Vietnam 🇻🇳

Vietnam lies in South-Eastern Asia, part of Asia. Treaties and official documents call it Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Government sits in Hanoi.

The land area is 331,212 km², which ranks it 68th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Finland and just ahead of Malaysia. For scale, it is almost exactly the same size as Finland.

It is home to roughly 101.0 million people, placing it 16th of 250 by population — between DR Congo above it and Iran below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 5th of 11 in size and 3rd in population.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 305 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. The median across all 250 entries here is about 90 per square kilometre.

Vietnamese is the only official language. No other entry in this dataset lists Vietnamese, so on this list it stands alone.

Someone from Vietnam is a Vietnamese.

Against Asia as a whole it is the 8th most populous of 50 entries, and it accounts for 15% of everyone living in South-Eastern Asia.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Vietnam ranks 68th of 250 by area and 16th by population. That works out at 0.22% of the combined land area of all 250 entries and 1.2% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Vietnam in the size ordering are Finland at 338,424 km² and Malaysia at 330,803 km², against Vietnam's 331,212 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Vietnam averages 305 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 45th of the 248 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Zoom in from the world to South-Eastern Asia and Vietnam sits 3rd of 11 by population and 5th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Philippines just above and Thailand just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Indonesia is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in South-Eastern Asia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇵🇭 Philippines
• 🇹🇭 Thailand
• 🇮🇩 Indonesia

Its reference point sits at 16.2° north and 107.8° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,800 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Sudan, Chad and Niger.

It borders 3 neighbours: Cambodia, China and Laos. The largest of them by area is China, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 1.43 billion people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

The Vietnamese đồng (VND) is used only in Vietnam among the 250 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Vietnamese is listed for Vietnam and for no other entry on this site. A language confined to one country is unusual, and it is normally a sign of long isolation or of deliberate revival.

The currency is the Vietnamese đồng (₫, VND). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Vietnam, the answer is Hanoi.

Its internet country code is .vn. Calls from overseas start with +84. Standard country codes: vn and VNM.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 193 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.