Vietnam's 2025 province mergers: why heritage sites changed their addresses

The short answer

Vietnam redrew its provinces in 2025. National Assembly Resolution 202/2025/QH15, signed on 12 June 2025, left the country with 34 provincial-level units, 28 provinces and 6 cities: 19 provinces and 4 cities formed by merging, and 11 left as they were, among them Hà Nội, Huế and Quảng Ninh. The new local governments were to start operating on 1 July 2025, under what the resolution's summary calls a two-level local government model.[1] XTOUR read the resolution through the Cần Thơ Department of Justice's summary; the full text on the national legal database did not load.

That is why heritage sites now give addresses that look inconsistent with older pages, sometimes on the same website. The new address names the administrative unit the site belongs to today. It does not move the site, rename the town a visitor means, or make a site part of a city because the city's name now appears in its address.

Hội An and Mỹ Sơn: now addressed to Đà Nẵng

The Hội An World Cultural Heritage Conservation Centre gives its address as Số 10B, đường Trần Hưng Đạo, Phường Hội An, TP. Đà Nẵng: Hội An is now a ward (phường) of Đà Nẵng city.[4] A centre notice of 7 July 2025, on the old-town night event, refers to the context "after the merger of Quảng Nam province and Đà Nẵng city".[3]

Older text survives on the same sites. The centre's 2012 heritage overview still describes "Thành phố Hội An, tỉnh Quảng Nam", a city of nine wards and four communes, while the footer of the same page reads "Hội An, Thành phố Đà Nẵng".[5] The homepage's teaser for the Chàm Islands still places them in "xã Tân Hiệp, thành phố Hội An, tỉnh Quảng Nam".[4]

Mỹ Sơn shows the same split across two bodies. Its management board gives Thôn Mỹ Sơn, xã Thu Bồn, Thành phố Đà Nẵng, but its website licence, issued in November 2023, is from the Quảng Nam Department of Information and Communications.[6] The Thăng Long – Hà Nội Heritage Conservation Centre's page on Mỹ Sơn still places it in Duy Phú commune, Duy Xuyên district, Quảng Nam province.[7]

None of this puts Mỹ Sơn in Hội An, or either of them in central Đà Nẵng. XTOUR keeps Hội An and Đà Nẵng as separate destinations, and treats Hội An as a base for Mỹ Sơn, not a container. Choosing between the two as a base is a different question, covered in Hội An or Đà Nẵng as a base.

Phong Nha: Quảng Bình on older pages, Quảng Trị now

The Phong Nha – Kẻ Bàng National Park board gives its contact address as xã Phong Nha, tỉnh Quảng Trị, with an email on the Quảng Trị government domain.[8] The Thăng Long centre's page on the park places it in Quảng Bình province, across the districts of Quảng Ninh, Bố Trạch, Tuyên Hóa and Minh Hóa.[9] And the Quảng Trị provincial portal gives its own address as Số 06 Hùng Vương, phường Đồng Hới, tỉnh Quảng Trị.[10]

XTOUR's reading of these three pages is that the province now called Quảng Trị includes Phong Nha, which the older page places in Quảng Bình, and Đồng Hới, now a ward in the provincial portal's address. The summary of the resolution that XTOUR read does not list which provinces were combined, so XTOUR states no more than the pages show. Phong Nha is not Đồng Hới.

Huế, Hanoi and Ninh Bình: same province, new local names

Some places kept their province but not their lower units. Huế was one of the 11 provincial-level units left unchanged.[1] Its portal says the city now has 40 commune-level units, 21 wards and 19 communes, under Resolution 1675/NQ-UBTVQH15 of the National Assembly Standing Committee, dated 16 June 2025.[2]

In Hanoi, also unchanged at the top, the Thăng Long centre's functions page gives an address in phường Quán Thánh, quận Ba Đình, while its footer gives Phường Ba Đình, Thành phố Hà Nội; the street differs too, and the page does not say which address is current.[13] The Văn Miếu – Quốc Tử Giám site gives its own address as Phường Văn Miếu – Quốc Tử Giám, so the ward in its address now carries the monument's name.[14]

In Ninh Bình, the Tràng An management board's address is Phường Hoa Lư, Tỉnh Ninh Bình, and recent entries on its relic list use wards such as phường Tây Hoa Lư. Its undated page on the complex still lists the districts of Hoa Lư, Gia Viễn and Nho Quan and the cities of Tam Điệp and Ninh Bình, and one relic entry on the same list keeps "xã Trường Yên, huyện Hoa Lư".[11][12] Those places are all in Ninh Bình province, not Hanoi.

Districts that disappear from addresses

XTOUR's reading of the two-level model is that addresses now run from commune or ward straight to province or city, without the district in between, and the pages read show exactly that shift. The Củ Chi tunnels' Vietnamese homepage gives Bến Dược as ấp Phú Hiệp, xã An Nhơn Tây, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, with no district, yet on the same page still places Bến Đình in xã Nhuận Đức, huyện Củ Chi; its English homepage still gives Bến Dược as Phu My Hung Commune, Cu Chi District.[16][15] Củ Chi is administratively part of Ho Chi Minh City, not its centre, and the tunnels are a trip from the Ho Chi Minh City base, not a place inside it; see the Cu Chi tunnels. Off the coast, Cat Ba National Park gives its address as Đặc khu Cát Hải, a "special zone" of Hải Phòng, while a regulation linked from its homepage still names huyện Cát Hải, the district.[18][17]

How XTOUR handles the change

XTOUR records the administrative unit that the source names, with the source's date, and does not guess a new name where no page it read gives one. That means an older page's "Quảng Nam" or "huyện Củ Chi" is reported as what that page says, not corrected silently, and a new name is used only where the managing body itself uses it. XTOUR also does not count a site as inside a destination because the destination's name now appears in its address. Huế's portal, for example, counts 40 wards and communes in the city; XTOUR's reading is that a province-level city covers far more than the town a visitor usually means.[2]

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR has not read the full text of Resolution 202/2025/QH15 or the commune-level resolutions for each province, so it does not list which provinces merged into which beyond the cases above, and does not give the new commune for any place whose managing body has not stated it. For the country, see Vietnam.