Chapter One: Location

Vietnam in the World

Vietnam is the very small green country in Asia. Vietnam’s north border is located at 23°N and 105°E (just south of the Tropic of Cancer); the southern tip of the country is 9°N and 105°E.

Vietnam in Asia

This is Vietnam in relation to the other countries in South Asia. The country is green, like in the other map. It borders Cambodia, China, Laos, the Gulf of Thailand, the Gulf of Tonkin, and the South China Sea.

Political Divisions Within Vietnam

Vietnam is divided into sixty-four small provinces. The biggest is Thanh Hóa. The provinces are generally grouped into eight regions: Northwest, Northeast, Red River Delta, North Central Coast, South Central Coast, Central Highlands, Southeast, and Mekong River Delta.

Transportation and Communication

Because of poor road conditions throughout much of the country, transportation over land is difficult, except along the coast. The two main cities in Vietnam, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, are connected by highway and railway running along the coast.

Otherwise, the Vietnamese rely mainly on the rivers and canals running through the country in order to interact with each other. Besides this, both major cities have international airports and some smaller cities are connected by air too. The picture shows a plane at the airport in Hanoi. The country’s major ports - all important to the economy and interaction with other countries- are situated throughout Vietnam. There is Haiphong in the north, Ho Chi Minh in the south, Da Nang in the central regions, and Cam Ranh, a natural harbour developed during the war.

As of 2004, there was 10, 124, 900 main telephone lines in the country and 4.96 million cell phones. Therefore, Vietnam does have modern methods of communication.

Human-Environmental Interaction

An important resource in Vietnam is the Mekong river. But, it’s also an important environmental problem.

The Mekong is a very long river - 4,500 kilometres from source to mouth. Obviously, it affects the economy of all the countries it is a part of, not just Vietnam. Whatever countries further upstream choose to do with the river affects the Vietnamese part of the Mekong too.

China is currently working towards completing seven dams, blocking 50% of the water that the country usually contributes to the downstream section of the Mekong. In addition to this, Laos has finished four of twenty-three planned dams which will hold back 73% of the water the Mekong receives from that country. And Thailand plans on stopping 20% of the usual volume of water from reaching Vietnam.

If you combine this and the ever-present pollution issue, by the time the Mekong reaches Vietnam, it has been deprived of a lot of water and a lot of fish. This will affect the lives of millions of people who make their living off the tenth longest river in the world.

Below: The rare Irrawaddy dolphin
once thrived in the Mekong river,
but the species is now endangered by
pollution.