1. Geography
Thua Thien - Hue is located in the Northern Central Vietnam with Hue city as the centre. Its eight districts include of Quang Dien, Phong Dien, HuongThuy, Huong Tra, Phu Vang, Phu Loc, Nam Dong and A Luoi. Thua Thien - Hue stretches from 160 to 16.450 latitude and 10.30 to 108.80. lt borders Quang Tri province in the north Dang Nang City and Quang Nam province in the south with Hai Van mountain pass, people Democratic Republic of Laos in the west with Truong Son range and East River in the east. Hue is 600 km from Hanoi and 1,080 km from Ho Chi Minh City. Thua Thien – Hue is on the East - West strategic corridor where passing national road No,1AI No.49 and Ho Chi Minh road, having Ku - Tai frontier pass connecting neighbouring Laos, Chan May deep - sea port, Phu Bai alrport, etc.
2. The weather
Thua Thien - Hue is in the monsoon tropical area, under the influence of the interfered weather between Asian tropical weather in the north and the tropical weather in the south. lts weather is with two clear seasons of wet and dry with the rainy season lasting March to August and the dry season from September to October. The annually average temperature is about 25.6oC.
3. Area and terrain
lt has the natural area of 5,053.9 sq.m spread in the long and narrow land, with the average width of 60 km and the length of 127km. It is along the direction of North West - South East parallel with the coast, with various terrains of mountains, hills, coastal plains and lagoons. . . The terrain gets lower in the east, of which the west is mainly hills with the most height of less 500m and main features of wide top, slope side, mostly hundreds width ''bowl-shaped'' hills. The large rivers' basins create downwraping including narrow coastal plain covering the lagoon area of 22,000 ha, such as Tam Glang, Ha Trung and Cau Hai lagoons, An Cu area and three gates to the sea: Thuan An, Tu Hien and Lang Co. In the plain, the terrain is 5m - 30m long sand-banks parallel with the coast.
4. Human resources
In 1999, the province's whole population was 1,045,134. The annually natural population growth is 1.8%. In 2000, the number of people in the working age was 591 thousand, account for 54.9% the population. The labourers in the national economy was 470 thousand, account for 79.5% of the whole province's labourers.
5. Natural resources
Tourism resources are various including of natural tourism and humanism resources. Thua Thien - Hue is not only famous for its interesting natural landscapes but also for its cultural heritage of ancient Capital Hue. The ancient capital where is preserving a huge material cultural treasure with an ancient historical place complex and thousands of pagodas having unique national architecture and non-material cultural treasure with kinds of festivals, religions, traditional and popular festivals. Besides there are historical and revolutionary places couple with national and international celebrities' life and career, one of those is Ho Chi Minh.
Marine and coastal resources: the coast is 120 km in length with various specles of seafood (fish alone with 500 species), of which 30 - 40 high economic efficiency species, such as lobster, butterfish, codfish and other species of seafood. With the largest lagoon in the South East Asia (22,000 ha), Thua Thien-Hue is favourable for aquaculture with numerous species of valuable aquatic products of sugpopawn, white shrimp and crab, especially, yellow-line seaweed is the high economic efficiency and various material sources providing foragar and agarose processing. The coastal pools and bays are favourable for seaport building.
Mineral resources: over 100 mines of minerals with non-metal resources of limestone, granite and kaolin account for large proportion. Limestone mines of Long Tho with the reserves of 300 million cu.m, Phong Xuan - Phong Dien 240 million cu.m, Nam Dong 500 million of cum. Natural resources mines in Phong Dien and Phu Vang.
Forest resources: the forest and forest land is about 330 thousand ha, account for 70% natural area with the total wood reserves of about 17 million cu.m, of which many kinds of valuable wood and animals: barian king-wood, aloe wood, rattan ... and valuable medicinal plants: acanthopanax, amomum...
The essential geography, natural and humanism advantages are the important premises for Thua Thien-Hue to have its own development, exploit maximum and promote the local strengths for a sustainable development in the new century.