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A prospering modern town, Buon Ma Thuot (pronounced ‘boon me tote’; also spelled as Ban Me Thuot) has outgrown its rustic origins-the Ede name translates as “Thuot’s father’s village – but alas, without acquiring any new charms. Inundated by traffic from three highways and powdered by orange-brown dust, its only saving grace is coffee. The region grows some of the best coffee in Vietnam, plenty of which is sold and drunk in town.

Most travelers stop in Buon Ma Thuot enrooted to the attractions around it: Yok Don National Park, a couple of striking waterfalls and heaps of minority villages. The province is home to 44 ethnic groups, including some who have migrated here from the north. Among indigenous Montagnards, the dominant groups are the Ede, Jarai, M’nong and Lao. However the government’s policy all of the Montagnards now speak Vietnamese fluently.

Before WWII, this was a centre for big-game hunting, attracting Emperor Bao Dai, but the animals have all but disappeared. Towards the end of the American War, Buon Me Thuot was a strategic but poorly defended South Vietnamese base. It fell to North in a one-day surpise attack in March 1975, pushing the South into a retreat from which it never recovered.

The rainy season around Buon Ma Thout lasts from May to October, though downpours are usually short. Because of its lower elevation, Buon Ma Thuot is warmer and more humid the Dalat; it is also very windy.

Quang Tri was once an important citadel city, but little of its old glory remains. In the Easter Offensive of 1972, four divisions of North Vietnamese regulars, backed by tanks, artillery and rockets, poured across the DMZ into this province. They laid siege to QuangTri town, shelling it heavily before capturing it along with the rest of the province.

The south struck back: over the next four months the city was almost completely leveled bay South Vietnamese artillery and carpet bombing by US fighter- bombers and B-52s. The ARVN suffered 5000 casualties in rubble to rubble fighting to retake the city.

Today all that might interest a visitor are the remnants of the moat, ramparts and gates of the citadel, which the North and South fought bitterly over in 1972. It’s off Tran Hung Dao Street, 1.6 km north of Hwy 1A

Outside Quang Tri, along Hwy 1A towards Hue, is the skeleton of Long Hung church. It bears countless bullet holes and mortar damage from the 1972 bombardment, and is a common stop on DMZ tours

Vietnam’s most evocative Cham site, My Son lies 40km southwest of Hoi An, in a bowl of lushly wooded hills towered over by the aptly named Cat’s Tooth Mountain. My Son may be no Vietnam Angkor Wat, but it is now on UNESCO’s World Heritage list and richly deserves its place on the tourist map. The riot of vegetation that until recently enveloped the site has now largely been cleared away, but the tangible sense of faded majesty still hangs over the moldering ruins, enhanced by the assorted lingam and Sanskrit stealer strewn around and by the isolated rural setting, whose peace is broken only by the wood-gatherers who trace the paths around the surrounding coffee and eucalyptus glades.

Excavation at My Son have revealed that Cham kings were buried here as early as the fourth century, indicating that the site was established by the rulers of the early Champa capital of Simhapura, sited some 30km back towards the highways, at present-day Tra Kieu.(See box on p.238 for more on  the Kingdom of Champa). The stone towers and sanctuaries whose remnants you see today were erected between the seventh and thirteenth centuries, with successive dynasties adding more temples to this holy place, until in its prime it comprised some seventy building. The area was consudenred the domain of gods and god-king. And living on site would have been an attendant population of priests, dancers and servants.

French archaeologists discovered the ruins the late nineteenth century, when the Cham’s fine masonry skills were still evident – instead of mortar, they used a resin mixed with ground brick and mollusk shell, which left only hairline cracks between brick course. After the Viet Cong based themselves here in the 1960s, many unique building were pounded to oblivion by American B52s, most notably the once magnificent A1 town. Craters around the site and masonry pocked with shell and bull holes testify to this tragic period in My son’s history.

Pleasantly untouristed, Dong Hoi is a simple seaside resort town with a fair selection of hotels but no souvenir shops and no hassling. While the town itself isn’t incredibly attractive, the modest beaches to the north and south, and modest beaches to the north and south, and the Nhat Le River (complete with fishing boats bobbing on the tide) make up for it. It’s the most likeable spot to break up the journey between Hanoi and Hue.

Like its southern neighbour Dong Ha, Dong Hoi suddenly found itself a border town in 1954 with the partition of Vietnam at the North Vietnamese Army, it suffered more than most during the American War. It has since recovered as a congenial provincial capital and makes a good base for visiting Phong Nha Cave