Vietnam has almost always been at war with some other country, including the Chinese, the French, lots of others, so the "American War," as it was called, was wedged in among all the others, just another blip on a radar screen, even considering the tremendous loss of American and Vietnamese lives.

From the American forces military pullout in 1973 and the fall of Saigon in 1975 until the early 1990s, when the trade embargo and restrictions on travel to Vietnam were lifted, Vietnam was stuck in a holding pattern of little progress because of its postwar diplomatic policies.

Now growth in Vietnam is exploding and a new country is emerging, the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes. And Vietnam is at war with no one. There is only peace in this land of a thousand smiles.

My husband, a former Marine who hadn't been back to Vietnam in forty years, and I journeyed to Saigon-since the war known as Ho Chi Minh City-with day trips into the Mekong Delta.

At first, we spent a couple of days walking and visiting places of interest. And we did walk, because traffic is frantic and definitely not for the fainthearted. Everyone drives like a wildcat across all lanes of traffic, down sidewalks, virtually anywhere there is an opening. That's part of the reason rental cars generally aren't available to foreign tourists.

These busy streets are mostly filled with motorcycles, too many to count. "There are 8 million people in Saigon," intones one local guide. "And there are 8 million motorcycles to go along with them."

Melded into the motorbike mess are cars, human-powered donkey carts, buses, bicycles, pedestrians, and the "cyclo," a three-wheeled contraption similar to a rickshaw used for hauling everything from tourists to produce.

At the top of my husband's list of places to see was the War Remnants Museum, so we set out dodging traffic to find it. This aptly named museum houses old military equipment, prison replicas, even a guillotine used by the French on Vietnamese agitators. But the main attraction is the collection of photographs that clearly defines the misery of war - some of the pictures very much propaganda-like. (CONTINUED...)