Do the timewarp

For a people that seldom feel the texture of much hard cash, the growth of adventure tourism is bringing this localised craft - embroidered cushion covers, wall hangings, flower-power hippie tunics - rendered blue from harvested wild Indigo flowers, to enchanted backpackers, who care not that a wash and tumble dry later all their clothes will be the same moody hue.

It is a further tentative stride towards economic maturity taking hold across a country driven as it has been since the fall of Saigon to the Viet Cong in 1975 by the dictates of communism. After years of oppressing these once nomadic clans, whose origins probably hail back to ancient civilisations, the Government has now taken

a turn for the politically correct in a bid

to encourage visitors to invest in the fabric of the country.

These ''minority people'', as it now calls them, are at last being recognised as unique ambassadors for an independent way of life.

In response, they are opening up their homes to those fit and daring enough to challenge the tricky terrain leading to them that dries and cracks like arid parchment beneath the unforgiving sun and as swiftly turns to slippery mush with the coming of

the rains.

The rewards in terms of raw, panoramic majesty are astonishing. Steep green terraces, hacked for generations into the hills for the production of rice, laced with pretty wild flowers, lead down into vast wide valleys cut through with glistening rivers and streams.

While 90% of the population of this country are ethnic Vietnamese augmented by several million Chinese, up to seven million more comprise an estimated 54 ethnic tribes, to make it one of the most culturally diverse nations in South East Asia.

In Sapa, the gateway to many of these clans, whose distinct, often flamboyant costumes, languages and dialect, make them easily identifiable, tour guides can be inexpensively hired.

Thang, our own scout, had grown up with the minority people and knew some families personally. He explained that many of these hard-working groups, dubbed Montagnards or ''highlanders'' by French colonisers and less kindly by the Vietnamese as ''moi'' or savages, live as they did in medieval times. Their stilt houses are elevated to keep away snakes, vermin, and flood water and until recently they have relied on rather brutal slash and burn agricultural techniques.

They subsist by farming a land whose yield is dictated by extremes of climate. But life is hard and each winter scores of buffalo - the indispensable physiological tractors owned by most families - die from the cold. No wonder tourism is such an appealing prospect.

During the Vietnamese War, both the Viet Cong and the Americans found willing fighters among the ethnic groups whose support was driven by a desire to remain independent from their enemies. Some 200,000 of a population of one million are said to have died.

However, while today many remain tied to the paddy fields by illiteracy or ignorance, the Government is at least allowing their languages to be taught in schools. Some tribal children are even getting to university. Moreover, cash crops such as timber and

fruit are being phased into the region to replace illicit trade based on opium, hunting

and logging.

This may be eroding certain customs, but other old traditions die hard. Many still refuse to give their children a name for a long period of time after their birth, believing this will ward off evil spirits, while the Tai tribe push arranged marriages just about as far as they can. The husband does not witness the bride until he removes her veil on the night of their wedding. Women are chosen for their physical strength and child-bearing capabilities and any disappointment has to be shouldered for the good of the community.

However, Saturday markets provide ample opportunity for husbands to play away with damsels of their choice - as long as they are back home for breakfast. Predictably, the deal is only for men.

For the tourist just wandering around the market place in Sapa and taking in the bright colours is a visual feast in itself. Not far away is Halong Bay, a magnificent sweep of ocean in the Gulf of Tonkin dotted with 3000 limestone islands surrounded by beaches, grottoes and forest. Opportunities for snorkelling and diving abound though, impressively, visitors are warned not to help themselves to the rare coral and shells on the sea bed.

In 1994 the region was made the country's second Unesco World Heritage site. It also comes complete with its own Loch Ness-style legend. Mariners claim to have seen a massive marine beast known as the Tarasque and souvenir touts milk the story with vigour.

Less mystic creatures on nearby Cat Ba Island include coloured butterflies as big as clenched fists that shimmer before us in brilliant clouds and tiny frogs that leap kamikaze-style across our paths.

It is difficult to believe that only a generation ago this was a theatre of war staging one of south-east Asia's most bloody dramas. Indeed, hard evidence that so many million indigenous men, women and children along with American youths perished in Vietnam is not always that obvious outside the war museums.

A quarter of a century after a string of American presidents tried to halt communist expansion with a gung-ho plan they hoped would ultimately save the world, Vietnam is clearly getting on with life and enjoying its hard-earned peace. There is no discernible ''remember the war'' mentality keeping natives suspicious of travellers.

Of course there are some day-to-day structural reminders - the odd shrine hidden in thick forest where a B52 bomb felled a young girl, bullet holes in rocks on a nature trail near Halong Bay, the partial decimation of ancient shrines at My Son, the Viet Cong base not far from Danang and barbed wire surrounding various official buildings in Ho Chi Minh City.

Remembrance is important for a people plagued by war for so many years but not to the point of neurosis.

The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City certainly doesn't pull any punches in its narration of exactly what happened in the Cold War clash.

Explicit photographs of the effects of napalm, agent orange and various pesticides - still wreaking havoc with the country's

eco-system - on human flesh are a morbid warning to those who might wish to romanticise the whole bloody episode.

Depressing figures are reeled off about the 7,850,000 tons of bombs dropped on the tiny country or the 75,000,000 litres of defoliants, including dioxin, sprayed over croplands and forests in the south.

But there is a welcome balance in its depiction of the war. A final section is devoted to images of peace presenting real hope for the future.

That optimism is partially cloaked in the guise of tourism. Indeed, watching the waves lap gently across the golden shores of Nha Trang, the beautiful beach resort in the centre of the country where American squaddies made for a spot of R&R, one could be on the French Riviera.

We take a trip with Mama Hanh, a local character whose business acumen and penchant for red wine have built her a whole fleet of ocean-going pleasure boats.

Filled to the brim with backpackers, this feisty lady accompanies cruisers on day trips to nearby coral reefs set in glassy seas for an exercise in complete hedonism. Her staff prepare a veritable banquet of traditional food while you sip aperitif or snorkel with kaleidoscopic shoals of fish.

It is followed later in the afternoon by the most magnificent fruit frenzy - just about every kind of succulent imaginable makes its way on to the table, including dragon fruit, which grows in a reptilian-looking pink and green skin in Nha Trang.

Diversity is the buzz word in a country so keen to get its name on the world tourism map. Hoi Anh is a small town not far from the ancient capital of Hue.

Many of the shops accommodate tiny textile industries and just about every traveller, from backpackers to package tourists leave more than a few kilos heavier.

In 24 hours, tailors can copy and run up

that designer suit or dress straight from the Milan catwalk.

They take their inspiration from stacks of fashion magazines - Elle, Marie Claire,

Vogue - abandoned by tourists and can kit

you out with a whole new winter wardrobe

for under #100. It is a temptation few

can resist.

Moving south to the cajeput forests of the Dong Thap Muoi (plain of reeds) in the Mekong Delta, old waterways previously navigated by the Viet Cong are now being reopened.

This area of outstanding beauty, marketed as ''a living art gallery'', was ravaged during the independence wars providing as it did ideal hide-out for liberation army guerillas.

But enough of the network of criss-cross canals built early last century, covered as they are in a canopy of emerald forest and home to numerous birds, fish and wild animals, remain for the intrepid explorer to peruse.

Freedom is delivering regeneration in Vietnam. The individual credited with this rebirth is the communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, who died before the 1975 liberation. The esteem in which he is held across the

country is evident in his ubiquitous nickname, ''Uncle Ho''.

You can even take a peek at the great man who is now lying in state in a huge stone mausoleum in Hanoi - despite his apparent dying wish to be cremated. He may well now be 110 but prostrate behind the glass cabinet he looks calm and well, probably thanks to an annual wash and brush up each winter in the former Soviet Union.

It won't be long before visitors are coming in their droves to Vietnam. Lovely people

with a desire to please, fantastic food and magnificent scenery have their own unique magnetism. But it is those lucky enough to witness Vietnam as it is now, relatively unspoilt by the trappings of the 21st century, who are the really blessed.

We travelled with Malaysia Airlines from Edinburgh via London and Kuala Lumpur. Prices for flights to Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City range from #684-#834. For more details contact: 020 7 341 2040.

Tours in Sapa can be booked through T F Handspan Travel, 116 Pho Hang Bac, Hanoi - tfhandspn@hn.vnn.vn - or Chapa Tours, 29 Cau May, Sapa.