This review explores climate change adaptation in water and agricultural sectors in Vietnam and presents the current status, issues, and constraints in climate change adaptation. So far, the implications of climate change for Vietnam are not well understood and recognized and there is a lack of awareness within government and the general public outside the scientific community. This study presents a number of barriers for implementing climate change adaptation in Vietnam, which include (a) uncertainty in the climate change scenarios; (b) weak planning, institutional setup and coordination for responding to challenges of climate change; (c) limited awareness and poor data to support planning and implementation; and (d) weak capacity to undertake climate change impact analysis and identification of cost effective adaptation measures. In this paper, we argued that there is a need to bring together various stakeholders to bridge these gaps through a comprehensive national framework for climate change adaptation that cuts across different sectors and geographical scales.