Vietnam: It's Geography

When I was a boy in Glendale high school back in the early '60's, I had no idea where it was or anything about the culture. Little did I know that I and many of my fellow school mates were going to be going to that distant land. And unfortunately some did not return.

I was in the Navy and so did not have to go on patrols in the jungle but even today, 40 years after 7 tours of patrolling the oceans off of Vietnam, I find that I still do not know all that much more about it.

After eating at Little Saigon and meeting John and his lovely family, I found that I wanted to learn more about the country. So I have written down here some of the things that I have learned. I am responsible for all the mistakes found here so if you find any don't blame John, ok! And also be sure to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it the corrections!!

I love maps because they tell me where I am, where I have been, and hopefully where I am going. So whenever I begin learning things about a country that is new to me, I generally start by looking at maps. If you are like me, whenever you hear of another country, you generally think of it in vague ways not really knowing what size it is. But based on our experience here in Arizona and the US, we generallyh think that all countries are as big as our country. But this is seldom true. And Vietnam is much smaller than the United States.

But! It is a long narrow country and stretches many miles from north to south. Look at the map on the left. As you can see that if Vietnam is overlaid the Arizona, that the country extends all the way up into Idaho. As you can also see, Cambodia lies to the west of Vietnam in the south and Laos in the north. Do you know what country lies to the north? If you want you can either find it here or ask John or his wife when they serve you some of their great home-made Vietnamese cooking.

Have you noticed that the whole southern and eastern coast of Vietnam is ocean beach!!! If California every falls off the map due a huge earthquake maybe we will have some ocean beach here in Arizona too but on the west side instead.....don't think we really have to worry too much about it though!

If you look at the borders of our and surrounding states, you can see that most of the lines are straight. But there is one section that is not and that is the western border of Arizona. The border here is a natural one that is defined by where the Colorado River flows. Do you know what happens to the border if the river should move its bed to a different part of the area where the river runs? I don't know. Does the border change with the new flow of the river or remain the same? If you know, please This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

If we rearrange the land of Vietnam so that it is similar to the shape of Arizona, we will find that the area of Vietnam is a little larger than that of Arizona. Vietnam is 128,065 square miles in area (331,689 square kilometers) while Arizona is only 114,06 square miles in area.

Looking at this map, I can't see a straight lined border in Vietnam anywhere! What are the possible reasons? I can think of a few: mountains, rivers, canyons, lakes, and the ocean. Most borders are determined over hundreds of years and disputes can lead to big arguments and even warfare between the nations and peoples that live along the borders.

And indeed, Vietnam has fought many wars in its long history. It's history is broadly divided into six periods. The first is ..... Well that is a different story that let's save for the next time.

Please let me or John know what you would like to find out about Vietnam and we will do your best to find out if we don't know already.....I probably don't.....John probably does.....so asking him would probably be faster!!!

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