Hanoi, Vietnam: Students search and play games online inside an Internet shop in Hanoi. Ten years after the Internet went live in Vietnam, the number of Web users in the country has soared, with dissidents using it as a podium and others surfing it to learn about the outside world. Vietnamصs government says around 18 million people, or more than 20 percent of the population, are using the Internet, numbers that thrust the country into the world top 20 in terms of online penetration.