The central highlands

North of Da Lat, the yawning plateaux of the central highlands are worth visiting for their scenery and minority peoples. After heading south from Da Lat on Highway 20 for about 20km turn right onto Highway 27, which snakes its way northwards over the hills. First stop is usually Lak Lake, an attractive body of water surrounded by minority villages, about 60km south of Buon Ma Thuot. The town of Buon Ma Thuot itself is an unlovely place, but it is the gateway to E De longhouses, elephant-back rides and treks into Yok Don National Park. From Buon Ma Thuot, Highway 14 probes further north to Plei Ku, where it’s possible (with a guide) to visit Jarai villages. From Plei Ku it’s little over an hour’s journey straight north on Highway 14 to the likeable town of Kon Tum, where you don’t need a permit to visit villages of minority groups like the Bahnar, with their towering tribal rong, or communal halls. From Kon Tum you can follow Highway 24 eastwards over a high pass to the coast at Quang Ngai, or get into high-adventure gear and continue north through the highlands along Highway 14, on the route of the Ho Chi Minh trail, branching off on Highway 14B to hit the coast at Da Nang. Yet another possibility is to head for the new border crossing at Bo Y and cross into southern Laos. 

++ Lak Lake

Some 150km north of Da Lat, Highway 27 passes serene LAK LAKE, a charming spot that has become very popular with tourists, aided by the upgrading of the highway between Da Lat and Buon Ma Thuot. Emperor Bao Dai grabbed some of the best sites in southern Vietnam for his many palaces, so it comes as no surprise to learn that he had one here, in a prime spot on a small hill overlooking the lake. The site is now home to a small hotel, the Bao Dai Residence (050/856767; US$15-30). With just a few well-equipped rooms enjoying fabulous views over the lake, this is far and away the best place to stay near the lake. Intriguing snaps of Vietnam’s last emperor adorn the walls, and a decent restaurant adds to the appeal. A new road spirals to the residence at the top, and another runs round the base of the hill; both afford spectacular views, particularly at sunset, of the lake. Snuggled into a protected bay east of the hill, the Lak Lake Tourist Resort (050/586184; under ฟ) consists of a former military barracks with simple but adequate twin bedrooms with fan or air-conditioning, some with attached bathrooms, as well as two longhouses ($5) beneath a grove of tall, shady trees. There’s also a floating restaurant where the food is reasonable and Mnong staff wear traditional dress. If you’re intent on getting the whole minority village experience, complete with grunting pigs and squawking chickens waking you in the morning, head on round to Jun Village, a thriving Mnong community on the west side of the hill, whose longhouses crowd together near the shore. Dak Lak Tourist has a branch office here (050/586268) and a longhouse where it’s possible to overnight ($5, $7 including American breakfast); mosquito nets and mattresses are provided, and there are outside toilet facilities. They can also organize a show with gong-playing, dancing and rice-wine tasting ($60 per group) and elephant rides around the lake ($30 for two for an hour and a half). You can take a dug-out canoe with one of the locals ($10 per hour for two through Dak Lak Tourist, cheaper if you bargain with a local boatman) on the lake, which can be a great experience early in the morning, and the tourist office can also organize guided treks into the surrounding forested hills.

Although Lak Lake is mostly geared towards organized tour groups, it’s entirely possible to arrive here independently, either by Honda om or by the local bus from Buon Ma Thuot. 

++ Buon Ma Thuot

Without the added incentive of its nearby minority villages and waterfalls, BUON MA THUOT would have little to offer. Of those who do make the journey up from the coast’s well-trodden tourist trail, or direct from Ho Chi Minh City along Highway 14, many expect a quaint longhouse community, and for them the town’s central sprawl of modern buildings splayed across a grid of streets can only disappoint. Seeing longhouses and traditional minority communities – of which most around these parts comprise E De people – is possible at Ako Dhong, on the northern outskirts of town, and in the surrounding countryside at Ban Don near Yok Don National Park, or some other outlying montagnard village. Enough E Des have by now been assimilated into Buon Ma Thuot’s population of nearly 200,000 for a public-address system to relay the news across the town in E De, daily at dusk. Although Dak Lak Province is fairly relaxed about visits to these villages, some, particularly those near the Cambodian border, are still theoretically off limits to travellers, while others are not permitted to take foreign overnight guests. Check with the Dak Lak Tourist Office, before heading out.

Sited around 200km north of Da Lat and the same distance south of Plei Ku, Buon Ma Thuot is both administrative centre to Dak Lak Province, and the western highlands’ unofficial capital. During French colonial times, the town developed on the back of the coffee, tea, rubber and hardwood crops that grew in its fertile red soil, and was the focal point for the plantations that smothered the surrounding countryside. Plantation-owners and other colons would amuse themselves by picking off the elephants, leopards and tigers once prevalent in the area, and Bao Dai himself enjoyed bagging game so much that he had a house built some way south of the town on Lak Lake connected by a private track to his summer palace in Da Lat. In later years Americans superseded the French, but they were long gone by the time the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) swept through in March 1975, making Buon Ma Thuot the first "domino" to fall in the Ho Chi Minh Campaign. More recently, natural resources and coffee in particular have made the town a comparatively affluent community, as evidenced by the number of Hondas and jeeps buzzing its streets, and the glut of restaurants and cafés. 

++ Plei Ku

North of Buon Ma Thuot, Highway 14 rocks and rolls over the hills and plains of the Dak Lak Plateau, passing rubber plantations, hardwood forests and the corrugated leaves of coffee plants on its way to PLEI KU. The band of peaks to the west of the highway, and the rugged terrain buttressing them, constituted one of the American War’s major combat theatres. It was an NVA (North Vietnamese Army) attack on Plei Ku, in February 1965, that elicited the "Rolling Thunder" campaign; the war’s first conventional battle of any size was fought in the Ia Drang Valley, southwest of Plei Ku, eight months later. Hundreds of Americans died at Ia Drang, but many times more Communists perished, spurring America to claim victory by dint of a higher body count. A decade later, in March 1975, Plei Ku was abandoned when NVA troops overran Buon Ma Thuot. As the South’s commanding officers flew by helicopter to safety, 200,000 Southern soldiers and civilians were left to make their own way down to the coast, hounded at every step by NVA shells.

So little of Plei Ku was left standing by these last days of the war, that a near-total reconstruction was required. The 1990s reincarnation that you’ll see, stacked up the side of a gentle slope, lacks any charm. Indeed, you’d be hard-pushed to find any real reason for spending time here, as you need a permit and guide to visit the few minority villages that are open to foreigners, and there’s little to see in any case. If you’re keen to explore minority villages without a government chaperone, it makes sense to push on 50km north, just an hour’s journey, to Kon Tum, where there are fewer restrictions.

Barring an early morning stroll along central, east– west Tran Phu, where hawkers sell aubergines, shallots, parsnips and garlic, and into the adjacent town market, there’s little to do in Plei Ku. Should you get stalled by the weather, you could check out the two museums in town. The Ho Chi Minh Museum (Mon– Sat 7–11am & 1.30–4pm free), across from the Plei Ku Hotel, is well laid out but throws up few surprises. The Gia LaiMuseum (Mon– Fri 7.30–11am & 1.30–4pm; $1; book at tourist office in advance), at 28 Quang Trung, fares little better, but there is an impressive gong and rice-wine jar collection in the first gallery and, in the fourth, replicas of a Bahnar grave and longhouse are displayed.

This far north in the highlands, the Jarai and, to a lesser extent, the Bahnar outnumber the E De, though many of them have been assimilated into mainstream Vietnamese culture. Also, Plei Ku’s tourist board, Gia Lai Tourist, is notoriously defensive of the region’s few remaining traditional settlements and doesn’t approve of individuals making forays into the wilds, insisting that you should always be with a licensed guide when visiting villages. If you try to by-pass this regulation and just turn up in villages, you’ll get little cooperation from the locals, who receive a cut from the fees for "official" visitors. 

++ Kon Tum and the minority villages 

Some 49km north of Plei Ku, Highway 14 crosses the Dakbla River and runs into the southern limits of KON TUM, a sleepy, friendly town which serves as a springboard for onward travel to Laos as well as jaunts to outlying villages of the Bahnar and other minority groups such as the Sedang, Gieh Trieng and Rongao. There are about 650 minority villages in the province, of which only a small fraction have been visited by foreigners, so the scope for adventure here is broad indeed. Unlike other provinces in the central highlands, local authorities in Kon Tum do not insist on the need for visitors to obtain permits and guides to visit minority villages, so you are more or less free to explore as you like. However, you’re strongly advised to discuss your travel plans with the local tourist office to check on their feasibility.

Under the guise of Phan Dinh Phung, Highway 14 forms the western edge of Kon Tum; running east above the river is Nguyen Hue, and between these two axes lies the town centre. In common with Buon Ma Thuot and Plei Ku, Kon Tum had a hard time of it during the American War, and yet a stroll along Nguyen Hue still reveals a handful of red-tile terraces of shophouses left over from the French era, their low, bowed roofs blackened with age, as well as two churches. At the base of Tran Phu stands the grand, pastel-coloured bulk of Tan Huong Church. Further east is the so-called Wooden Church, built by the French in 1913, and frequently restored since then. A statue of Christ stands behind glass over the front entrance; below him, a stained-glass window neatly fuses the classic Christian symbol of the dove with images of local resonance – a Bahnar village and an elephant. In the grounds, a statue of the nineteenth-century French bishop who established the diocese of Kon Tum stands before a scale model of a rong, or communal house.

Behind the church, a Bahnar orphanage looks after children of all ages in spartan but well-cared-for surroundings. Visitors are welcome to look around, and are usually offered homemade wine and croissants; a donation is expected. There is another branch of the orphanage tucked away down by the river off Ly Thai To, which receives fewer visitors, so you’re likely to get a warm welcome. At 56 Tran Hung Dao is a Catholic seminary and minorities museum (Mon– Fri 8–11am & 2–4pm; free) that is worth a look for its impressive architecture and small museum, which contains examples of minority wood carvings, work implements and clothes, as well as a history of Christianity in the hills of Vietnam. It doesn’t stick rigidly to its opening hours, so if you can’t find anyone around, contact one of the local branches of Kon Tum Tourist to arrange a visit.

One good thing about Kon Tum is that you don’t have to go far to get a feel of a minority village, as there are a couple of Bahnar villages on the eastern fringe of town. Following Nguyen Hue to its eastern end brings you to Kon Tum Konam, while following Tran Hung Dao to the east takes you directly to Kon Tum Kopong, where there is a wonderful example of a rong, or communal house, which is such a striking feature of Bahnar villages. Built on sturdy stilts with a platform and entrance at either end (or in the middle, as is the case here); the interior is generally made of split bamboo and protected by a towering thatched roof, usually about 15m high. The rong is used as a venue for festivals and village meetings, and as a village court at which anyone found guilty of a tribal offence has to ritually kill a pig and a chicken, and must apologize in front of the village. Villagers at Kon Tum Kopong are big on basket-weaving, and you might chance upon locals cutting bamboo into thin strips and crafting them into sturdy baskets, which they sell very cheaply in the local market.

++  North of Kon Tum

Until recently it was necessary to backtrack from Kon Tum in order to get down to the coast or head northwards, but as a result of improved roads, travellers now have the choice of heading for the Laos border at Bo Y, down to the coast at Quang Ngai on Highway 24, or continuing north on Highway 14, the famed Ho Chi Minh trail, which has now been upgraded to a major north– south highway, then branching off on Highway 14B to reach Da Nang. As yet only seeing light traffic, this picturesque road is a pleasure to travel on.

Around 42km north of Kon Tum is the district of DAK TO, which witnessed some of the most sustained fighting of the American War; to the west of the road to Dak To is Rocket Ridge, a brow of hills that earned its name from the heavy bombing – napalm and conventional – it received during this time. To the south of town is Charlie Hill, which was the scene of one of the fiercest battles of the war, ending in a VC victory over Southern troops. There’s a rong right in the middle of Dak To, where the inhabitants are mostly Sedang, and with a little exploration you should be able to find more Sedang longhouses in the settlements surrounding Dak To.

Heading north along the route from Dak To, the road passes through DAK GLEI, where there’s another spectacular rong. Directly east is virgin jungle surrounding Mount Ngoc Linh (2598m), the highest peak in the central highlands. Beyond here, the route takes you through wonderfully verdant and unpopulated countryside before Highway 14B branches off to the right at Nam Giang, taking you down to the coast at Hoi An or Da Nang.