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Can you locate all 47 prefectures of Japan?
Can you locate all 77 provinces of Thailand?
Can you locate all 80 provinces of the Philippines?
Can you locate all 83 federal subjects of Russia?
Vietnam redrew itself in 2025. Sixty three provinces and municipalities were merged into thirty four, which means every map, every quiz and most of the mental furniture built before that year is now wrong. This game uses the new arrangement, and this page is the whole of it: what a province is, how the merger changed the list, and how to find each name on a country shaped like a letter S.
Vietnam's first level units are provinces (tỉnh) and centrally governed municipalities (thành phố trực thuộc trung ương). A municipality is a city with the rank of a province, and there are six of them: Hà Nội, Hải Phòng, Huế (which this map still labels with its older name, Thừa Thiên Huế), Đà Nẵng, Hồ Chí Minh City and Cần Thơ. Everything else is a province, and both kinds are a single target here.
The 2025 merger is the thing to understand about this map. Provinces were combined in pairs and threes, mostly a coastal province with an inland one, and the surviving unit usually kept the more prominent of the two names. Đà Nẵng took in Quảng Nam. Hồ Chí Minh City took in Bình Dương and Bà Rịa Vũng Tàu, so the city now reaches the sea. Lâm Đồng absorbed Đắk Nông and Bình Thuận and became the largest unit in the country. Names that were on every map a few years ago, Bình Định, Ninh Thuận, Hà Giang, Bạc Liêu, are simply gone.
Two of the merged units carry the name of the wider region rather than their own in the boundary data this map is built from: the unit north of Hồ Chí Minh City, which should read Đồng Nai, appears as Đông Nam Bộ (the southeast region), and the one southeast of Hà Nội, which should read Hưng Yên, appears as Đồng Bằng Sông Hồng (the Red River delta). Everything else carries its own name.
The names that catch people are the compounds that share a first word. Quảng Ninh is in the far northeast, Quảng Trị in the middle, Quảng Ngãi further south again. Hà Nội and Hà Tĩnh are three hundred kilometres apart. And a merged unit sits where the older of its two names used to be, not halfway between them, so if you learned the old map, place the name you know and then widen it.
North, middle and south, which is how Vietnam is usually divided in conversation as well as on paper. Each group can be switched on and off on its own in the game's start dialog, and the northern group is the biggest of the three, so it is the one worth a session by itself.
The capital, in the middle of the Red River delta rather than on the coast, and one of the six municipalities. It is surrounded by the densest cluster of units in the country, which is why the delta rewards learning as a group instead of one name at a time.
The central coast, and much larger than it used to be: the municipality absorbed Quảng Nam in 2025, so it now runs from the beach up to the Laotian border. If you remember Đà Nẵng as a dot on the coast, this is the shape to relearn.
The unit immediately north and east of Hồ Chí Minh City, formed by merging Đồng Nai with Bình Phước. This is one of the two targets whose label in the source data is a region name rather than a province name, so it reads Đông Nam Bộ on screen. The place it points to is Đồng Nai.
The heart of the Mekong delta, a municipality rather than a province, and the anchor for the whole southern tip. The delta units around it are small, similar and flat, so finding Cần Thơ first and counting outwards beats hunting for each one.
34 first level units since the merger that took effect in 2025: 28 provinces and 6 centrally governed municipalities. Before that there were 63. Any map or quiz that still shows 63 units is out of date.
To cut the number of administrative layers and the cost of running them. The reorganisation merged provinces in pairs and threes, abolished the district level between province and commune, and left 34 units where there had been 63. Most mergers paired a coastal province with an inland neighbour.
A city that ranks alongside a province and reports directly to the national government rather than to a province around it. There are six: Ha Noi, Hai Phong, Hue, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho. Hue was the most recent addition, promoted from a province in 2025.
Many familiar names, including Ha Giang, Bac Kan, Vinh Phuc, Hoa Binh, Thai Binh, Hai Duong, Nam Dinh, Ha Nam, Quang Binh, Quang Nam, Kon Tum, Binh Dinh, Ninh Thuan, Phu Yen, Dak Nong, Binh Thuan, Binh Duong, Ba Ria Vung Tau, Binh Phuoc, Long An, Tien Giang, Ben Tre, Tra Vinh, Soc Trang, Hau Giang, Bac Lieu and Kien Giang. In each case the territory still exists inside a larger unit.
Yes, mostly through signs and plates. Province names appear on boundary signs and administrative notices, and Vietnamese licence plates begin with a two digit province code, so knowing where each province sits turns either clue into a location.
More administrative maps in the region: Thailand Provinces, Philippines Provinces, India States and Japan Prefectures.
