If you happen to arrive in Hanoi on the eve of Tet, there are a few things you’ll need — a moped, a huge red balloon and as big a branch of peach blossom as possible. Once you have assembled everything, simply squeeze onto your moped with at least five other members of your immediate family and launch yourself into the beautiful chaos that is Hanoi traffic.

It’s this unbelievable two-wheeled traffic that first hits you on arrival in Hanoi — literally, if you don’t watch where you’re going. Ten years ago, it was nearly all bicycles, but now it’s motorbikes and mopeds of all shapes and sizes. Hanoi has the highest concentration of motorbikes in the world, and crossing the road is like ploughing through a fluid wave of two-wheelers.

Aside from entire families, most riders are young men cruising around with their unfeasibly beautiful girlfriends perched behind them. Some of the women sit sidesaddle; others straddle the bike with attitude. I decided that the side-saddlers were merely “courting”, whereas the “straddlers” were in a relationship.

I opted, controversially, for a three-wheeler for my first foray round the city. I hailed one of the fast-disappearing cyclos — a bench seat, perched on the front of a tricycle, that a man a quarter of my size propelled me around the city in. The little guy didn’t speak a word of English, but delivered an uninterrupted, excitable monologue about his city that kept me totally entertained as I occasionally nodded or laughed where it seemed appropriate. He’d sometimes get so excited about a building that he’d start bouncing up and down on his precarious seat. For my own amusement, I started making up my own version of what he was telling me. On the right, we were passing the People’s Bubble Gum Factory, on the left was the Ministry for Branding Everything American as a Devil, coming up . . . it actually is a statue of Lenin, I can’t believe it, haven’t seen him around for a while. I loved my cyclo tour.

A frontier is always a good indication of what the country you are entering will be like. With Vietnam being one of the few remaining one-party communist states left in the world, I was expecting some over-the-top totalitarian behaviour, with heavily armed guards overseeing sinister plain-clothed types who’d scan your document endlessly for problems. Far from it — there were some uniformed types, but they were all wearing curiously ill-fitting outfits, and seemed uncomfortable in their roles. Seated behind the passport counter that I approached was a really friendly-looking woman who gave the man in front of me a huge smile and spent a good couple of minutes chatting in heavily accented English about what he was planning to see in Vietnam. She even recommended a couple of restaurants. Hang on — my mind was racing — was this a honeytrap? Were the restaurants she was recommending bugged and ready for action? It was my turn. I approached gingerly.

“Hello,” she said, with a big smile. I nodded noncommittally. She wasn’t going to trick me into giving away any secrets.

“Welcome to Vietnam,” she said with another big smile.

“Just name and number, that’s it, Joly — they won’t break you,” I whispered to myself.

“Happy new year, sir, enjoy your stay.” She waved me through with a final huge smile. This was a trick. I would relax, then someone would appear out of a little tunnel and stick sharp bamboo spears through me. I got my luggage cautiously and left the terminal, fighting off tiny smiley porters and beaming miniature cab drivers. This country had perfected the “death by a hundred smiles” routine. ONE OF my terrible guilty secrets is that I enjoy travelling in totalitarian countries. They tend not to be touristy and retain an element of nonhomogeneity that makes travelling through them a joy. I know that this is horribly naive and insulting to the general population, who are being denied the unadulterated joys of a democratic free-market economy. Yet, the more Vietnamese I spoke to, the more they seemed totally uninterested in who was running the country or how, as long as they were left to go about their business.

One cab driver told me that whoever is in power would be as bad as the previous one — essentially, they mistrust power, but fear chaos. Business, however, is the keyword. For the past 20 years, Vietnam has had its own version of perestroika, doi moi. It’s an arrangement whereby the Party looks after the politics and the press, but the populace is essentially free to get on with everything else. Investment is pouring into the economic powerhouse that is Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), and Vietnam is starting to boom. Old Vietnam is fast disappearing.

That’s why I went. I had been listening to the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent one day as I took my dog for a walk, and I heard a reporter describe just how fast Ho Chi Minh City was changing, and that it would be only a couple of years before it became no different from every other bustling Asian city. I decided on the spot that I’d better go quickly — two weeks later, I was there.

As I travelled through Vietnam, I was reading Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. It’s the perfect travel companion to the country. Set in the 1950s in Saigon, as the French colonial power desperately tries to hold off the Viet Minh, it’s a frightening crash course in the troubled history of the country. Fifteen years later, it would be the Americans versus the Viet Cong — history has a terrible habit of repeating itself, and it gives the Vietnamese a strong carpe diem philosophy. This is a country that — however much progress it’s undergoing — does not have much truck with the uncertainties of the future.

AS I got off the plane in Ho Chi Minh City, a wall of humidity, which made the capital Hanoi in the north feel positively chilly, assaulted me. As my luggage and I struggled through a large crowd of wide smiles, I could feel my sopping shirt sticking to my back. My throat was as dry as a bone. I remembered a line from Greene: “You couldn’t believe it would ever be seven o’clock and cocktail time on the roof of the Majestic, with a wind from the Saigon River.”

I arrived at the evocative Hotel Majestic, one of the oldest in the city, half an hour later and couldn’t wait for seven o’clock. I knocked back a cocktail or two on the roof and raised a glass to Greene. Looking out from the roof terrace, you could see that this is a city in between identities. The latest invasion of Vietnam is not a military one — it’s an economic onslaught, firing up big glass skyscrapers and ever-bigger advertising hoardings that seem, for some peculiar reason, to be almost entirely obsessed with 100% latex mattresses.

I went to the War Remnants Museum, where large amounts of US ordnance are littered about in the grounds, either abandoned or captured. But it was the uncensored picture gallery that really hit home — the terrible after-effects of Agent Orange, the scenes of torture and the sheer scale of the military onslaught that these people faced and defeated. I realised just how extraordinary is the lack of rancour and hostility that one experiences in this country.

I loved Ho Chi Minh City immediately, just as I had Hanoi. The capital is more old-school and slow-paced, whereas Ho Chi Minh City buzzes with energy. Once again, the moped is the only real answer to getting around. Quite apart from the convenience, it was the only way that I could keep myself cool. I buzzed around the city, barely getting off the machine. If I saw something interesting, I would slow to a crawl, getting off only if I had actually to go inside a building — although, on a couple of occasions, there were even ramps to allow you to drive inside. My kind of town.

I hunted for the most symbolic building in Ho Chi Minh City — the old American embassy, where the last, desperate people were evacuated by helicopter from the roof as the North Vietnamese were entering the city in 1975. It was razed to the ground. The site is still owned by the Americans, but it’s now their consulate. The bollards, barbed wire, blast-proof walls and scowling armed guards prevented me from seeing anything whatsoever. Paradoxically, the consulate of the leader of the “free world” was the only experience during my whole trip to this wonderful country that fitted in with my expectations of totalitarianism.

- Dom Joly travelled as a guest of TransIndus

Getting there: there are no direct flights between Vietnam and the UK, but plenty of connections in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The cheapest option from London is to fly to Ho Chi Minh City via Doha with Qatar Airways, from Gatwick or Heathrow; Trailfinders (0845 058 5858, www.trailfinders.com) has returns for £483. The best fare to Hanoi is £671, with Singapore Airlines via Singapore, again through Trailfinders. Although more expensive, this allows open-jaw routing — flying into one Vietnamese city and out of the other — for the same fare.

If you want to travel independently around Southeast Asia, you could fly to Bangkok — from £480 with Qatar Airways, via Doha — then hop around on local no-frills airlines. Bangkok Airways (www.bangkokair.com) has one-way web-only fares to Ho Chi Minh City from £71. Air Asia (www.airasia.com) flies between Bangkok and Hanoi; from £23. Pacific Airlines (www.pacificairlines.com.vn) flies between Hanoi and Ho City Minh City; from £46, one-way.

Where to stay: in Hanoi, the best hotel is the Sofitel Metropole (www.sofitel.com); from £122, B&B, with Trailfinders (0845 054 6060, www.trailfinders.com). Good budget options include the Hanoi Elegance 2 (00 84 4 926 3451, www.hanoielegancehotel. com) in the old quarter, which has doubles from £18, B&B. In Ho Chi Minh City, the Hotel Majestic (www.majesticsaigon.com.vn) has doubles from £88, B&B, if booked online. The swankiest hotel is the Park Hyatt (0845 888 1234, saigon.park.hyatt.com), where online rates start at £120, room-only.

Tour operators: Transindus (020 8566 2729; www.transindus.co.uk) has a 12-day tour, covering Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hué, Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh City, from £1,765, including flights from London, transfers, B&B accommodation, guided sightseeing and entrance fees. Or try Kuoni (01306 743000, www.kuoni.co.uk) or Travel Indochina (01865 268940, www.travelindochina.co.uk).

Best guidebook: Vietnam (Rough Guides £14.99).

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