A Vietnamese whir

The city is a terrifying chaos of motorbikes, bicycles and Vietnamese style rickshaws that criss-cross each other's paths at breakneck speed.

Eventually, though, we master the art of crossing the Vietnamese way, by "letting the traffic drive around you".

The pace slows in Hanoi's French Quarter, where wide boulevards, grand villas and a Parisian style opera house are reminders of Vietnam's colonial past.

Far more hectic is the Old Quarter, which is only a short ride away on one of the city's cyclos -- three-wheeled rickshaws.

Once hidden behind wooden gates, the ancient quarter is a maze of tiny streets where everything spills out on to the pavements.

Vietnamese women in traditional conical hats pace the streets, selling fruit from two baskets balanced over their shoulders with a bamboo pole.

Old Quarter street names, like Hang Ma (Paper Objects) and Hang Quat (Ceremonial Fans), are a clue to the goods sold on them. While one street sells nothing but ancient medicines, another trades only in tin goods, in a tradition which has lasted 500 years.

Locals buy their fruit, vegetables, meat and spices in the open-air food market, where it's not unusual to see a confused chicken or duck poking out of the top of a plastic carrier bag as it's carried home alive for dinner.

At night the Old Quarter comes alive again with living rooms opening on to the streets, women gossiping at stove and stool food stalls and children playing marbles on the cracked floor.

For visitors, Hanoi's landmarks include the prison dubbed the Hanoi Hilton by American pilots during the Vietnam War, and the mausoleum where independence leader Ho Chi Minh is embalmed.

Our historic hotel, the 102-year-old Sofitel Metropole, was also a tourist attraction, though a less gruesome one.

Hollywood actress Jane Fonda stayed in the luxury, French colonial style address while broadcasting anti-Vietnam War messages to American troops, while author Graham Greene was another famous resident, writing part ofThe Quiet American, now a film with Michael Caine, in its bar.

We spent two days in Hanoi before driving to the World Heritage Site of Ha Long Bay, where 1,969 towering and bizarrely shaped limestone islands jut out of the South China Sea.

The most relaxing way to soak up this breathtaking sight, often described as the eighth wonder of the world, is to spend a night on a luxury wooden junk, where a six course lunch of fresh seafood is immediately served on white linen tablecloths.

Our junk sailed past clusters of brightly coloured floating fishing villages and dropped us off at one of 60 caves, before anchoring by the only island with a sandy beach for us to swim in its warm waters.

That night -- with the seascape having turned pitch black around us -- it was impossible not to sleep soundly in one of the junk's seven bedrooms.

With plans to go further north, our bed for the next night was a wood panelled, soft sleeper luxury carriage on an overnight train to the highlands.

We awoke 10 hours later in the Chinese border town of Lao Cai, where an old Russian jeep was waiting to drive us to the former French hill station of Sa Pa.

As we climbed 5,000 feet up the Tonkinese Alps, we passed by more than one tourist bus which had become stuck in the mud but our jeep just about made it.

Over the next two days, the dark, misty and rainy town of Sa Pa became our base from which we visited ethnic minority villages in the mountains.

These walks took us past rice paddies, water buffalo and tiny straw hut villages where life has barely changed through the centuries.

Our first sight of one of these isolated villages was clothes, woven from hemp and dyed dark blue with indigo, hung out to dry outside a cluster of huts belonging to the Black H'Mong, one of 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam.

Minutes later a Black H'Mong grandmother -- wearing the traditional dark blue turban, knee length skirt, leggings and waistcoat, with huge aluminium looped earrings -- invited us into the family hut, where we were watched curiously by 12 village children who had gathered around the stove fire in the centre of their two room home.

Black H'Mong's neighbours, in the highest altitudes of the northern highlands, are the Red, White, Green, Black and Flower H'Mong, whose market we visited the next day,

The attire of Flower H'Mong women, their headscarfs, skirts and sun umbrellas, seem to contain a splash of every colour under the sun. Some of the Flower H'Mong farmers walk for four or five hours to bring their goods to Coc Ly market, which stood on dirt tracks on both sides of a dangerously swaying suspension bridge.

The men sell horses and water buffalo on one side while the women trade monkey nuts, dried chillies, sugar cane, vegetables and fabric on the other.

For the minority groups living in Vietnam's northern mountains, tourists are still something of a curiosity.

But the residents of Hoi An, our next destination, had long been used to foreign visitors. Four hundred years ago, Europeans and Asians traded tea, spices and silk in Hoi An's port and the wooden houses and temples of Japanese and Chinese merchants still stand.

More recently, the peaceful town on central Vietnam's east coast was where much of The Quiet American was filmed.

Without plunging your finances into the red, tailors will make to measure everything from silk and cashmere suits to Japanese style dresses, in just a couple of hours.

Hoi An's visitors usually head for the nearby white sandy beach. As the sea was choppy, we soaked up the sun by our beach-side, Victoria Hotel pool before heading for one of the town's waterfront restaurants.

With delicious local specialities on the menu the food in Hoi An turned out to be our favourite. Four days later, we were seeing for ourselves where it probably came from.

A flight south took us to the Mekong Delta. One reason tourists come to the fertile area known as Vietnam's "rice bowl" is its floating markets.

Everything from floating noodle cafes to DIY stores and even bars selling green tea and fizzy drinks jostle for custom alongside boats selling coconuts, sugarcane and watermelon on the river.

Along the waterways, children jump off monkey bridges to bathe in canals, while mothers lean out of wooden stilt houses to wash their pots and pans in the same water.

Soon it was our turn to dip our toes in the water -- after a visit to the legendary 250 km long Cu Chi tunnels, where the Vietnamese disappeared out of sight during the Vietnam War.

Perfectly, our last stop in Vietnam was a luxurious beach resort, with our very own thatched-roof stilt house overlooking the ocean.

TRAVELFACTS

Audley Travel is offering a 14-day/13-night comprehensive tour of Vietnam's main highlights staying in four and five star accommodation on a twin or share B&B basis departing from the UK at any time in 2003, from £1,495 per person.

A 20-night trip is also available from £2,495 per person.

All flights and UK departure taxes (including long haul with Malaysia Airlines) visas and visa processing, airport transfers and tours, private vehicles, guides and drivers and entrance fees are included.

For brochure/reservations contact 01869 276200 or email mail@audleytravel.com. Alternatively, contact your local ABTA travel agent.