Trung Nguyen Coffee Village

To get to where the story of Vietnamese coffee began, and to trace the nation’s spectacular rise as a major world coffee exporter, a visit to Trung Nguyen Coffee Village is a must.

Located in the highland city of Buon Ma Thuot in Dak Lak Province in the Central Highlands, Trung Nguyen Coffee Village offers more than a cup of the exquisite beverage. It is an ideal place for those who are interested in learning about coffee trees and the coffee processing industry.

With a desire to build a coffee paradise for tourists who visit the capital of coffee, Trung Nguyen Corporation constructed a coffee village in a total area of 20,000m². Two years after beginning construction, the project was completed in 2008 and is considered the largest historical and cultural museum of coffee in the Central Highlands.

The garden of old coffee trees in the village. White flowers of coffee trees in Trung Nguyen Coffee Village.  Part of Trung Nguyen Coffee Village.

The village is separated into two main areas including one for enjoying coffee and the other for display. Each area brings interesting experiences to visitors. In the area for enjoying coffee, tourists can see a house with a special architectural space and style of ancient houses in Hue. It has three main compartments namely Cherry, Arabica and Robusta. However, the most striking feature of the village is a garden of old coffee trees. It surely gives tourists relaxing moments when enjoying a tasty cup of coffee under canopies of old coffee trees in an immense space.

Inside the village, there are small streams that help create a cool and airy space and convey stories about the coffee culture of the locals in the Central Highlands. It is the water resource from pure streams that is attributed to creating the distinctive tasty for this area’s coffee.

The second part of the village is used as a display area which was built from wood according to the architecture of a Dai (long) house of the E De ethnic people. Visiting the area, tourists have a chance to see with their eyes objects relating to processing coffee. It is also the place for displaying over 500 objects that show diverse cultures of enjoying coffee from many countries. Here, many art performances of making coffee of other countries in the world have been held, such as making Cappuccino from Italy, roasting and grilling coffee of the Japanese and the traditional method for roasting coffee of the E De people in Vietnam.

The display area of coffee boxes. Foreign tourists learn about the tools for making coffee in Trung Nguyen Coffee Village. Utensils of the ethnic people in the Central Highlands are exhibited in the village. Tourists visit the display area in Trung Nguyen Coffee Village where there are many old objects that hold coffee. Tourists  learn about a German coffee grinding machine. Foreign tourists are interested in the traditional method of processing coffee  of the ethnic people in the Central Highlands. Foreign tourists enjoy cups of coffee in Trung Nguyen Coffee Village.

Besides the objects, visitors are also fascinated by valuable ones which feature cultures of the ethnic people groups in the Central Highlands with gongs, mysterious legends and Can wine.

Last but not least is the souvenir shop in the village where tourists can buy Trung Nguyen coffee and other products such as bags and shirts made from brocade as presents for their relatives or friends.

By Tat Son, Trinh Van Bo
Source: Vietnam Pictorial