US Senator-elect Hillary Clinton yesterday met Vietnamese village women involved in a small loans project.
Mrs Clinton and her daughter Chelsea were given a warm welcome by hundreds of smiling villagers in Phu Tang, which is surrounded by waterlogged rice fields, about 30 miles north-west of Hanoi.
Some 30 years after US B52s rained bombs down on northern Vietnam, the Clintons were cheered when they tried on straw hats.
Mrs Clinton told a group of women in a micro-finance project supported by Oxfam America she hoped the presidential visit would strengthen friendship between the two countries. The women take out small loans of between £20 and £600 to start small businesses such as raising chickens, pigs or fish, or making tofu.
In a village meeting hall below a red hammer-and-sickle flag and a portrait of Vietnam's late leader Ho Chi Minh, Mrs Clinton praised the women's efforts.