ABSTRACT
Location: The capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, situated in the delta of the Red River in the north of the country, eighty-five miles from the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea.
Description: A city, now of more than 3 million people, that served as the capital for various Vietnamese dynasties and for colonial French Indochina. From 1954 to 1976 it was the capital of North Vietnam, and since 1976 it has been the capital of the reunified Vietnamese state. A city of lakes and temples, Hanoi was ravaged by war in the twentieth century; economic sanctions against the country, a result of Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia, delayed reconstruction until the 1990s.
