President Clinton made a point of highlighting the emerging private sector in Vietnam during his visit, as well as enjoying himself as a tourist.
Yesterday in Ho Chi Minh City, just as he had done the previous day in Hanoi, he headed for lunch in a privately run cafe, this one called Pho 2000 and situated on a busy roundabout. There he sat down to a meal of noodles topped with chicken and a mango shake, much to the delight of the manager, Mr Vo Van Lang.
Later at the Hotel Caravelle, Mr Clinton enthused about his hopes for Vietnam in a courtesy call on the hotel manager, Mr Stephen O'Grady. They discussed how the best chance for the future lay, just as in Ireland, in its huge population of talented, entrepreneurial young people, all of whom in Vietnam had been born since the war ended.
Mr Clinton told him: "Young people, like you have in Ireland, don't want to live in the past, they want to go forward," said Mr O'Grady, whose parents come from near Westport in Co Mayo and who presented the US President with a shamrock pin as a mark of shared Irish background.
The visit of the US President will give an enormous boost to Vietnam's economy, the Caravelle manager said. "There is a huge buzz in the hotel business, and the demand for rooms from business people this year is incredible," he said.
Such optimism contrasts with the situation a year ago, when most hotels in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, were almost empty, and there was much pessimism about the future of foreign investment in the face of red tape and obstructions placed in the way by the communist government.
Now hotels are flourishing for the first time since Saigon's heyday during the 1960s. Work is to begin shortly on finishing the gaunt skeleton of the Marriott, which until recently stood abandoned as a symbol of overoptimistic foreign investment in the mid1990s.
Not only are high-end tourism and business travel picking up, but Vietnam is becoming fashionable again. A movie of The Quiet American, Graham Greene's 1950s novel set in Saigon, is apparently soon to be made here.
Mr O'Grady said there was evidence that interest in Vietnam as a tourist destination was increasing around the world. An Irish tour company had been in Saigon recently to check things out, and Japanese tourists were coming in bigger numbers; over 110,000 in the first nine months of this year, equal to the number for all of 1999.
The government is pouring much money into upgrading roads and other facilities in tourist sites such as Da Nang, Hoi An and the imperial city of Hue. It has also simplified entry visas for foreigners.
One of the big attractions of Vietnam is its unspoilt nature. This is particularly true of Hanoi, which retains much of its architectural charm from French colonial times, and is rapidly becoming a favourite destination for frequent travellers in Asia.
Several excellent French and Vietnamese restaurants have opened and, despite the motorcycles that clog the streets, tourists can take leisurely rides on cyclo-taxis through the leafy avenues and the 1,000-year-old quarter.
Whether it will remain unspoilt as Hanoi embraces "progress" remains to be seen. Among the resident foreign community is Mr Mark Barnett, an American spice trader, who lives in a charming narrow house of balconies and steep winding stairways at the end of an alley where stallholders sell Hanoi's best fried chicken in the evenings.
"I wonder if the government can allow this to survive in the centre of a capital city," he mused as we looked out from his top-floor office over the sloping red tiles of the similar neighbouring homes of university professors and artists.
Taking my cue from the US President, I did a little bit of tourism myself in Hanoi, seeking out one of the city's hidden charms, an antique workshop hidden down a long, winding laneway with flowering vines draped from the walls.
The family of the owner, Mr Tran The Ky, a Viet Cong veteran, led me through rooms filled to overflowing with treasures ranging from 14th-century Tran Dynasty drums and ancient grave-markers, to reproduction stone elephants, reclining Buddhas and inlaid compass cases, all at a lower rate than in the city stores. Business is getting better, Mr Tran says, and Mr Clinton's visit would mean many more visitors.
In Saigon yesterday, before his noodle lunch, Mr Clinton also went browsing for antiques, calling in to half-a-dozen stores, in one of which he bought a small granite figure called "Buddha on a turtle". I don't know what he paid, but if he had come with me to Mr Tran's, I'm sure I could have got him a better price.