Buon Ma Thuot

Buon Ma Thuot grows a large share of the coffee the world drinks and receives almost none of the people who drink it. That gap is the reason to go.

Is Buon Ma Thuot worth going to?

If you have an interest in coffee or in the central highlands, yes. It is the capital of Dak Lak province, sitting on a basalt plateau at around 500 m, and it is the centre of Vietnamese coffee growing.

Buon Ma Thuot is also a working provincial town rather than a destination built for visitors. There is no old quarter and no beach. What there is: waterfalls, a lake, national park forest, Ede and Mnong villages, and coffee taken more seriously than anywhere else in the country.

The scale is worth stating plainly. Vietnam is the world's largest producer of robusta coffee, and a large share of that crop grows on this plateau. Between October and December the town works around it: trucks, drying beds on every hard surface, and the smell of it everywhere.

Waterfalls, a lake, a forest and the coffee

Four things, spread across the province. Dray Nur and Dray Sap are the waterfalls, sitting close together on the Serepok river about half an hour from town, and they run hardest at the end of the wet season.

Lak Lake is the second, an hour and a half south — a wide shallow lake with Mnong villages on its shore and traditional longhouses among them. Yok Don national park is the third, a large dry forest reserve to the northwest.

The fourth is the coffee, which is less a sight than the texture of the place. The coffee guide explains why what is served here is not the weak thing the name suggests elsewhere.

When is the coffee harvest?

October to December, and it takes over the town while it lasts. Trucks fill the roads and drying beds appear on every hard surface, which makes it the most interesting time to be here and the busiest. The wider dry window is November to April, so the harvest sits inside the comfortable half of the year.

March is the short flowering, when the plantations go white and smell strongly. The wet season from May to October is heavy on this plateau, and the tracks out to the villages and the park get difficult.

What about the elephants?

Do not ride one. Dak Lak has been shifting away from elephant riding towards a model where the animals are watched and fed rather than worked, and the province has backed that change.

Operators at Lak Lake and around Yok Don differ, and some still offer rides. Choosing one that does not is a small decision that decides what your money supports. The elephants are a genuine reason to come here; sitting on one is not part of it.

The town, or a longhouse at Lak Lake?

In town, mostly, in ordinary Vietnamese hotels at ordinary prices — the tiers in the accommodation guide apply, and Buon Ma Thuot sits at the cheaper end because demand is domestic.

At Lak Lake there are longhouse homestays and one old lodge, and a night out there is more memorable than a night in the town. It is the choice worth making if you have three days rather than two.

What does a day in Dak Lak cost?

Cheaply. A hotel room runs roughly 300,000 to 700,000 dong, meals are provincial prices, and the waterfalls charge small entry fees. At about 26,000 dong to the dollar this is one of the least expensive places in the country to spend a day.

Getting between the sights is the cost that surprises people. They are spread over a wide province, and a car or a motorbike for the day is close to essential.

Fly, or drive the highlands?

By air is easiest — the airport takes flights from Hanoi, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City, and the hop saves most of a day.

Overland, it is around 350 km and roughly eight hours from Saigon, and about five to six hours south of Kon Tum. The more interesting approach is from Da Lat or Nha Trang, four to five hours each, which threads the highlands together into a route most trips never touch — the central highlands route sets it out day by day.

The transport guide covers the choices.