to eat or drink and do your activities while staying as healthy as possible.
Here are some great tips on how to stay healthy while in Vietnam.
1. Food and water Drinking water
As a traveler, water is an issue since like many other countries, Vietnam has an underdeveloped water treatment infrastructure. Contaminated water is a major source of illness.
In Vietnam, avoid tap water as much as possible and only drink bottled water. Generally, even locals avoid tap water and drink boiled or filtered water at home. Bottled water is almost always available in restaurants as well as on the street.
If you want to drink something refreshing at a restaurant other than water, an alternative is iced tea (“Tra da”, pronounced “cha da”), which is cold green tea with ice. Since it is a tea, the water has been heated and then cooled, which kills any germs that can make you sick.
Most people in the country drink iced tea in restaurants simply because it’s safe, more refreshing than lukewarm water, and cheaper than bottled water.
As for the ice cream, it may not be very clean because it may have been made with contaminated water especially in small restaurants or in the mountains. However, many restaurants buy ice cream from companies rather than making it themselves, in which case it is quite safe.
2. Food
Foodborne illnesses are also a major concern for a traveler.
Soups are ubiquitous in Vietnamese cuisine, so there are plenty of opportunities to get food poisoning or diarrhea.
Make sure the pho you order is hot!
Eat only cooked foods and avoid raw meats. Even eating salads and raw vegetables is not the best idea. Adding herbs to your hot pho is usually good, but again you will have to use your judgment. Note that restaurants will boil raw vegetables and herbs for you upon your request.
Be careful with fruit – eat fruits that have inedible skin (i.e. bananas, oranges, watermelon, etc.) and avoid fruits like apples.
3. Street Food
The first thing to look out for is to see if the stand is busy or if there are no customers. If it is busy, it would mean that many customers are eating there, which indicates that the restaurant is safe but also that the food does not sit out in the open for long and therefore there is a rotation of people. food but also that the food is probably delicious.
Many of these stalls do not have refrigeration facilities, so they rarely prepare food in advance. Some food stalls are covered on three sides with glass, protecting the food from harmful germs.
If you are here for the first time, do not try stalls where the food is left out in the open as this would mean the ingredients could get dirty easily. Also clean the cutlery when you arrive at a restaurant since they are often left on the table and collect either dust or flies but in both cases, it is clearly not great.
Avoid stalls that are not crowded as this instead indicates that even locals don’t go there, which is never a good sign.
You should also avoid street food stalls where vendors use dirty oil to cook. You can observe this yourself – check the bottle the supplier uses to store their oil and look at the oil in the pan used. If the color is brown or even black, forget it immediately.
