Image index

The red flag with a single gold star in the center was adopted by the North Vietnamese in 1955, and then used for the entire nation after the South Vietnamese regime fell in 1975.

In Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh's body is on display in a mausolem modeled after Lenin's Tomb.

Ho Chi Minh is often presented as fatherly, educating the nation and people of Vietnam.

This commercial street in Hanoi is evidence of the market reforms Vietnam has undertaken since the mid-1980s.

A young bride walks through the streets of Mytho in a European-style, lacy pink wedding dress.

Electricians repair a network of power cables in Hanoi.

Roadside kiosks and refreshment stands are the Southeast Asian equivalent of U.S. convenience stores.

Cooking and selling prepared foods is a common small business for less wealthy urban families.

Urban women are raised to be skilled merchants and routinely play a public role in small business.

Rural farmers often bring their farm produce to sell at urban outdoor markets like this one in Dalat.

Green fruit spikes of peppercorns dry on a mat.

White latex sap drips into a collection pan fastened to a tapped rubber tree.

A bus carries goods to Ho Chi Minh City for sale.

Rice (and passengers, in the hold below) travels to market on the Mekong River.

Motorcycles and bicycles are the most common vehicles on Vietnam's roads.

Two women sit discuss the news outside a rope and mat shop in Hanoi.

Uniformed children file out of the school ground in Danang.

Cao Dai, a religion created in the 1920s, was legalized by the Vietnamese government in 1997.

This All-Seeing Eye, framed in a triangle surrounded by sun rays and carved lotus blossoms, is displayed in the Cao Dai temple at Tay Ninh.

Painted statues, guarded by carved serpents, depict saints honored in the Cao Dai religion.