The waters of the Vietnam East Sea are among the most energetic in the global ocean. Strong tides and stratification in the Luzon Passage give rise to internal waves, which propagate west into the Vietnam East Sea. The associated energy carried by the waves is dissipated via-turbulent processes. Here, the authors present and contras.t the relatively few direct observations of turbulent dissipation in Vietnam East Sea internal waves. Some of the energy is dissipated along the continental shelf of China and Vietnam by frictional processes acting in the bottom boundary layer. It appears that more energy is lost near the Dongsha Plateau, where the waves reach their maximum ampli{udes, and where the bottom topography abruptly shoals from 3000m in the deep basin to 1000 m on the Plateau. There, energy dissipation by turbulence reaches 1 W m-2, on par with the conversion rates in the Luzon Passage.