Vietnam is shaped in a long "S" stretching
for 1000 miles from China in the north to the Gulf of Thailand
in the south. The country's land area including water is about
127,000 square miles which makes it slightly larger than Italy
or a bit smaller than Japan. It is broad in the north and south
and narrow in the center, where at one point, it is only 31
miles wide; Vietnamese often describe their country as resembling
a bamboo pole supporting a basket of rice on each end since.
This image can also be seen as a metaphor for the demography
of Vietnam with the heavily populated, grain producing areas
located in the north in the Red River Delta and in the south
in the Mekong Delta with a thin, less productive and less densely
inhabited coastal region linking them. Vietnam has 2144 miles
of coastline and 2372 miles of land borders: 966 miles shared
with Laos, 796 miles with China, and 610 miles with Cambodia.
Vietnam is a country of tropical lowlands, hills,
and densely forested highlands, with level land covering no
more than 20 percent of the area. Three quarters of Vietnam
is made up of mountains and hills. In the north, there is the
Hoang Lien Mountains which contains the highest point in Vietnam,
Fan Si Pan, extending 10,312 feet into the sky. The country
can be divided into four geographical regions: the highlands
and the Red River Delta in the north, the Truong Son Mountains
form the Central Highlands running almost the full length of
Vietnam along its borders with Laos and Cambodia, the coastal
lowlands, and the Mekong River Delta in the south. The Red River
and the Mekong River are navigable in their entirety and are
considered to be the two major rivers in Vietnam. To help prevent
flooding in their deltas, a system of dikes and canals have
been built which confines the rivers to their paths. However,
silt carried by the Red River and its tributaries has raised
the level of the river beds above that of the surrounding plains
and breaks in the levees result in disastrous flooding every
year during the Monsoon season.
Due to the vast range of latitudes and altitudes,
Vietnam's climate is remarkably diverse. Although the entire
country lies in the tropics and subtropics, local conditions
vary from frosty winters in the far northern hills to year-round,
equatorial heat in the Mekong Delta. Because most of Vietnam
is over 1600 feet above sea level, most of the country enjoys
a subtropical climate. Vietnam lies in the East Asian monsoon
zone, with two monsoons setting the rhythm of rural life. The
winter monsoon comes from the northeast between October and
March bringing chilly winters to all areas north of Nha Tran,
but dry and warm temperatures to the south. From April or May
to October, the southwestern monsoon brings warm, humid weather
to the whole country except for those areas sheltered by mountains,
such as the central coastal lowlands and the Red River Delta.
Between July and November, violent and unpredictable typhoons
often develop over the ocean east of Vietnam hitting the central
and northern regions with devastating results.
In the south, there are two main seasons: the
wet and dry. The wet season lasts from May to November. During
this time, there are heavy but short-lived downpours almost
daily, usually in the afternoon. The dry season usually runs
from December to April where late February to May is hot and
very humid. Falling in the shadows of the Truong Son Mountains,
the Central lowlands are denied significant rainfall from the
southwestern monsoon. Much of the coastal strip's precipitation
is brought by the northeastern monsoon between December and
February. The cold and wet winter weather of the north-central
coastal lowlands is accompanied by fog and fine drizzle. Areas
north of the 18th Parallel have two seasons: winter and summer.
Winter is cool and wet, usually lasting from November to April.
February and March are marked by a constant drizzling rain.
The hot summers run from May to October. The north is subject
to occasional typhoons during the summer months.
