Vietnam
Discover Vietnam
Introduction
Vietnam runs 1,650 kilometres down the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, narrowing in the centre to barely 50 kilometres between the Laotian border and the sea. That shape governs everything about travelling it: the country has three climates at once, and no single month is right for all of them.
The two ends are unalike. Hanoi in the north is older, denser and cooler, with a genuine winter and a thousand years of continuous settlement around its lakes. Ho Chi Minh City in the south is hot year-round, newer and faster, and still widely called Saigon.
Between them the centre holds the imperial capital at Huế, the merchant town of Hội An, and a coastline of long beaches.
Offshore, the limestone towers of Ha Long Bay are the same karst formation that surfaces in southern Thailand — drowned here rather than standing on land.
