Fifth Stop: Buon Ma Thuot

April 23. NHA Trang to Buon Ma Thuot. 188km.

The next town was somewhat out of the way. The original plan was to head north to Quy Nhon, but instead we headed inland to Buon Ma Thuot to see what it had to offer. This meant a rather large detour inland and then back down to the coast.

Whether or not stopping in Buon Ma Thuot was worth it in the grand scheme of things, I cant really say, but I did like it there.

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We got in at about 4pm and had to look for a place to stay. There was nothing on hostelworld and not much on booking.com so we asked a few locals for nha nghi - hotel in Vietnamese.

We managed to find a place that had three double beds - enough for the six of us - for a mere 400,000 dong per night ($4aud each).

We booked a tour to go out on the day after arrival. A local guide drove us out to a small coffee plantation and shop, to the Dray Nur waterfalls and then the Lok Lake and its surrounding tribal village. 

The first stop, the coffee plantation, was simply a high end coffee shop with a small museum attached, not exactly the countryside coffee farm we were expecting.

From here we were taken to an up-and-coming coffee shop, Azzan, to try some of their coffee. The shop owner explained to us how their coffee is made more purely than traditional Vietnamese coffee, which contains a lot of additives to alter the flavour, and that as a result their coffee is not at all popular inside Vietnam! Their coffee beans are well produced and almost the entirety of their sales are to exporters in Italy and Singapore.

The coffee really cant be compared to the rest of the Vietnamese coffee I have had to date - which I really like. It is a lot more aromatic and bitter - which I did actually appreciate, but that is also more what I am used to from back home.

One special type of coffee I did get to taste however was weasel coffee. This is essentially coffee beans that have been eaten by a weasel, their shit collected and cleaned up to produce coffee, as seen below in its raw form...

These coffee beans are sold for up to US$3,000/kg. It tasted okay, a little more bitter and flavoursome than the regular coffee.

From here we went to the Dray Nur Waterfalls - my favourite destination of the day.

We were able to go behind the waterfall below and take a dip in its pouring water. The power of these waterfalls is incredible - and this is the dry season!

The last stop was Lok Lake. Unfortunately during the dry season this massive lake is largely dried up, but I can imagine how expansive it would be during the wet season.

We walked around the town, around peoples house's to see how traditional Vietnamese lived. The single room wooden huts were the staple housing establishment in this village! We had explained to us that the length of the house is dependant on how many daughters the family had; it was tradition that upon marrying the men would move in with the women and live together in their family. 

From here our guide drove us home. He seemed to be in a kind of hurry because he was a demon behind the wheel - overtaking on the wrong side of the road constantly forcing motorcyclists to drop off the shoulder onto the gravel. Glad I haven't come across many drivers like this to date! Nevertheless, we made it back, alive.