Vietnam is a long, narrow nation shaped like the letter s. It is in Southeast Asia on the eastern edge of the peninsula known as Indochina. Its neighbors include China to the north and Laos and Cambodia to the west. The South China Sea lies to the east and south. The mountains of the Annam Cordillera rise over most of the western side of Vietnam, while a thousand-mile (1,600-kilometer) coastline dominates the east.
At its narrowest point, Vietnam is only 30 miles (48 kilometers) wide. Two of Vietnam’s largest rivers, the Mekong in the south and the Red in the north, end at the South China Sea in huge swampy plains called deltas. These regions are home to most of the country’s people and provide fertile ground to grow rice and many other crops.
Vietnam, a strip of land shaped like the letter “S”, lies on the eastern part of the Indochinese peninsula. It is bordered by China in the north, Laos and Cambodia to the west, the East Sea to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the east and south. Three quarters of its territory comprise mountains and hills and it has over 3,000 km long coastline.
