HANOI - Everybody and his brother is on a motorbike. His sister, too, you realize, once you look beyond the masked faces, elbow-length gloves and shrouded bodies - the better to keep the sun away and remain pale in that urbane, I don't-work-in-the-fields way. Me, I'm stupidly tan-happy, bareheaded and bare-legged as I zip along side-saddle behind Long, the motorbike taxi-man of the morning. We're on our way to see Ho.

Ho is Ho Chi Minh, the father of Communist Vietnam. He looks much as when I last visited him here, in 1994. Waxen and pale, the revered peasant leader forever under glass. Dead, but not gone, never forgotten.

But Ho may be just about the only thing in Vietnam that looks the same. A decade ago this month, the U.S. normalized relations with Vietnam, following that government's decision to admit Western visitors. Former Congressman Pete Peterson - a former prisoner of war here - became the first U.S. ambassador in the post-war era. Vietnam vaulted into modern capitalism with a vengeance.

These days, scenes from Apocalypse Now and Good Morning Vietnam seem surreal. Visiting the New Vietnam, you may find yourself wondering if the bloody campaign that ended in America's defeat with the 1975 fall of Saigon was merely a drug-induced nightmare, a cruel trick of collective memory.

Unless, of course, you - or someone you loved - spent time here between 1964 and 1975, when more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers and an estimated 1.1 million-plus Vietnamese died.

Why was the U.S. military here? you may find yourself asking, as you stare into shops filled with sleek silk gowns, beaded sandals and Prada-esque eyeglass frames; hip cafes and pubs and cappuccino bars; day spas and travel agencies offering backpacker trips to just about every corner of this serpentine country. And, who really won the war?

A DECADE OF CHANGE In the time it takes to sip a Saigon Beer, Vietnam's past seems to fade. Yes, you can still see water buffalo pulling plows in the countryside. But in cities, cyclists and vendors lugging baskets of fruit on shoulder yokes are giving way to literally millions of motorbikes. Conical grass hats are being replaced by baseball caps, and even the "Hanoi Hilton" - nickname for the prison where American POWs were held, including now-Sen. John McCain - has been largely vanquished to make room for a glass office-and-retail tower. The new Hanoi Hilton is a sleek tower near the Opera where you can sip a $2 soda, smoke a Havana cigar or buy a Montblanc pen while awaiting your room.

A decade ago, none of this was here. Not the made-to-order tailors, the chic housewares shops, the 400 dragon-prowed tourist boats on Halong Bay, the five-star Ana Mandara Resort on Nha Trang Beach. Not the art galleries stacked to the rafters with canvases of air-brushed Buddhas and bucolic farming scenes. Not the air-conditioned tourist buses that roll along the Vietnamese backbone, Hanoi to Saigon for $31, with stops at Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang and Dalat.

Roughly 1.4 million foreign tourists came here in the first five months of 2005, reports the country's tourism administration - up 19.4 percent over the year before. American tourists rank third in numbers, behind China and Japan, with 272,000 American visitors in 2004.

Credit curiousity about a fresh, rapidly changing destination and a wide variety of experiences in a single country, says Chris Skilling, vice president of worldwide operations for Boston-based Grand Circle Travel and Overseas Adventure Travel. The two companies are taking 58 percent more Americans to Vietnam this year than last.

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