Kon Tum

Kon Tum is a former provincial city and the capital of the former Kon Tum province, located inland in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam, near the borders of Laos and Cambodia. Its article now treats Kon Tum as a ward of Quảng Ngãi province, in a basin landscape on flat and fertile land watered by the Dak Bla River. The name means village by the lake in the language of the indigenous Ba Na people, who inhabited the area, and Kinh settlers from Quảng Nam, Quảng Ngãi and Bình Định came later. French missionaries on their way to the Central Highlands established the first Christian mission here between 1841 and 1850, and in 1893 the colonial authorities set up the Kon Tum administrative agency under Father Vialleton, from which the name became official and was later adopted by the province. Before 2025 Kon Tum held the status of a class 2 provincial city. It has a tropical savanna climate, Köppen Aw, with a wet season from April to November.