Vietnam stretches over 1600 km along the eastern coast of the Indochina Peninsula (from 8° 34' N to 23°22' N).

The country' s land area is 326,797 sq km, or 329,566 sq km including water. This makes it slightly larger than Italy
and a bit smaller than Japan. Vietnam has 3451 km of coastline and 3818 km of land borders: 1555 km shared with Laos, 1281 km with China and 982 with Cambodia.

Vietnamese often describe their country as resembling a bamboo pole supporting a basket of rice on each end. The
Country is S - shaped, broad in the north and south and very narrow in the centre, where at one point it is only 50 km wide.

The country 's two main cultivated areas are the Red River Delta (15,000 sq km) in the north and the Mekong Delta (60,000 sq km) in the south. Silt carried by the Red River and its tributaries (confined to their paths by 3000 km of dikes) has risen the level of the riverbeds above that of the surrounding plains. Breaches in the levees result in disastrous.

Three - quarters of the country consists of mountains and hills, the highest of which is 3143m - high Fansipan (Phan Si Pan) in the Hoang Lien Mountains in the far north - west. The Truong Son Mountain Range (Anna mite Cordillera), which forms the central highlands, runs almost the full length and Vietnam along its borders with Laos and Cambodia.

The largest metropolis is HCMC, which many still call Saigon, followed by Hanoi, Hai Phong, and Da Nang.