01 · Local cuisine
Flavours of the land
Cuisine
1
Dak Lak
Red Noodle Soup of Buôn Ma Thuột
Bún đỏ is the soul of Buôn Ma Thuột's twilight hours — thick rice noodles dyed brick-red with cashew oil, submerged in rich pork bone and crab broth, topped with pork meatballs and quail eggs. Stalls open only from late afternoon through the small hours of the morning.
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Cuisine
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Dak Lak
Bamboo Rice & Charcoal-Grilled Chicken
Cơm lam was born from the highland people's forest expeditions — glutinous rice packed into fresh bamboo tubes, sealed with leaves, and buried in glowing coals for up to an hour. The accompanying free-range chicken is marinated in forest honey, lemongrass, and wild herbs before being grilled golden over charcoal.
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3
Dak Lak
Serepok River Catfish Hotpot
Serepok catfish develop unusually firm, sweet flesh from swimming against the river's year-round current. Simmered in a hotpot with wild bamboo shoots, fresh turmeric, tomatoes, and highland greens, the gently tart broth perfectly offsets the fish's rich flavour — a Central Highlands signature impossible to replicate elsewhere.
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Cuisine
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Dak Lak
Bitter Highland Eggplant — Soul of Ê Đê Cuisine
Bitter eggplant grows wild in Đắk Lắk's highland forests and anchors Ê Đê cuisine — stewed with stream fish, eels, or buffalo, or simply stir-fried with garlic. The initial bitterness that puts newcomers off resolves into a lingering sweet aftertaste that becomes the defining flavour memory of any visit to Buôn Ma Thuột.
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Cuisine
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Dak Lak
Canh Thụt — M'nông Bamboo-Pounded Soup
Canh thụt is M'nông heritage in edible form — banana-leaf-grilled stream fish, termite mound mushrooms, and bitter eggplant loaded into a metre-long bamboo tube, simmered, then rhythmically pounded until everything blends into a creamy, unified mass. Each family guards its own recipe, carrying the flavour of hillside farming life down through generations.
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Cuisine
6
Dak Lak
Ê Đê Bamboo-Tube Grilled Pork
Thin-sliced pork seasoned with ginger and galangal is packed into a bamboo tube stoppered with a fresh banana leaf. As it grills over charcoal, the sealed chamber traps all aromatics and forces them back into the meat. The tube arrives at the table still sizzling, and pulling the leaf stopper releases a rush of fragrance like unwrapping a gift from the forest.
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Cuisine
7
Dak Lak
Ê Đê Golden Ant Sour Soup
Ê Đê cooks don't use tamarind or lime to sour a broth — they use golden ants. This iconic soup combines the ants with river shrimp, crab, small fish, and djam tang blossoms from the Sêrêpôk riverbank; the ants' natural formic acid creates the tartness while their eggs add a rich, fatty depth found nowhere else on earth.
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Dak Lak
Buôn Ma Thuột Grilled Pork Rolls
Buôn Ma Thuột's grilled pork rolls have their own character — minced pork wound around lemongrass stalks and charcoal-grilled, then self-wrapped in rice paper with crispy spring rolls, fresh vermicelli, sour green mango, cucumber, and herbs. The thick, slightly sweet peanut dipping sauce is what keeps diners lingering longest.
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Cuisine
9
Dak Lak
Tamarind Beef Hot-Dip
Bò nhúng me is the perfect dish for Buôn Ma Thuột's cool highland evenings — paper-thin beef swished through a bubbling sweet-sour tamarind pot with caramelised onions and butter, then rolled up in rice paper with fresh herbs and vermicelli. At around 150,000 VND per serving on Lê Thánh Tông street, it's an affordable ritual for locals and visitors alike.
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Cuisine
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Dak Lak
Buôn Ma Thuột Coffee — The World's Coffee Capital
Đắk Lắk supplies over 40% of Vietnam's coffee exports, and the "Buôn Ma Thuột Coffee" geographical indication is legally protected in more than 30 countries. In 2025 the knowledge of growing and processing coffee here was declared a national intangible cultural heritage — a single phin-drip glass in this city carries the weight of an entire civilisation built on red basalt soil.
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02 · Top places
Places to visit
Tan Loi Ward, city center · Most intact Ede village within Buon Ma Thuot
Ako Dhong Village
Ea Roc Commune, Ea Sup District · Only Cham tower in the Central Highlands
Yang Prong Cham Tower
Place
Dak Lak
Buon Ma Thuot Prison
Built by French colonists in 1930–1931 to detain communist leaders exiled from Central Vietnam, Buon Ma Thuot Prison became a site where revolutionary fighters secretly transformed their cells into schools. The 2-hectare complex includes six cellblocks and solitary confinement chambers that chronicle the most dramatic resistance story of Dak Lak.
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Dak Lak
Bao Dai's Palace at Lak Lake
Perched on a hilltop overlooking the emerald expanse of Lak Lake, Bao Dai's Palace was built during French colonial rule as a hunting retreat and rest house for Bao Dai — the last emperor of the Nguyen dynasty. From its terrace, dawn light on the lake and the surrounding M'Nong forest compose one of the most memorable views in the Central Highlands.
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Dak Lak
Dak Lak Museum
Built in 1940 in a style blending Ede longhouse design with French colonial architecture, Dak Lak Museum preserves over 30,000 artifacts from the region's indigenous ethnic groups. From bronze drums and gong collections to elephant-hunting tools, it is the definitive gateway to Central Highlands culture.
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Place
Dak Lak
Lak Lake
Lak Lake is a vast natural freshwater expanse where the M'Nong people have lived for centuries in traditional waterside villages. Dugout canoes — the iconic vessel of the Central Highlands — carry visitors across the still water to Buon Jun village, where ancient stilt houses and M'Nong culture remain vibrant.
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Dak Lak
Buon Don — Land of Elephants
Buon Don was the most celebrated center of wild elephant trapping and taming in Southeast Asia. The tomb of "Elephant King" Khun Yu Nob, a 130-year-old wooden stilt house in Laotian style, and a 1-kilometre bamboo suspension bridge are the defining landmarks of this remarkable ethnic village.
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Dak Lak
Dray Nur Waterfall
Dray Nur — the "female waterfall" of Ede legend, born when a couple leapt into the Serepok River and split it into two — stretches 250 metres wide and plunges 30 metres into a turquoise pool below. Behind the curtain of water hides a 300-square-metre cave accessible only to those willing to wade through the spray.
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Place
Dak Lak
Yok Don National Park
Yok Don National Park is Vietnam's second-largest nature reserve and home to the country's only surviving dry dipterocarp forest — a woodland type as rare in Southeast Asia as temperate forests are in the tropics. Between December and February, the entire canopy turns brilliant gold, creating a scene unlike any other in Vietnam.
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Place
Dak Lak
World Coffee Museum
Opened in 2018 by the Trung Nguyen Legend Group, the World Coffee Museum is Southeast Asia's sole institution dedicated entirely to the history and culture of coffee worldwide. Over 10,000 artifacts — antique grinders, brewing tools, 3D civilisation maps — tell the story of the drink that changed the world, set inside five Ede-longhouse-inspired buildings.
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03 · Festivals
Cultural rhythms
1
December 19
Central Highlands Gong Culture Festival
In 2005, UNESCO declared the Central Highlands gong cultural space a "masterpiece" — but for the Ê Đê and M'Nông of Dak Lak, gong music has never been a performing art: it is the only language capable of speaking directly to the gods.
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September 10 · Lunar
M'Nong New Rice Festival
When the first upland rice stalks turn golden across the Dak Lak highlands, the M'Nông do not harvest first — they must seek permission from the deity Giàng, escort the "rice soul" home, and perform three days of offerings before a single grain of new rice may touch human lips.
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November 15
Ê Đê Water Source Worship Ceremony
Three days, two pigs, nine cups of rice wine, and cotton thread woven with chicken feathers sealing the village entrance — this is not a festival for visitors to admire, but the sacred moment when the Ê Đê negotiate with the water spirit to secure an entire village's wellbeing for the coming year.
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March 9
Buon Ma Thuot Coffee Festival
From the French colonial plantations that first broke Dak Lak's highland soil in the late 19th century, the province's Robusta coffee has grown into a brand reaching over 80 countries — and every two years, Buon Ma Thuot claims its title as the coffee capital of the world.
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March 11
Buon Don Elephant Festival
In the land where one M'Nông man named Y Thu K'Nul tamed nearly 500 wild elephants over more than a century, the ritual health blessing for elephants endures as the world's most vivid testament to the unparalleled bond between humans and Asian elephants that exists nowhere else on earth.
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