I am new to the site, and also fairly new to GIS, in general. I have spent the last year of graduate school familiarizing myself with the program, but am by no means a GIS expert. Please bear with me. I appreciate any and all help that anyone can provide!

I'm currently interning with UN-Habitat Vietnam in Hanoi, and am helping them produce some basic maps for community development strategies in the coastal cities of Tam Ky and Quy Nhon. This is my first time working in GIS internationally, and I'm realizing quite quickly the differences between here and North America in terms of reliable data acquisition. I'm having a really hard time tracking down shapefiles for the study areas, and am hoping someone with experience doing GIS work in Vietnam could help out with some pointers.

One thing I should mention, is that I have been provided fairly detailed DWG files for both cities. I personally don't have any experience converting CAD into GIS, but I have begun to poke around in AutoCAD to see what I can come up with. However, the file layers are not organized in any way I can comprehend, and many of the polylines are disconnected, and therefore don't translate well to GIS.

Please, if anyone knows where to look for shapefiles in Vietnam, and/or has experience working with Vietnamese CAD files, I would very much appreciate some words of advice. Many thanks in advance to your replies!