Vietnam

Vietnam is a country in Asia.

It is long and thin. The sea runs all along one side. Mountains are on the other side. The capital city is Hanoi.

Vietnam is in Southeast Asia, beside the South China Sea. It is long and narrow: about 1,650 kilometers from north to south, but only about 50 kilometers wide at its narrowest point.

A mountain range runs down the middle of the country. At each end is a big, flat river delta, the Red River in the north and the Mekong in the south, where most of the rice is grown. About 102.3 million people lived in Vietnam in 2025. The capital is Hanoi, in the north.

Britannica compares Vietnam's area and shape with Norway's: it extends about 1,650 km from north to south and narrows to about 50 km. Wikidata gives an area of about 331,700 square kilometers. Its main physical features are the Annamese Cordillera (Truong Son), which runs northwest to southeast through central Vietnam, and two extensive alluvial deltas, formed by the Red (Hong) River in the north and the Mekong (Cuu Long) in the south, joined by a long, narrow coastal plain.

Vietnam's National Statistics Office put the population at 102.3 million in 2025, with about 39 million people, 38.6 percent, living in urban areas. The capital, Hanoi, is in the north; the largest city, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), is in the south. Since the doi moi ("renovation") reforms that began in 1986, Vietnam has moved from a centrally planned economy toward one that uses market forces.

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam.

It has an old castle called a citadel. Hue was the home of kings long ago. Ho Chi Minh City is the biggest city. Hoi An is an old town of wooden houses.

Hanoi, the capital, sits in the Red River delta. Its Imperial Citadel of Thang Long was built in the 1000s, and Vietnam's rulers led the country from there for a very long time. Hue, in the center of the country, became the capital of a united Vietnam in 1802, under the Nguyen kings.

Ho Chi Minh City, in the south, is Vietnam's largest city; it used to be called Saigon. On the central coast, Hoi An is an old trading port with more than a thousand old timber-frame buildings. Between the 1400s and the 1800s it traded with countries across Asia and the rest of the world.

UNESCO describes the Thang Long Imperial Citadel in Hanoi (inscribed 2010) as built in the 11th century by the Ly dynasty, marking the independence of Dai Viet, on the remains of a 7th-century Chinese fortress; it was a center of regional political power for almost 13 centuries. Hanoi was also the capital of French Indochina from 1902 to 1954. Hue, on the Huong (Perfume) River, was the capital of unified Vietnam from 1802 and the political and cultural center of the Nguyen dynasty, the last royal dynasty, until 1945 (UNESCO, 1993).

Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, was built largely by the French in the second half of the 19th century as the capital and main port of Cochinchina. Hoi An (UNESCO, 1999) is a well-preserved small trading port, active from the 15th to the 19th centuries, with 1,107 timber-frame buildings in tight rows along narrow streets and an 18th-century wooden Japanese bridge; its decline in the late 19th century left its old street plan intact.

Vietnam has a bay full of rocky islands.

The rocks stick up out of the sea like towers. Vietnam also has giant caves. Rain falls hard in the wet season. Rivers make wide, flat land for growing rice.

In Ha Long Bay, in the northeast, more than 1,100 limestone islands and pillars rise straight out of the sea. The limestone was shaped in a hot, wet climate and then flooded by the sea, leaving towers, cliffs and caves. Inland, at Phong Nha-Ke Bang, the limestone is full of caves, more than 220 kilometers of them, including Son Doong, the cave with the world's largest known passage.

The highest mountain is Fan Si Peak (Fansipan) in the north. Vietnam's mapping agency measured it with satellites in 2019 at about 3,147 meters, a little more than 4 meters higher than the old French figure. Vietnam has a tropical climate with monsoon winds that bring heavy rain, and typhoons can strike the coast from summer to autumn.

UNESCO describes Ha Long Bay-Cat Ba Archipelago (inscribed 1994) as 1,133 islands and islets over 65,650 ha and the most extensive example in the world of marine-invaded tower karst: limestone hills drowned by the sea, with conical fengcong and isolated fenglin towers, sea notches and caves. Phong Nha-Ke Bang, shared with Laos's Hin Nam No, holds karst that has evolved for about 400 million years and over 220 km of documented caves and underground rivers; Son Doong contains the world's largest documented cave passage by diameter and continuity.

Fan Si Peak (Fansipan) is the country's highest point: Vietnam's Department of Survey, Mapping and Geographic Information measured it by satellite positioning (GNSS) in 2019 at 3,147.3 m, against the 3,143 m measured by the French in 1909 and still given by Britannica, and the Mekong delta covers about 39,900 km2 within Vietnam. Britannica places the north on the edge of the tropics: Hanoi averages 17 °C in January and 23 °C over the year, while Ho Chi Minh City averages 27 °C. Northern summers bring heat, heavy rain and occasional typhoons; in the center and south, the southwest monsoon brings rain and typhoons from June to November.

Elephants live in the forests of Vietnam.

So do sun bears and gibbons. An animal called a saola lives there too. Water buffalo help farmers in the fields.

Vietnam's forests are home to elephants, sun bears, black bears, wild oxen called gaurs, deer, monkeys called langurs and macaques, and gibbons. About 600 kinds of birds have been seen in southern Vietnam alone. Crocodiles live along some rivers and lakes.

In the 1990s, scientists described three hoofed mammals that were new to science: the saola, the giant muntjac and the Truong Son muntjac. On farms, water buffalo still pull many of the plows in the rice fields.

Britannica lists elephants and tapirs among the wild game of the central highlands, along with wild oxen such as gaurs, black bears and sun bears, muntjacs and musk deer, binturongs, palm civets, langurs, macaques and gibbons; it notes that Sumatran rhinoceroses, believed extinct there by the 1960s, were sighted in the 1990s. Three hoofed mammals, the saola, the giant muntjac and the Truong Son muntjac, were discovered in the 1990s. Some 600 bird species have been identified in southern Vietnam alone, and crocodiles, pythons and cobras are among the reptiles.

UNESCO describes Phong Nha-Ke Bang as home to many highly specialized and endemic species, including orchids and begonias above ground and some invertebrates and fish restricted to single cave systems. Britannica also notes that the U.S. Army used herbicides to strip large areas of forest in southern Vietnam during the war; most of those forests have been regenerating, but resettlement and illegal logging appear to have done longer-lasting damage.

Most people in Vietnam speak Vietnamese.

It is written with letters like the ones you are reading now. Rice is the main food. A noodle soup called pho is a famous dish. Tet is the biggest holiday of the year.

Most people in Vietnam are ethnic Vietnamese and live in the lowlands, while many smaller ethnic groups, with their own languages, live in the highlands. Vietnamese is the official language. Today it is written in a Roman alphabet called Quoc-ngu.

Rice is the main food. Pho, a noodle soup with beef or chicken broth, is often called the national dish, and spring rolls and fish sauce are popular too. Many people love snacking at street stalls. Tet, the lunar new year, is the most important holiday, a time for feasts, visits and gifts. Nine years of school are required for every child.

Britannica describes one of the most complex ethnolinguistic patterns in Asia. Ethnic Vietnamese occupy the lowlands; highland groups speak Tai languages in the north, and Mon-Khmer and Austronesian languages in the southern highlands, while Cham and Khmer minorities live in the south-central coast and the Mekong delta. Vietnamese, the official language, is a Mon-Khmer language of the Austroasiatic family with strong Chinese influence; poetry was written in Chinese until the late 13th century, then in the Chu Nom script, and in the 20th century in the Roman-alphabet Quoc-ngu. About half the population identifies as Buddhist, practicing a blend that also draws on Confucian and Daoist traditions.

Rice is the staple. Pho, celebrated with a national Day of Pho on December 12, probably took its present form in the north in the late 19th century; cha gio spring rolls and nuoc mam fish sauce are other hallmarks. Nine years of schooling, five primary and four lower-secondary, are compulsory, and literacy rates are high. Football is exceedingly popular, as is sepak takraw, a volleyball-like game played with the feet.