Vietnam is way bigger than you may think

New York to Miami. That's how long Vietnam is from north to south. Most people planning a trip to Vietnam have no idea. It looks small on a map — sandwiched between China, Laos, and Cambodia — but Vietnam stretches over 1,000 miles and packs more than 2,000 miles of coastline along the South China Sea. That's more coastline than the entire US East Coast.

Nearly 100 million people call Vietnam home. The entire US has 340 million. Vietnam fits almost a third of that population into a country that is roughly the size of New Mexico — and at its narrowest point, you can drive coast to coast in under an hour.

For travelers, that coastline is the story. Vietnam beaches run from the Gulf of Tonkin in the north all the way down to the Gulf of Thailand in the south — and most of them are still relatively undiscovered.