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THE COFFEE CULTURE
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serve customers with ready-made cof-
fee, but freshly made coffee is most
popular. Whenever customers enter a
café, the staff begin grinding coffee
beans.
It can be difficult to choose a cof-
fee shop from the hundreds in the
city, but luckily my motorbike driver
stopped at the coffee village on Le
Thanh Tong street. Everything was
on offer from weasel coffee to more
standard blends. It’s really exciting
to taste coffee, though it is not easy
to identify which shop has the best.
However, I do know that in the cooler
evening temperature at night, a hot
coffee is an unforgettable experience.
After a sleepless night, I spent the
second day in Yok Don National Park
and Buon Don village. Located 40 kilo-
meters west of Buon Ma Thuot city, Yok
Don National Park, the largest of Viet-
nam’s nature reserves, has been gradu-
ally expanded and today encompasses
115,545 hectares of mainly dry decidu-
ous forest. The park runs all the way up
to the border with Cambodia, with the
beautiful Srepok River flowing through
it. It has a reputation as an impor-
tant site for the conservation of large
mammals and is home to two globally
threatened primate species: the black-
shanked douc pygathrix nigripes and
yellow-cheeked crested gibbon hylo-
bates gabriellae.
Here, I stopped at Buon Don village
in Krong Na commune, an area famous
for the M’Nong wild elephant hunters
and trainers. Elephant riding is now
growing in popularity as a tourist attrac-
tion, so from Buon Don village, I took
an elephant ride into the national park.
The annual elephant race is held in
March and is the most attractive event
in town. Although I missed the race, I
enjoyed the perfectly tranquil and pure
atmosphere of the region. It’s interest-
ing to explore the local customs and
traditions of tribes, their ancient stilt
houses and to visit the tomb of the king
of elephant hunters.
After a full day exploring,I stopped
at Pho Nuong restaurant (150 Hung
Vuong) at the suggestion of my driver.
There is a wealth of options, including
grilled squid and fried spring rolls.
Feeding weasels with selected coffee beans
Collecting weasel dung to select special coffee beans
Storing the weasel beans