№ 01Why go up to Kon Tum

Everything most visitors do from Hoi An runs along the coast. Kon Tum goes the other way — 312 km inland and 500 metres up, into the Central Highlands, where the air is cool, the villages are Ba Na and Xo Dang rather than Kinh, and there is no beach for two hundred kilometres in any direction.

Two things pull people here. Mang Den, a pine-forest town at 1,200 m that Vietnamese travellers call “the Da Lat of the highlands” and that has gone from unknown to fully booked at weekends in about five years. And Kon Tum city itself, which has the finest wooden church in Vietnam and a river running through it, and which almost no foreign tour bus stops at.

It is worth being honest about the effort. This is not a day trip. The road is mountainous, the bus takes most of a day, and the reward is a part of Vietnam that looks and feels nothing like the coast you came from.

№ 02Every way from Hoi An to Kon Tum, priced

The short version: this is a bus route or a bike route, and nothing else. The absence of a train and the absence of a useful flight are the two facts that shape the whole trip.

№ 03The bus in detail

Services run from Da Nang rather than Hoi An, so the trip begins with 30 km to the bus station or, more commonly, a pickup arranged by the operator. Several companies work this route, including limousine vans and full sleepers, with departures spread from early morning to about nine at night. Fares run from roughly 380.000₫ for a seat up to around 740.000₫ for the better vans, and the journey takes anywhere from seven to nine and a half hours depending on which road the operator uses and how many stops it makes.

The spread in journey time is real and worth asking about. A limousine running the Ho Chi Minh Road non-stop is a very different day from a coach that goes via Quang Ngai and picks up passengers at every junction on QL24.

№ 04Why there is no train and no flight

Vietnam’s Reunification railway follows the coast. There is no railway anywhere in the Central Highlands — not to Kon Tum, not to Pleiku, not to Buon Ma Thuot. The nearest station to Kon Tum is Quang Ngai, 200 km east over a mountain road, which makes the train a way of getting closer rather than a way of getting there.

Flying is barely better. The nearest airport is Pleiku, about 50 km south, and it is served only from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City — there is no Da Nang route, so flying from here means going via Saigon and back up, which takes longer than the bus and costs several times as much.

So the honest answer to “what is the fastest way from Hoi An to Kon Tum” is a private car at about five hours, and after that the bus. That is the whole list.

№ 05Two roads up, and why the scenic one is free

There are two sensible routes and this is the most useful thing in the guide. The fast road goes west from Da Nang and turns south onto the Ho Chi Minh Road at Thanh My, running through Kham Duc and Dak Glei — 312 km from Hoi An. The scenic road goes south down the coast to Quang Ngai, then west on QL24 over the passes and through Mang Den — 322 km.

Ten kilometres. That is the entire penalty for taking the route that includes a pine-forest resort town, a mountain pass and a completely different landscape. Anyone riding or driving themselves should go up one and down the other; there is no reason to see the same road twice.

Both routes are long days on a bike — seven to eight hours of moving time before stops. Our Hoi An to Mang Den motorbike guide breaks the QL24 version down leg by leg, and if you would rather rent once you are up there, our Kon Tum motorbike rental guide covers the local shops.

№ 06Mang Den: the reason most people come

Mang Den sits at about 1,200 m in Kon Plong, roughly 55 km east of Kon Tum city on QL24. It is pine forest, lakes, waterfalls and a temperature that hovers around 20°C when the coast is at 35 — which is the whole proposition. Vietnamese visitors come for the cool air, the strawberry farms and the pine-lined roads; the comparison everybody makes is with Da Lat thirty years ago, and for once it is a fair one.

It is also changing fast. Kon Tum drew 1.5 million visitors in the first half of 2025, and while the headcount was flat, tourism revenue rose from 365 billion to 520 billion dong and international arrivals nearly doubled from under 4,000 to more than 7,500 — a small base growing quickly. Weekends and Vietnamese holidays are now genuinely booked out; midweek it is still quiet.

№ 07Kon Tum city: the wooden cathedral and the rong houses

The city is small, low and easy to walk. Kon Tum Wooden Church, built by French missionaries in 1913 in a mix of Roman basilica and Ba Na longhouse, is the reason to come: it is entirely timber, painted deep red-brown, standing on stilts, and it is the most beautiful building in the highlands. The seminary a few streets away is the same idea in a quieter form and has a small ethnographic museum.

Rong houses — the tall thatched communal halls of the highland peoples — stand in villages all around the city; Kon Klor, across the suspension bridge, has one you can walk to in twenty minutes from the centre and a village that still uses it. Beyond that, the Dak Bla river is the local swimming and evening-beer spot, and the coffee is grown close enough that you should drink it black and take some home.

№ 08Kon Tum is now part of Quang Ngai province

This catches people out and no English-language guide has caught up. On 1 July 2025 Vietnam cut its provinces from 63 to 34, and Kon Tum province was merged into Quang Ngai — the coastal province 200 km east. The combined province keeps the name Quang Ngai, and its administrative centre is Quang Ngai city, not Kon Tum.

Practically: a hotel address, a bus ticket or a government form saying “Quang Ngai province” may now mean the highlands. Maps, road signs and booking sites still say Kon Tum, and the city has not moved. The provincial plan is to sell the whole thing as one “sea and forest” route joining Ly Son island to Mang Den, which is exactly the trip QL24 makes possible — our Hoi An to Quang Ngai guide covers the coastal half of it.

Carrying on south? Pleiku is 50 km further down the same road — our Hoi An to Pleiku guide covers it, and Gia Lai is hosting National Tourism Year 2026.

№ 09When to go, and how long to stay

The highlands have two seasons rather than four. The dry season, roughly November to April, is the time to come: clear skies, cold mornings, the coffee harvest in November and December, and roads you can trust. The wet season from May to October brings heavy afternoon rain, fog on the passes and landslides on QL24 — not impossible, but not a first choice for a rider.

This works badly as a two-day trip and well as a three- or four-day one. Two nights lets you see Kon Tum city and Mang Den without spending both days on a bus; four days is what the loop deserves, going up one road and down the other with a night at each end.

№ 10FAQ

Road distances were measured from Hoi An Old Town to central Kon Tum, by both the Ho Chi Minh Road route and the QL24 route via Mang Den; times assume normal traffic and no long stops. Bus fares follow operator listings current at the time of writing. Visitor and revenue figures for Kon Tum are for the first half of 2025 as reported in the Vietnamese press. The merger of Kon Tum into Quang Ngai follows the 2025 provincial reorganisation effective 1 July 2025. Anh Khoa rents motorbikes, e-bikes and bicycles in Hoi An; we do not sell bus tickets, we do not run a private car service, and we do not offer one-way drops to the highlands.