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About Vietnam >> Vietnam's Geography :>> Vietnam's Geography - Physiography Vietnam is a country of verdant tapestry of soaring mountains, fertile deltas, primeval forests, sinuous rivers, mysterious caves, otherworldly rock formations, heavenly waterfalls and beaches. Geographically, Vietnam can be divided into five distinct regions: Reb River Delta, Highlands, Central Highlands, Coastal Lowland and Mekong River Delta. :> Red River Delta – the cradle of the wet rice civilization The delta of the Red River or Song Hong, is a flat, triangular region of 3,000 square kilometers, is smaller but more intensely developed and more densely populated than the Mekong River Delta. Once an inlet of the Gulf of Tonkin, it has been filled in by the enormous alluvial deposits of the rivers over a period of millennia, and it advances one hundred meters into the Gulf annually. The ancestral home of the ethnic Vietnamese, the delta accounted for almost 70% of the agriculture and 80% of the industry of North Vietnam. :> Highlands – home land of ethnic minorities The highlands and mountain plateaus in the north and the northwest are inhabited mainly by tribal minority groups. The Giai Truong Son or Annamite Range originates in the Tibetan and Yunnan regions of southwest China and forms Vietnam's border with Laos and Cambodia. It terminates in the Mekong River Delta, north of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). These central mountains, which have several high plateaus, are irregular in elevation and form. The northern section is narrow and very rugged; the country's highest peak, Fansipan, rises to 3,142 meters in the extreme northwest. The southern portion has numerous spurs that divide the narrow coastal strip into a series of compartments. For centuries these topographical features not only rendered north-south communication difficult but also formed an effective natural barrier for the containment of the people living in the Mekong basin. :> Central Highlands – powerful waterfalls and primitive forests Within the southern portion of Vietnam is a plateau known as the Central Highlands (Tay nguyen), approximately 51,800 square kilometers of rugged mountain peaks, extensive forests, and rich soil. Comprising 5 relatively flat plateaus of basalt soil spread over the provinces of Dak Lak, Gia Lai, and Kon Tum, the highlands account for 16% of the country's arable land and 22% of its total forested land. Before 1975, ,North Vietnam had maintained that the Central Highlands and the Giai Truong Son were strategic areas of paramount importance, essential to the domination not only of South Vietnam but also of the southern part of Indochina. Since 1975, the highlands have provided an area in which to relocate people from the densely populated lowlands :> Coastal Lowlands – the heaven of beaches The narrow, flat coastal lowlands extend from south of the Red River Delta to the Mekong River basin. On the landward side, the Giai Truong Son rises precipitously above the coast, its spurs jutting into the sea at several places. Generally the coastal strip is fertile and rice is cultivated intensively. :> Mekong River Delta – tropical fruit orchards and floating markets The Mekong delta, covering about 40,000 square kilometers, is a low-level plain not more than three meters above sea level at any point and criss-crossed by a maze of canals and rivers. So much sediment is carried by the Mekong's various branches and tributaries that the delta advances sixty to eighty meters into the sea every year. An official Vietnamese source estimates the amount of sediment deposited annually to be about 1 billion cubic meters, or nearly 13 times the amount deposited by the Red River. About 10,000 square kilometers of the delta are under rice cultivation, making the area one of the major rice-growing regions of the world. The southern tip, known as the Ca Mau Peninsula, or Mui Bai Bung, is covered by dense jungle and mangrove swamps.
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