Agricultural Village Tour

Today we went by bus to visit the Montagnard Agricultural village, & Buon Chioa, a charming mountain village a half hour outside of Dalat. We stopped along the road at a military controlled Flower nursery, the sight of a US airport during the war. There were numerous greenhouses growing roses, daisies, & lilies. We learned the proper way to pick a daisy from our local guide Liem. He told us that there are 40000 greenhouses in the Dalat area, & the owners can make $30K US a year or more if they time the blooms correctly. Our next stop was to try Weasel coffee, which is made from coffee beans pooped out by weasels. They only eat the ripest beans so the coffee is the best quality. Regular pickers must pick some green beans too, lessening the quality. They had some beautiful hand made scarves at this stop & Kim bought one which took locals a month to make. It has hand embroidered flowers on it. Our last stop was Buon Chuoi village which only OAT can visit. The locals are called the K’Ho Chil people. OAT has built a school, play structure & a well on this site. The kids were from 4-7 or so in the school. We toured the Catholic Church & the village leader’s house. He was 90, his wife nearly 87. Electricity has only been in village for 7 years. We travelled by tractor & cart, on a very dusty, red soiled road. We returned to have lunch in Dalat. Kim went to the Crazy House after lunch. We visited Dalat University & enjoyed a tour of the campus by current students. We ate at another Vietnamese family owned restaurant to end our day.Read more