First-ever Vietnamese beauty crowned Miss Earth 2018

Nguyen Phuong Khanh, Vietnam’s representative, was crowned Miss Earth 2018 at the finale on November 3 in Manila, the Philippines.

The moment Phuong Khanh Nguyen of Vietnam was crowned Miss Earth 2018.

Khanh has become the Vietnamese Miss Earth, in a competition between 86 hopefuls.

Nguyen won after telling her fellow millennials to stop using social media and technology for vanity purposes and "transform the world" in the pageant's question-and-answer round.

Earlier in the competition, she won a gold medal for Asia & Oceania region in the national costume round and a silver medal in the swimsuit competition.

Khanh noted that she became aware of the Miss Earth pageant for the first time when she was 15, and said that it became her dream to represent her country in one of four biggest beauty contests in the world, alongside Miss Universe, Miss World, and Miss International.

Nguyen Phuong Khanh, Vietnam’s representative at Miss Earth 2018, has won a silver medal in the swimsuit competition.

Nguyen was born and raised in Ben Tre, a coastal province located in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. The region was the spotlight of her video for the 2018 pageant, as the Vietnamese beauty spoke about an ongoing project to protect the ecological resources of the Mekong river and those local areas which depend upon it for survival.

Khanh is a cat lover, stating on the Miss Earth website: “They are intelligent animals that [have] the ability to adapt to [their] environment and situations. Cats are very sociable and just like humans observe [their] surroundings.”

23-year-old Khanh was the second runner-up at the Miss Sea Vietnam Global Beauty Pageant 2018 held on Phu Quoc Island in April. She is is 1.72m tall, weighs 51kg and measures 90-58-94.

She is pursuing a degree in marketing at Curtin University, Singapore, majoring in marketing. Khanh will graduate in early 2019.

She was the second runner-up at the Miss Sea Vietnam Global 2018 held in Phu Quoc in April this year.

The Miss Earth is an annual international environmental-themed beauty pageant promoting environmental awareness./.

VNF