HO CHI MIN, Vietnam _ Life in old Saigon seems to whiz by on two wheels. The city has been taken over by a swarm of motorcycles, which swells on the big avenues and thins out in the alleys. Bikes are king here.

This metropolis, which changed its name from Saigon to Ho Chin Min in 1976, has a human population of 4 million and a motorcycle population of, maybe, 3 million. It is impossible to know the exact number. But they are everywhere.

It is life on a motorbike.

Streets here are grand examples of balance and diversity. Bikes always seem about to crash, but I only saw one accident and it was of little consequence.

I remember the woman who gently massaged her boyfriend's back while he was driving, seemingly impassible.

And the sad sight of a father and his sick son, a boy who had paralyzed legs and was clearly mentally handicapped, riding on some sort of tricycle. Father and son, in turn, were pushed by another relative on a motorbike that spewed thick gray smoke in its wake. I imagined a thousand possibilities for this improvised "Hochiminite" ambulance. None, however, with a happy ending.

And I watched a young man with three white mannequins balanced precariously on his rusty motorbike, like in a circus act. But he looked so steady and self-confident astride the bike that he, too, seemed made of cardboard. Vietnamese surrealism.

No doubt about it, motorbikes give the impression of imminent freedom in this nation, which is still listed in books as Communist. Capitalism, however, is breaking out everywhere.

One example is that the same rulers who insist their country has "a Socialist-leaning market economy," recently invited Bill Gates _ who The New York Times calls "the world's most famous capitalist" _ for a visit.

But that's not all. First-class restaurants (serving incomparable French-Vietnamese food), luxury hotels, designer boutiques, countless private businesses, and the evident presence of foreign investment suggest a convenient combination of rigid political control with growing commercial opportunity.

But the majority of the almost 85-million Vietnamese depend on agriculture and fishing. They do not live in Hanoi or in Ho Chi Min and are painfully poor. In a long trip from Vietnam's third biggest city, Da Nang, to the imperial city of Hue, I saw the evident backwardness of this country, which has experienced peace only in the last 30 years.

Tourism has been one way to generate growth in Vietnam. The "tourist attractions," however, leave much to be desired. Unless, of course, you can appreciate the rather dull mausoleum of a former guerrilla leader or the wreck of a military helicopter that still lies, as a war trophy, on the grounds of the former American Embassy in Saigon.

I made the mistake of taking a tour with a guide who repeatedly called us, his captive clients, "ladies and lemonade" (new twist on "ladies and gentlemen")! The worst part was when he took us on a boat tour of the Perfume River in Hue. I can assure you that the murky brown waters of that river do not honor its name and is comparable to the most polluted and least aesthetic ones I've seen in Latin America at the height of the rainy season.

To tell the truth, while Vietnam is a very interesting place, it isn't irresistibly beautiful. You come to Vietnam to learn history and to understand the life of a country that has never lost a war. But you don't come for the tourism.

From here, for example, it is easier to understand why the United States is having so many problems in Iraq. The American military was never able to master Vietnam's inhospitable jungles and mountains, much the same as is happening now with U.S. forces drenched in sweat in the deserts and maze-like cities of Iraq. The United States went into both wars for obscure reasons, and without knowing how and when to pull out.

Suddenly, the din of motorcycles jolts me out of my ruminations and forces me to open my eyes quickly to avoid being run over as I walk along an unpronounceable Vietnamese street.

That din is so endemic and penetrating that even when I fly off to another destination, I can still hear in my mind the drone from a country searching for a new destiny down a thousand roads.