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VIETNAM is a socialist republic. It says so on my bright yellow and red visa and so it must be so. But "socialist" like what? Like "communist", if you look at the occasional red flags with their yellow hammer and sickle. And certainly the politics here are pretty simple: there's just one party and it's communist.

But Vietnam is like seeing an elephant and being told it's a rabbit. I don't mind in the least that it's supposed to be communist. Who would be against a society where everybody has what he needs and everyone contributes according to his means? Other, of course, that it's never worked. Human nature ensures that the people aren't good enough for communism but equally that capitalism isn't good enough for the people.

Vietnam seems to have got round this conundrum by being both an elephant and a rabbit. There is not the slightest sign on the street that communism rules the roost. Other than the obvious differences between all countries, you could at first appearances be in any nest of capitalism that you choose. Businesses small and large are everywhere. Entrepreneurial enthusiasm is everywhere, as the briefest hesitation outside any café or shop will show.

The people are well dressed, well fed and disarmingly cheerful. Little of this is supposed to happen under the cruel heel of communist boots.

The one thing that sets your mind at rest, though, is the stern-faced unpleasantness of the immigration people. They're never very happy anywhere, not at airports, and it's hard to make them look at you, still less to smile.

Here, the immigration people wear smart, sand-coloured uniforms with stiff red lapels and ludicrously high-fronted caps. They sit in boxes high enough that they can see you but you can't see anything lower than their top button. They have all been to night school classes in keeping a straight face. Unwelcome to Vietnam, sir, madam.

Well, we're here, and so are the bikes. That's always the worry, isn't it? For all that experience tells you otherwise, you can't - or, anyway, I can't - help wondering what I'd do next if the boxes arrived crushed into a mound of ball bearings and bent tubing.

But they left Toulouse with us, they reached London. They were moved to a flight from there to Kuala Lumpur and then north across the rest of Malaysia and low over the Mekong delta to reach Saigon. Or Ho Chi Minh City, if you prefer.

Our immediate experience is that people here call it both, sometimes in the same sentence. Why it was originally called Saigon, nobody knows. There are lots of stories about it being Khmer, the language of Cambodia, for a forest. But then someone says "On the other hand, other people say...".

The two things that are certain is that the river through its centre is called the Saigon and that the city was renamed after the northern Vietnamese overran the south and reunited the country. The south had fought the north in a proxy war that had as many as half a million American troops on its side. And when it lost, the old capital was named after the communist leader whose Confucian face now looks beatifically from all the currency. You lose a war and you get your head city renamed after the man who beat you.

A word about the currency, by the way. It's called the dong, an entertaining name which means brass or simply money. Vietnam had a spot of bother with it while it struggled with what the leaders considered a better form of communism and inflation exploded. There are now 20 000 dong to the euro, near enough, and an individual dong is so worthless that Vietnam is a country without coins.

More than that, because the numbers are so enormous - a good hotel room can cost a million - and because nobody has thought simply to cross off a load of zeroes and start again (after which there'd still be as much money but it'd use less ink to print price lists), people speak not even in thousands but tens of thousands. So, if something is about to cost 20 000 dong, you'll be asked for "two". It takes some getting used to.

Well, we're here and the welcome couldn't - other than at immigration - have been friendlier. We hadn't even pushed our bike boxes as far as the airport doors when a couple approached us, first curious what was in the cartons, then insistent we take their phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

"The slightest problem you have, be sure to call us," one of them said. "We'll do our best to help you."