Saturday night in Ho Chi Minh City and I am positioned at the third floor window of my room in the Rex Hotel.

It's 10pm but the rumbling of the endless, endless streams of 'moto-cycles' (as our taxi driver called them) provide the bass notes for the tinny treble - a four-bar electronic jingle played over and over by the hand propelled ice cream cart stationed on the footpath below.

Dah-de-dah, dah-de-dah. Dah-de-dah-dah, dah-de-dah overlaid on vrrroooom. This is HCMC's night music. And the droning, circling bikes are a 20kmh version of an Italian passeggiata.

These throaty 125cc treasures carry not only couples, smartly attired for the ride, the girl usually snuggled in behind her man, but often entire families. Three, four - there's one with five: mum, dad and three littlies, a circus act anywhere else, but here simply the way this family gets to go out together, torsos, arms and legs secured in a complicated knot.

There's a mini-park in the centre of the street, opposite the Municipal Theatre, and here people are cooling off by the fountain. Children out with their parents, round-headed tots, eyes bright. This is the big night. Clean clothes for strolling, or for riding those forever circling bikes.

I decide to join the mass of people below. It's late. It's hot, but the shops are still open and as we pass, weary sales people pop up to open a showcase. To try for a sale. A thin boy in a T-shirt, carrying a tray of coconuts full of their sweet refreshing water, follows us, nagging.

A girl who looks about thirteen approaches us. She is selling postcards and paper fans and giggles when I read Smart Lady on the embroidery of a fan she flips open. She can't be shaken off, so she crosses the street with us, oblivious to those motorbikes boring down. I plaster myself to her because she knows the trick to this dangerous exercise.

Someone whimpers with fear. It's me! After all it goes against all I was every taught about road safety. Walk out in front of a speeding bike and expect not to get hit. Yeah, right! Yet here you would never get across a road unless you did. Somehow the riders veer a few centimetres to let you pass, then instantly merge again into the tide of traffic. 

Saigon - forget the politically correct HCM City tag, most locals do - is Vietnam's largest city with a head-count of around eight million or roughly a tenth of the country's population. It's thin whip of a country, shaped like a lazy-S, 1650km north to south and only 50km across at its narrowest point - all coastline (3444kms) and mountains, flattening out only at the lush Mekong delta in the south.

The shape would have to be the only lazy thing about Vietnam, though, as its industrious people have revitalized the country's economy after over a century of war and occupation.

Following the Vietnam War (which interestingly most Vietnamese refer to as 'the American War') there was much to do. The defoliant Agent Orange, had caused dreadful mutations and continues to do so, a- and not just of houses and offices.

After a few blocks, my young friend with the postcards finally gets the message that we are OK for souvenirs and melts away into the night with a sassy smile and a final flutter of her Smart Lady fan.

How like this city, we reckon. Smart, tireless, confident, charming. I could be a fan, myself, I reckon.

Dah-de-dah-dah. That's if someone would only turn off that confounded ice cream cart jingle!

- Sally Hammond

FACTFILE:
WHERE?

Vietnam is a communist state with Hanoi as its capital, an area less than half the size of NSW, and a population of around 80 million, located in south-east Asia, between the Gulf of Thailand, the Gulf of Tonkin, and the South China Sea, and bordered China, Laos, and Cambodia. 

WHEN?

The climate is tropical in the south and monsoonal in north with a definite hot rainy season (mid-May to mid-September) and a warm dry season (mid-October to mid-March). There are occasional typhoons (May-January) with extensive flooding, especially in the Mekong River delta area.

MUST ALSO SEE

The mighty Mekong delta fans out over an area of 194,000 square kilometres. At 4184 kilometres in length, the Mekong is the eighth longest river in the world, and 50 million people in the six countries it flows through (if you count Tibet as a separate country) depend on it to some extent for their prosperity and survival. Only navigable from Laos, 1600km from the source, it is nevertheless fed by melted snows high in the Himalayas, and fuelled by monsoon rains. Both combine to cause the annual flooding, which the people somehow shrug off and deal with. Very rich agriculturally - one of the greatest rice growing areas of the world - a tour allows insights into agricultural and fishing industries that feed the country. See rice paper wrappers being made, fish farms housed in underwater 'houses', or visit a floating market at dawn.

The Cu Chi Tunnels are about 36km north-west of the city. Originally dug by the Viet Minh in 1948, they were used by VC during the Vietnam war. Day tours allow visitors to explore the area and if you are small enough and do not suffer from claustrophobia, you can squeeze into these narrow openings and get a feeling for what it was like to fight here.

THE FINER THINGS

Vietnamese food is fresh, fragrant and varied. What's more it's inexpensive and available everywhere from street-side stalls to hotel restaurants. Try true Vietnamese-style coffee filtered straight into a cup.

Shopping is varied and fashions are cheap. The French influence is noticeable with delicate designs and tasteful colour combinations. Straw nons (conical hats) are everywhere, as are silk scarves, lacquerware and artifacts. Markets sell everything from fresh fish and fruit, to souvenirs and shoes.