The ethnic Vietnamese, who make up nearly 90 percent of the population, are thought to be descendants of peoples who migrated into the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam from southern China.
This southeast Asian nation has a population of about 75 million people.
The northern and southern parts of the country are somewhat wider, with the north reaching a maximum width of 350 miles. At the center of the "S," Vietnam is less than 30 miles wide. It is bordered on the west by Laos and Cambodia and on the east by the south China Sea. It extends about 1,000 miles from southern China southward to the Gulf of Thailand.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a long, narrow, "S"-shaped country of 127,243 square miles (329,556 square kilometers).