A $10 BILL ON LEGS.

This article discusses the author's experience in Hanoi, Vietnam. It's Tet holiday time in Vietnam, and a crowded Hanoi sidewalk. A woman is burning paper clothes, festive paper hats and boots, fake money, so that the dead too can celebrate with new goods for the lunar new year. Ho Chi Minh, great leader and Marxist icon, is inescapable in modern Vietnam. Following a couple of visits to Bangkok and Hong Kong, I thought I knew what Asian street commerce was all about. But Vietnam is a different matter entirely. My usual plan in a new city is to wander, blend in and observe. In Hanoi, I might as well have been 50 lb. of bratwurst attempting to blend into a kennel. Each narrow street seemed a gauntlet of vendors -- motorbike, shoeshine, T-shirts, watches, maps, bananas, books (usually The Quiet American, The Sorrow of War and the Lonely Planet Vietnamese Phrasebook -- but at home I'll bet they're reading Adam Smith and Donald Trump). The Vietnamese may burn fake money for the dead, but they don't play games with the real stuff. As a strolling tourist, you are a walking $10 bill. That hectic pace is mirrored in traffic patterns that must be seen to be believed. Communism does show up occasionally here, in a few large roadside monuments and in the English-language Viet Nam News. This country's growing thirst for tourists is drawing increasing numbers here. But there will always be those who seek more, and for them Vietnam can be a daunting experience.