> Maybe there is a bit of variation across Vietnam? I’m just sharing what my in-laws observed where they live.

Perhaps. My experience was with HCMC and Hanoi.

> When I say “all international flights” stopped, I mean, you can’t just hop on the next flight to Vietnam. Yes, there are still repatriation flights happening and flight for certain purposes, but “normal” air travel has stopped, no?

Actually, there were normal, scheduled flights throughout the lockdown. There are right now, there were last week, and there were every week before that. You can trivially confirm this on a flight-tracking website (one of the ones that goes on the ADS-B data, so you see actual aircraft tracks, rather than just a flight schedule website which may show you flights that didn't actually operate). Visa waiver, visa-on-arrival, e-visa and visa issuance for tourists completely stopped, so in practice a tourist can't board a flight to Vietnam, but a small number of flights have continued running throughout, indicating sufficient demand from people who are able to fly here (Vietnamese citizens, people with residence permits, people who were able to get issued non-tourist visas in their home country, ...)

> So regardless, would you agree that Vietnam is going far beyond a lot of countries in trying to control the spread?

I'd say they're pretty much on par with any of the places that aren't a massive failure. But I also think the question of which country did it better or worse is not very interesting, and mostly a pointless political distraction from useful questions like which control measures have a meaningful effect and which don't.