🇻🇳 New country: fly over Vietnam!

Fasten your seatbelt — Toponauts is flying to Southeast Asia for a second time: welcome, Vietnam! 🇻🇳✈️ It's a long, S-shaped country stretching from misty mountains in the north to a giant river delta in the south, with a stunning bay full of limestone islands, the highest peak in all of Indochina, and a brand-new map of 34 provinces that only came into being in 2025. Let's go exploring!

🗺️ A brand-new map: from 63 provinces to 34

Here's something really special: Vietnam's map you'll fly over in Toponauts is fresh out of the oven! On 1 July 2025, Vietnam merged its old 63 provinces and cities into just 34 — 28 provinces and 6 special cities. Some provinces kept their old borders, but many were joined together into brand-new, bigger ones. It's one of the biggest map changes anywhere in the world in recent years, and Toponauts already flies the new version!

🏙️ A name in one place, a government in another

The province mergers created some fun surprises. A few new provinces kept an old name — but their government moved to a completely different city! Lào Cai province is run from the city of Yên Bái. Tây Ninh province is actually governed from Tân An, a city that used to belong to a different province entirely. And An Giang province is run from the coastal city of Rạch Giá. Flying into every province, you'll discover exactly where each government really sits!

🌊 Two mighty rivers: the Red River and the Mekong

Vietnam is shaped by two great rivers. In the north, the Red River (Sông Hồng) flows down from China and spreads out into a wide, fertile delta around the capital, Hà Nội — home to nearly a third of the whole country's rice fields. In the far south, the legendary Mekong — one of the 12 largest rivers on Earth — finally reaches the sea after its long journey through six countries, branching out into the lush Mekong Delta, Vietnam's biggest rice bowl.

⛰️ Fansipan: the roof of Indochina

Up in the misty Hoàng Liên Sơn mountains in the northwest towers Fansipan, at 3,143 metres the highest peak not just in Vietnam, but in the whole of Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia together)! Further south, the long Trường Sơn mountains — also called the Annamite Range — stretch for 1,400 km along the border with Laos, and the cool volcanic plateaus of the Central Highlands (Tây Nguyên) grow much of Vietnam's coffee.

🏛️ Hạ Long Bay and 8 UNESCO treasures

Vietnam is packed with world-famous places. Hạ Long Bay, dotted with thousands of dramatic limestone islands rising from emerald water, is one of Vietnam's 8 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Others include the ancient trading town of Hội An, the imperial city of Huế — Vietnam's old royal capital — and the vast cave systems of Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng. Fly to every one of them and find out what makes each so special.

🎉 Fun facts

Vietnamese is written with the Latin alphabet — just like English or Dutch — but with extra accent marks for tones and vowels, like in Việt Nam, Hà Nội and Đà Nẵng.
Vietnam borders 3 countries: China in the north, and Laos and Cambodia along its long mountain and river borders to the west.
TP. Hồ Chí Minh (still often called by its old name, Saigon) is Vietnam's biggest city and economic engine — but Hà Nội has been the capital for over a thousand years.
The 6 new social-economic regions group the 34 provinces into bigger areas, from the mountainous north to the Mekong Delta in the far south.

▶️ How to play

Switch your country to Vietnam with the "change your country" button, then pick a map — provinces, regions, capitals, big cities, rivers, mountains or UNESCO sites. Zoom into a single province to practise its towns and villages. Safe flight! 🚁