Pleiku

Pleiku is the capital of Gia Lai, a highland town on red volcanic soil with a crater lake at its edge. Coffee grows in every direction from it.

Is Pleiku worth a stop on the highlands road?

Pleiku is worth a night rather than a holiday, and the reasons are all outside the town. The centre is a grid of provincial streets at around 800 m, pleasant enough in the cool of the morning and unremarkable by lunchtime.

What makes it worth stopping is the country around it. There is a lake in a volcanic crater, a cone you can climb in an hour, and villages that still build carved houses over their graves. The farmland is a colour you will not have seen further north.

What is Bien Ho, and why does it matter?

Bien Ho is a lake in the crater of an extinct volcano about 7 km north of town, and it supplies Pleiku with its drinking water. The Jarai name is T'Nung, and the local phrase for it — the sea lake — is what the Vietnamese name translates.

Bien Ho has a walkway out to a viewing point and a stand of pines. On a clear morning the water is a blue that looks like nothing else in the highlands. It takes an hour, it costs almost nothing, and it is the one thing in Gia Lai that everyone who passes through remembers. The tea and coffee hills on the road out to it are worth the extra twenty minutes.

Where does the red earth come from?

The red earth is basalt, weathered from the volcanoes that built this plateau, and it is why the highlands grow what they grow. Coffee and pepper cover the country around Pleiku, and the soil stains shoes, trouser hems and the sides of every truck on Highway 14.

Chu Dang Ya, about 30 km northeast, is the clearest sight of it. The cone is low, planted in rows, walkable in an hour, and the crops on it change colour across the year. What happens to the beans afterwards is in the coffee guide, and the wider industry sits south of here around Buon Ma Thuot.

When do the wild sunflowers come out?

The wild sunflowers come out in November, and they are the reason to time a highlands trip for that month. Dã quỳ grows along the road edges in a solid yellow band from Pleiku to Chu Dang Ya, lasting roughly three or four weeks.

Late February into March gives the other flowering season, when the coffee blossoms white across whole farms for a few days after the first irrigation. Otherwise, November to April is dry and comfortable and May to October is wet, with rain concentrated in long afternoons.

Pleiku or Kon Tum, if you only have one?

Take Kon Tum if you are choosing one, and Pleiku if you are flying. Kon Tum has the wooden cathedral, the Bahnar communal houses and the Dak Bla river, and it is the more interesting hour of the two.

Pleiku has the airport, the lake and the volcano. Most people going to either end up doing both. The two towns are 50 km apart on the same road, and the central highlands route runs through them.

Where do you stay in Pleiku?

You stay in the centre of Pleiku, in a business hotel, because that is what the town has. A handful of larger hotels sit around the main roundabout, with cheaper guesthouses on the streets behind them.

Nobody is here for the room. Book near the centre, so that breakfast, the coffee shops and a taxi to the lake are all within a few minutes. Spend the difference on a car for the day.

What does a day in Gia Lai cost?

A day in Gia Lai is one of the cheaper days in Vietnam. A room in the centre runs at the bottom of the bands in the accommodation guide. Pho kho costs what a bowl costs anywhere in the provinces, and the lake charges a token entry.

The one real expense is transport, because the sights are spread across 30 km of farmland with no bus going near them. A car and driver for the day, or a rented motorbike if you are already riding, is what makes Pleiku work.