Nevertheless, something gave me pause:was this not North Vietnam, home of fierce little fighters in black pyjamas who lived in the jungle on a handful of rice a day, whose inflexible ideology and sheer determination had forced the retreat of the mightiest armed force the world has ever seen?

Oh, the propagandists had surely done their job on me, and I didn't know quite how to respond to the friendly smiles, the colourful homes and the lovely smell of incense that seemed to be everywhere. I always feel trepidation at border crossings. Even the(formerly)porous and benign 49th Parallel used to trouble me because of its arbitrary customs officials who seemed trained in irrationality. I have learned to answer questions from these people with a simple yes or no and never to volunteer anything and I followed this policy at the Vietnamese border not that it meant much given the language barrier.

A few days later and further south, during one of our many walks in the country we met a friendly group of people near a solitary house of this sort, standing out awkwardly among the poorer structures along the road.Some young girls in the group were learning English in school and they were eager to practice. They acted as interpreters, sometimes arguing among themselves over the meaning of a word, while Ruth took pictures with our new digital camera (the best icebreaker yet invented!), and the most senior girl invited us to her home which turned out to be the fine emerald box we had been admiring and speculating upon.

Inside was a wide curving staircase, of at least ersatz marble, and lacking a guardrail. As I climbed on the wall side, avoiding the drop to the right, I glanced into the living room, a room singularly lacking in furniture I thought. I grew up with carpets, sofas, curtained windows and bookcases, but this polished space contained a wall unit with a stereo set and television, and another unit resembling an ornate steamer trunk of unknown purpose, possibly a tea service. Otherwise it was empty, echoing stone; not unattractive, just bare. Upstairs, avoiding the steep and still unprotected drop from the landing, I reclined on a mattress, seemingly new and still wrapped in its plastic on the floor- no frame or box spring - while giggling teenagers read to me from their English schoolbooks and Ruth took more photos. Where do they sit? There were no chairs. Where do they eat?  There were no tables.Where were the blankets, pillows and bedsheets? We never did find out, and on account of that visit we walked back to town in the dark.

I remember little of Lang Son, our first Vietnamese town, beyond some scruffy children playing in the street and ignoring the equally scruffy park nearby. Our taxi to Hanoi was a modern minivan, and the driver did the usual Asian public transport routine of circling through town to find more fares. Just as we were about to ask if he would ever head south, he did, and the lush countryside returned, punctuated by those box houses and the occasional Catholic church.

The modernity and comfort of our road and our vehicle were a continual contrast to the fields through which we passed, being worked by human and animal labour. Water buffalo are commonly seen here, just as in China, pulling ploughs or tethered and grazing, but to see them through the tinted glass of an air-conditioned van, while Vietnamese pop music (really American style rock 'n roll with Vietnamese words) blares from hi-fidelity speakers, is a true study in incongruity.  Asia has always been a land of disconcerting contrasts, has it not? High-rise towers of commerce are within a easy walk of 9th century stone piles that were once splendid temples; a branch of the Silk Road, redolent of camel caravans, once came this way but that road is now populated with trucks that I have seen carrying camels (albeit not in Vietnam); Roman coins are found in Cham emperors' tombs; and Vietnamese teenagers, those who are not ankle-deep in mud behind a water buffalo, are now speeding through the streets of Hanoi on their motorbikes wearing t-shirts that read "US Army".

The motorcycles of Hanoi - ah, who would have thought, in the let's-bomb-them-back to-the-stone-age sixties, that Hanoi would ever again have streets, let alone vehicles? But vehicles it has "by the glory" (Ruth's favourite phrase), and the two-wheeled motorized variety predominates by far. We had lived in Suzhou, China, where the bicycle is king and we quickly came to reverse an initial misapprehension:  that dodging motorcycles would be much more difficult and dangerous than dodging bicycles. You must understand that throughout Asia things with wheels have the right of way over things with mere feet. Stepping into a street filled with bicycles is much more problematic since the time between the realization that a collision is imminent, and the actual event, is very short - a second or two at most. But if a motorcycle is approaching at high speed its driver is looking farther ahead than would a cyclist, he sees you much sooner, makes a minute shift to his centre of gravity, and gracefully glides behind or in front of you.  The trick is simply not to do anything abrupt, stand still or calmly continue to walk. This is not easy as a group of them bears down upon you, but trust me, it is vital.

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