But what's really eye-popping about these congested street scenes is that there are no stop signs and few traffic lights. So what happens when drivers approach intersections? Those on the main streets rarely stop to let those from side streets enter. Instead, everyone slows down and weaves through the knot created by intruding cross-traffic. Remarkably, it works.

To avoid driving in such madness, we, like most tourists, relied mostly on taxis. Even so, I would have enjoyed the thrill of hopping on a motorbike. Later in my three-week visit, I settled for bicycling in the less-congested beach city of Nha Trang.

During one ride, my son, Zach, who was following me, became apoplectic when I ignored a dump truck thundering toward me from a side street. OK, sometimes it's smarter to yield and live to ride another day.

My son was clearly more attuned to getting around Vietnam than I was. He had been in Hanoi for five months as part of a college study-abroad program. I did not envision visiting him - until I read his e-mails describing the country, and a bunch of travel magazine articles. So off I went with my wife and our other son.

"Although the poverty is rampant, there is something about the culture and lifestyle, which is so beautiful and pure."

- e-mail from Zach

We enjoyed the different faces of cities and old towns, from Hanoi to Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). In the scenic mountain region of Sa Pa, we marveled at terraced rice paddies and green peaks. A cruise in Ha Long Bay took us through hundreds of striking rocky islands. At Nha Trang, the beach's natural beauty and luxury resort dazzled us.

But what impressed us the most were the people, who were cheerful and welcoming, with no animosity toward Americans. Some of them asked whether I had been to Vietnam before, and I wondered whether they were trying find out if I had been in the American War, as they called it. It, indeed, was my first time.

"Tuesday night was New Year's Eve, and at Hoan Kiem Lake in the center of Hanoi they put on a big fireworks show. It reminded me of the Fourth of July at the Art Museum. When the show was over, I got separated from the rest of my group and walked back to the dorm alone. It was really nice because I was in a sea of Vietnamese people leaving the festival. People were burning celebratory fires in the streets."

- e-mail from Zach

Downtown Hanoi is a web of streets that bend and turn at random. The city is largely composed of narrow three- and four-story buildings, some with French colonial architecture. There are office towers and other signatures of a modern city, but most boulevards and streets are lined with trees that offer welcome shade from the sun. Dust is everywhere, and garbage litters the gutters.

A popular section to wander in is the Old Quarter, a densely packed retail and residential neighborhood. Storefronts are about 12 feet wide and completely open, often with their merchandise spilling onto the sidewalk.

On many blocks, neighboring stores sell the same items, such as children's shirts, bamboo poles or medicines. Hundreds of years ago, mercantile guilds divided the area so all the hardware merchants, for example, were on one block and all the textile sellers on another. We saw the same thing in Ho Chi Minh City, where one block was lined with stores selling wooden boat models.

"It was fun to get out of the city and see what the countryside was like. . . . The most striking aspect there is the poverty. It is bad in the city, but it seems worse in the countryside. It is much more peaceful though. . . . There is a romantic beauty in this part of the country."

- e-mail from Zach

Sa Pa is an alluring tourist spot - a remote northern mountain town near the Chinese border that is surrounded by stepped rice paddies and villages inhabited by ethnic groups. To get there from Hanoi, we took an overnight train that had a dining car and sleeping coaches provided by the Victoria Sapa Resort, where we had reservations.