- Buon Ma Thuot is a good base for day trips out into the broad-reaching hill areas. Rolling hills covered with the ordered striations of row upon row of coffee plants bring you to far-flung ethnic minority villages of the Ede and the M"nong people. You can organize all kinds of trekking and tours in town that include canoeing, hiking, and elephant riding, as well as some great options for overnights and homestays in rural villages

- From Buon Ma Thuot you can visit Yok Don National Park just north of town. You can also visit a working coffee plantation. In town, expect little more than local souvenir shopping, mostly for good fresh coffee and jars of locally brewed whiskey in fired pots of the M"nong people. 

- This part of the highlands was more or less "off the map" for tourism until recent years, not for want of sights or natural beauty, but because the Vietnamese government still suspects subterfuge among ethnic minority groups. The local cadres are really pretty relentless. I met a young traveler putt-putting all around the region on his own rented motorbike out of Ho Chi Minh; for his troubles, he was made persona non grata in the provinces of Gia Lai and Dak Lak for traveling without a passport (he had a photocopy, which is usually okay because you often need to leave a passport at the rental office), and the poor guy had to endure lengthy interviews with a paranoid party member who thought he might be a spy.