We drove around until we found a popular restaurant filled with locals drinking beer and eating meat. We struggled with the menu for a good 20 minutes, trying in vein to translate the food with our phrasebook. Luckily for us, the staff eventually realized that they did have an English menu after all, or we might have ended up with some of these interesting meat choices:
With the help of an English language menu, we were able to successfully order some delicious food.
The next day Janet and I headed out of town on the motorbike through minority villages to find an elusive cemetery, where the minority people carve effigies of the dead to stand near the graves. We never found it. (Sound familiar?) The red-earth countryside was very beautiful.
Refueling at a rural gas station. At least they have a machine - many times the fuel comes in glass bottles.
That adventure pretty-much took up the entire day. The next day we took the motorbike out of town in the opposite direction to look for something else which we didn't find. But we did see plenty of rongs, which are communal buildings in the minority villages.
And we crossed some beautiful clouds.. I mean, a beautiful river.
The one "attraction" in the town of Kontum itself is a beautiful wooden church. I was too lazy to read the history behind it. We've seen a lot of historical stuff..
Behind the church was a Banar (minority tribe) orphanage. Janet, Fran, Fil and I brought a few bags of paper, pencils, and crayons to them. Apparently if a mother dies during childbirth, the Banar would traditionally bury the [live] baby along with the mother. Now they bring the baby to the orphanage.
The Banar man who runs the orphanage (also it's English teacher) worked as a translator for the Americans during the war. He told us that there were many American men my age here at the time, and many died in the surrounding hills.
What, you mean you don't like fried cow utters and grilled ball scrotum??
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