Natural Disasters.
Vietnam most common attack by natural disasters is by flooding. One of the more recent floods took place in November 1999. This flood was the result of 3 days of constant heavy downpour. This resulted in landslides and a widespread flood killing 554 people. Over half of these people which died lived in the Thua Thien Huê province. 467 of the people that lived in the imperial city of Huê, home of Thich Nhat Hanh’s root temple, Tu Hieu died. Government officials estimate that around 900,000 of the province’s 1.05 million residents were affected. The flood caused “Highway One” to become inaccessible due to the amount of water occupying the roads path.
Relief.
Due to the fact that Vietnams greatest advisory of natural disasters is floods this tells us that the relief of Vietnam is flat. This is true around the Phompenh area. The south and southeast part of Vietnam ranges from heaths of sea level to 200m above. However as one travels to the north Eastern parts of Vietnam one would find that the relief of the area is rather mountainous especially in places such as Dalat. Peek heights of this area range from 1000 – 2000 meters. A general rule to the relief of Vietnam is the closer one is to the coast the higher up one travels.
Special Economic zone (SEZ)
Recently there has been boom in the border trade between china and Ho Chi Minh City. Here in the province of Lang son more than 300 local enterprises, 5000 households and 100 Chinese traders do their business here. For this reason capital has been spent in setting up an infrastructure to help these activates. These include roads, electricity, safe water and other public facilities to be installed. This area has been giving the name a Special boarder economic zone (BEZ). This has proven to be very useful as their has been an annual growth in import/export of around 20%.
New town development
Due to the annual increase in capita in Vietnam many new towns have been set up. These new towns have restrictions as to how they can be developed. These include:
Building design must be approved
Government programmes around area must be set out first
Economic growth must first be taken into account
Home ownership
Land development
Colonialism
France moved into Vietnam in 1858 and captured Saigon in 1859. The French used south china (then known as Cochin China) as a base and moved from west to north taking over Vietnam and other countries. The French kept rule over Vietnam through the first and second world war. It wasn’t until 1954 that Vietnam won back their independence by defeating the French at Dien Bien Phu and having a conference in Geneva. The French rule had a great impact on Vietnams growth. It mainly served as a farming country in the 1800s and later going into export of textiles and rubber to France.
Bibliography
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/SRPage.aspx?search=vietnam
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/factbook/vm/index.html
http://www.plumvillage.org/charity/floods/Natural%20Disasters%20in%20Vietnam.htm
http://www.virtualref.com/uncrd/152.htm