Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [144]
In the dry season, the park’s wildlife makes for Yok Don Mountain in search of food and water, and your chances of seeing something interesting improve. Longer safaris can be arranged by the park HQ. If you’re only here for the day, the park can arrange elephant trekking tours (around $60) or one-day walking tours (around $20) into the forest. There’s a handful of twin-bedded cabin-style rooms with attached bathrooms ($10), should you wish to overnight; for bookings, prices and enquiries, contact the park HQ (0500/378 3049). From Buon Ma Thuot, hourly public buses go to the park via Phan Boi Chau (about $1), or a xe om costs around $12–15.
The central highlands | Through the highlands | Buon Ma Thuot and around | Around Buon Ma Thuot |
Ban Don
The three sub-hamlets that comprise BAN DON lie a few kilometres beyond Yok Don’s park HQ on the bank of the crocodile-infested Serepok. Khmer, Thai, Lao, Jarai and Mnong live in the vicinity, though it’s the E De who are in the majority. They adhere to a matriarchal social system, whereby a groom takes his bride’s name, lives with her family and, should his wife die subsequently, marries one of her sisters so that her family retains a male workforce. Houses around the village, a few of which are longhouses, are built on stilts, and some are decorated with ornate woodwork.
Village life in Ban Don has become ridiculously commercial with the Ban Don Tourist Centre (0500/378 3019) organizing its residents into a tourist-welcoming taskforce. Though constantly visited by busloads of Vietnamese, the rampant consumerism and fees charged for low-grade attractions will make most Westerners want to turn round and get out straight away. If you linger, you can pay a dollar to walk on a rickety bamboo suspension bridge through a tangle of banyan roots, or to look around the village’s oldest house, which seems to be under constant repair. The village’s other attractions include expensive elephant rides and a glut of souvenir stalls.
Ban Don village has a long and distinguished tradition of elephant-taming; indeed, elephants were still caught and trained until recently, though dwindling numbers of wild elephants make it a vanishing art. (If you’re lucky you may get a chance to see the annual elephant festival in March). Beyond its final sub-hamlet stands an elephant trainers’ graveyard, which includes the tomb of the legendary Y Thu Knu (1850–1924), the greatest elephant-catcher of them all. His lifetime tally of 244 included an auspicious white elephant which he presented to the King of Siam, from whom he received the honorary title khusunop, meaning something like “great elephant catcher”. Y Thu Knu’s is the square tomb, and the pointed one in front is his nephew’s, also a prodigious elephant-hunter. Other tombs nearby are adorned with paintings of elephants and wooden carvings of peacocks standing on tusks – the latter being considered expensive items to take into the next life.
Most people visit Ban Don on an organized tour; to go it alone, take the bus to Yok Don National Park (see "Yok Don National Park"), then a xe om (about 30,000đ) for the last few kilometres.
The central highlands | Through the highlands |
Plei Ku and around
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