The Central Highlands (Tây Nguyên)

Leave the coast and its beaches behind, climb switchback roads that plunge into the clouds, and suddenly Vietnam changes its face. The air cools, the light grows clearer, and the earth beneath your feet turns a deep, almost unreal red — the red of volcanic laterite. Around you stretch hills covered with coffee bushes in tight rows, shreds of primary forest, and now and then, as you pass a village, the deep sound of an ensemble of gongs echoing through the valley. You are in the Central Highlands, the Tây Nguyên (tay ngwee-en), literally "the Western Plateaus" — a Vietnam of mountains, red earth and ancient peoples, a world away from the paddies of the delta.

A red earth, born of fire

What strikes you first in the Tây Nguyên is the colour of the soil. This red earth the Vietnamese call đất bazan (dut ba-zan), "basalt earth." It comes from ancient lava flows: the region is a set of vast volcanic plateaus, tiered at altitudes that bring a welcome coolness to the tropics. This weathered basalt yields a soil of remarkable fertility, ideal for highland crops. It is this marriage — rich volcanic earth, cool climate and monsoon rains — that made the Tây Nguyên the great land of Vietnamese coffee.

The highlands span several provinces of the country's centre, among them Kon Tum, Gia Lai, Đắk Lắk, Đắk Nông and Lâm Đồng. Long cloaked in dense tropical forest, they still hold nature reserves, waterfalls plunging over basalt cliffs, and a wildlife the Vietnamese imagination associates with power: the tiger, in the past, and above all the elephant, of which more later. But over the twentieth century much of the forest gave way to plantations. Today the dominant landscape is these immense sweeps of coffee bushes, dotted with pepper vines, rubber trees and fruit trees.

The kingdom of coffee

Few people realise it, but Vietnam is one of the very top coffee producers in the world, and the leading producer of robusta coffee — and it is here, in the Tây Nguyên, that almost all of it happens. Coffee is not a native plant: it was introduced during the French colonial era, in the late nineteenth century. But it found in the red basalt earth an ideal home, and it has become a central part of the highlands' economy and culture.

The undisputed capital of this kingdom is Buôn Ma Thuột, capital of Đắk Lắk province. It is the beating heart of Vietnamese coffee, a town whose very name evokes, for any Vietnamese, the morning cup. For coffee here is no distant beverage: it is a national ritual. The famous cà phê sữa đá (ca fe suh da), "iced milk coffee," is made with a small metal filter, the phin (fin), set on the glass, beneath which the coffee drips slowly onto a layer of sweetened condensed milk. You pour it all over ice, stir, and savour this thick brew, strong and sweet at once, while watching the street come to life. The Tây Nguyên's robusta, more powerful and more bitter than arabica, gives Vietnamese coffee its unmistakable character.

Coffee has also transformed the region's human landscape. Waves of migrants from other parts of the country came up to farm the red earth, so that the highlands' population today mixes the Kinh (the majority Vietnamese) with the indigenous peoples who lived there long before.

The peoples of the highlands

For the Tây Nguyên is, above all, the historical home of many indigenous peoples, collectively referred to in Vietnamese as dân tộc thiểu số (dun tohk thee-oo saw), "ethnic minorities." Among them the Ê Đê, the Gia Rai (Jarai), the Ba Na (Bahnar), the M'Nông, the Cơ Ho and many others, each with its own language, customs and social order. Many of these languages belong to language families different from Vietnamese, and several of these societies were traditionally matrilineal — lineage and inheritance passing through women, a trait that sets these cultures clearly apart from mainstream Vietnamese society.

Traditional dwellings tell this difference. Among several of these peoples, people build the longhouse, the nhà dài (nya zai), a great house on stilts that grows longer over the generations as the family expands. Elsewhere they raise the spectacular high-roofed communal house, the nhà rông (nya rong), whose soaring roof, like an axe blade raised to the sky, towers over the village. It is there that meetings, festivals and ceremonies are held: the symbolic heart of the community.

Gongs, elephants and spirits

If one art embodies the soul of the highlands, it is that of the gongs, the cồng chiêng (kong chieng). These bronze discs, played in ensembles where each musician holds one instrument and one note, weave complex, hypnotic melodies that accompany every great moment of life: births, weddings, funerals, farming ceremonies, offerings to the spirits. For these peoples the gong is no mere instrument: it is a sacred object, a link with the invisible world, a precious possession handed down through the generations. This cultural space of the gongs of the Tây Nguyên has indeed been recognised by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity — an acknowledgement of its universal value.

Around this music survives an ancient, animist spiritual world, in which the forest, the springs, the rice and the mountains are inhabited by spirits to be honoured. The great festivals are sometimes accompanied by sacrifices, dances, and the famous rượu cần (zuh kun), the "jar wine" drunk together through long bamboo straws plunged into a shared jar — a gesture of sharing and conviviality at the heart of community life.

And then there is the elephant, the voi (voy). For a long time, in regions such as Đắk Lắk, the elephant was a companion for work, transport and prestige, captured and trained through skills passed from father to son. The village of Bản Đôn (Buôn Đôn) is famous for this long tradition. Today sensibilities have shifted: there is a growing effort to protect these now-rare animals rather than put them to work, and the relationship with the elephant is being reinvented around conservation.

Đà Lạt, the city of eternal spring

At the far south of the highlands, perched on the Lâm Viên plateau, one town stands out for its gentleness: Đà Lạt. Founded in the colonial era as a hill station where the French came to escape the heat of the lowlands, it has kept an atmosphere all its own. Its cool year-round climate earns it the nickname "the city of eternal spring." Here you find old villas, a lake at the town's heart, pine-covered hills (the thông, tong), and above all gardens: Đà Lạt is Vietnam's great flowering vegetable patch, producing strawberries, artichokes, cabbages, lettuces and tonnes of flowers that then travel down to the lowland cities. Newlyweds flock here for their photos, and travellers to breathe, between a greenhouse and a terrace café, air fragrant with resin and coolness.

A still-wild nature

Despite the advance of the plantations, the Tây Nguyên keeps stretches of spectacular nature. The region is dotted with waterfalls, the thác (tak), which plunge from basalt cliffs in a roar of spray; some, such as those around Đà Lạt or Đắk Nông, have become popular places to visit. There are also crater lakes, fish-filled rivers, and national parks that shelter tropical wildlife — monkeys, birds, and, in the remotest zones, a few rare species that people are working to protect. The rugged terrain, long hard to reach, has paradoxically helped preserve these habitats.

This nature also nourishes a particular imagination. In the tales of the mountain peoples, the forest, rừng (zung), is no mere backdrop: it is a world peopled with spirits, a source of game, wood and medicinal plants, but also of dangers. To respect the forest, not to plunder it, to honour its spirits, was part of an ancient wisdom. At a time when deforestation and the spread of farming raise questions everywhere, this traditional relationship with nature takes on a new resonance.

The Tây Nguyên is this constant contrast: the red earth and the black coffee, the modernity of the plantations and the antiquity of the gongs, the coolness of Đà Lạt's pines and the warmth of the campfires where jars of rượu cần pass round. A mountainous region, long set apart, that fiercely keeps a share of mystery — and that offers, to whoever takes the trouble to climb up to it, a wholly different Vietnam.

Vietnamese to remember

• Tây Nguyên (tay ngwee-en) — "the Western Plateaus," the Central Highlands
• đất bazan (dut ba-zan) — basalt earth, the red volcanic soil
• cà phê (ca fe) — coffee
• cà phê sữa đá (ca fe suh da) — iced coffee with condensed milk
• phin (fin) — the small metal filter for making Vietnamese coffee
• cồng chiêng (kong chieng) — the bronze gongs, recognised by UNESCO
• nhà rông (nya rong) — the communal house with the very tall roof
• nhà dài (nya zai) — the traditional stilted longhouse
• rượu cần (zuh kun) — the "jar wine" drunk through a bamboo straw
• voi (voy) — the elephant
• dân tộc thiểu số (dun tohk thee-oo saw) — ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples
• thông (tong) — the pine tree, emblem of Đà Lạt