Situated on the eastern margin of the Indochinese peninsula, Vietnam borders the Gulf of Thailand, Gulf of Tonkin and South China Sea. Its closest neighbours are China, Laos and Cambodia and the nation is a part of the biologically and culturally important Mekong River Delta region.
Vietnam is characterized by hot and humid tropical lowlands and densely forested highlands and is home to an abundance of plants and animals. Scientist are constantly finding new species in Vietnamn and the countries wildlife is far from cataloged yet. In addition to iconic mammal species like the two newly described species of Muntjac deer, there are also over 800 species of wood, 100 species of amphibians and over 150 species of reptiles to be found in this comparatively small nation, and the recorded number of plant species in the country surpasses 2,000. Click here for more info on tropical flowers in Vietnam and around the world.
The country is located in an area where the winds bring airborn seed from the north, south and west which has made this area extremly biological diverse and the forrest are home to a multitude of trees, flowers, fruits and berries. One of only four previously unknown large land animals to be discovered during the 20th century is native to Vietnam a wild ox that belongs to an entirely new genus. As mentioned above, two new species of Muntjac deer has also been described from Vietnam quite recently; both of them native to the Vu Quang Nature Reserve in Central Vietnam.
Vu Quang is a remote forested part of Vietnam in the Ha Tinh Province along the country’s north central coast. The habitat consists of steep mountains covered in dense rainforest and served as a base for Phan Dinh Phung, the Vietnamese revolutionary who led rebel armies against French colonial forces in the late 1800s. The Nature Reserve is a very hot and humid place since the tall mountains trap moisture coming in from the South China Sea. The rainy season offers continuous rain rather than separated thunder storms and the dry season can hardly be described as dry in a conventional sense of the word since there is such an abundance of fog. It is very hard to move about in the preserve since all areas are wet and covered in algae wich makes them slippry. It is so hard that not even hunters from the area want to enter the forrest.
A marvel of nature that is easier to access it the 30 meter high Ban Gioc waterfall the 4th largest waterfall along a national border. this spectacular waterfall separates the Guangxi Province in China from the Cao Bang province in Vietnam and is located approximately 272 km north of Hanoi. On top of the waterfall there is a stone tablet engraved in Chinese and French saying that it marks the border.
Another fantastic sight near the waterfall is the amazing Tongling gorge which can only be accessed by going through a cavern from another gorge. (A gorge is a deep valley between cliffs, typically carved out of the landscape by a river.) The isolated Tongling Gorge is home to a high degree of endemic plants that can be found nowhere else in the world. This Gorge is said to contain treasure and it is said that locals have fond treasures in it in the past, this is due to the fact that it used to be a hiding place for bandits.