Traveling through 3 towns on my trip in Vietnam Highland to Mang Den, a visual centric trip.
This article is a bit different that other one I have wrote. I will still pin the stops, locations of the bistro, cafes like I've usually do, but this time, I'd let a bit of photography and videography to seep through the words. Granted that you can just see the photo, but I'd like to create an inspiration for the reader to pick up photography along each of your trips to fully enjoy the moment.
Mang Den is simply a small town, a stop in the highland they recently expanded after constructing a new road connecting Kontum to Quang Ngai, a coastline town. The Vietnamese Highland is a very interesting region, surprisingly it was acquired and assimilated to Vietnam in a relatively peaceful manner.
As you, a foreigner, or maybe a uninitiated Vietnamese, may not have noticed how stretched out, far reached this land looks on the map. The highland has just been recently added to the Vietnam land, and to my surprise, not from any great battles or massacre. Unlike to stretch of land along the coast line in the South of Vietnam, where the natives used to be the Cham, with their own nation called Campanagara kingdom, swallowed and massacered by the Viet, the Highlands native, or so called minority still live till this day.
A dozen of different ethnicitíe locate sparingly in this region, while the Viets, native in the lowlands has been increasingly overpopulate areas around highways, leaving these minorities with their villages and more distant locations.
Traveling with Camera
Our main reasons, and our main activities during the trip was to take photos, and videos. Traveling without photography is unbelivably underwhelming. I used to take trips in Europe, but I did not have my camera with my then, quite regretable to be honest.
Photography brings such life, and spirits into the trip. It makes you conscious of the surrounding, of the light (most importantly), of the people, what they do, how they dress, what is the best composition for this shot, the list goes on.
I brought a Fujifilm X-Pro 2, a 6 years old camera with wonderful image quality.
The 3 stops, Buon Me Thuot, Pleiku, Mang Den
We took the trip on my bike, a 110cc scooter, and to be honest, it was a thrill. During the whole trip I was praying my bike won't fail on me, which it didn't, thank God! The road was simply straight and quite easy, however a two way 600km trip was not easy on my scooter, I should have rent a dirt bike instead.
Buon Me Thuot
Major city in Vietnam, this town has been through history. Used to be a major USA military base and head quater, now a major coffee hub og highland Vietnam.
On the way home we tried an alternative path, through a national park, and trotting along the Cambodian border. woth a look if you were riding a motorbike, preferably a dirt bike during this rainy season.
The food
Some very good food I have was in Buon Me Thuot. You would thank me to try 2 bowl pho, 1 soup, one noodle. Then try Vietnamese rice cake + BBQ. Then head down to the town and try sticky rice cake. And finally, try a lovely cup of Buon Me Thuot coffee.
Night life is unfortunately not much to do. The bar is scarce, some handful bars have beers but that's it
Pleiku
It gets chilly in the morning, we started from Buon Me Thuot at 5am, then have breakfast in Pleiku, 200km from Buon Me Thuot.
Mang Den
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