Vietnam Land

For a country with so much waterfront real estate—over 3250km of coastline—Vietnam is surprisingly hilly: roughly 80% of the country is composed of hills and mountains. In the northwest, the Hoàng Liˆn S£n Range—home to Vietnam’s highest peak, Fan Si Pan (3143m)—dominates the landscape. Farther east, the hills give way to the fertile lowlands of the Red River Delta, culminating in the land’s disintegration into thousands of islands and islets in Hå Long Bay and Bái T Long Bay. Much of the inland north, too, is dotted with towering limestone cliffs and monoliths (called karsts). Central Vietnam north of Hu\ sees the Tr™ng S£n Range, blanketed in forest, descend steeply from the Lao border into the sea. Around Hu\, winter ceases to exist; the stretch of amazing coastline you see on tourist brochures begins here and reaches almost all the way to H· Chí Minh City. Inland, the Central Highlands aren’t as high as the northwest, but they’re just as striking, carved by rivers and waterfalls and scattered with dense forests. Here, limestone gives way to basalt, and the ground becomes more fertile, supporting the coffee plantations of Bu®n Ma Thuÿt and the strawberry fields of à Låt. Approaching HCMC from the northeast, the landscape flattens out; southwest of HCMC, the land sinks into the swamps and mangrove jungle of the Mekong Delta, an area kept arable by the delta’s industrious denizens.

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