BUT THE CHILDREN ARE VICTIMS, TOO.

BY KARL VETAS | The gleaming towers along Le Loi and Nguyen Hue boulevards in downtown Ho Chi Minh Ville (still better known as Saigon) attest to Vietnam's growing prosperity as a potential Asian tiger. Much of the funding for the growth is reflected in the neon signs that glow atop the multistory glass complexes, foreign firms that have taken a stake in Vietnam's future through multimillion-dollar investments in industrial ventures. Amid the symbols of capitalistic expansion, another form of entrepreneurial drive is also thriving. This one too is funded by foreigners, but in a more direct and less voluntary way: Their assets are being unknowingly transferred from their pockets and purses to the supple fingers of local thieves.

The scope of the street theft problem was underscored at a recent United Nations-sponsored Mekong Tourism Forum Meeting held in Saigon and attended by representatives from private and public sector organizations from the six nations that border the Mekong River. Convened to discuss strategies for increasing tourism to Vietnam, the meeting's opening was delayed when the Myanmar delegation discovered their luggage had been ransacked somewhere between their aircraft's cargo hold and the baggage carousel.

They were among many who were loathe to disagree when the keynote speaker, William McGurn, senior editor of the prestigious Far Eastern Economic Review, stated that "personal safety" was a genuine concern among overseas tourists contemplating visits to Vietnam. He illustrated the point by noting that after the welcoming dinner at the Majestic Hotel the previous evening, he'd stepped onto the sidewalk -- and had his watch promptly stripped from his wrist.

Communism may have officially replaced capitalism, but the local entrepreneurial acumen that characterized Saigon during the Vietnam War is alive and well. Pickpockets and snatch thieves operate unmolested along downtown boulevards and woe betide the visitor who fails to keep one wary eye on his personal effects and the other on beggars and street urchins. Or who, in avoiding them, strays to the edge of the sidewalk and into the operating territory of thieves on motorcycles. Wall-eyed sightseeing is the order of the day.

The techniques practiced during the GI era of the 1960s seem to have been passed to a new generation without alteration or refinement. In those days, small smiling boys would dash up to a visitor as if about to sell him chewing gum. While the visitor fumbled for change, they would run a thin card up his shirtfront to snag the pens clipped to the pockets. The pilfered object would quickly disappear in a relay of hands before the stunned victim could recover his wits and give chase.

More threatening were the "cowboys," pairs of snatch thieves astride motorcycles. When the driver veered toward the tourist, his partner would grab whatever dangled from a shoulder strap -- purse, camera, valise -- and speed away. A delegate at the Mekong meeting discovered that times have changed little. Walking down the sidewalk, he wandered too close to the street and a passing motorcycle passenger grabbed the jacket he had slung over his shoulder. The victim maintained his grip and the jacket split, leaving him with a back panel and a pair of sleeves.

If anything, the thieves these days are bolder. Walking on main streets for an hour between conference sessions, my companion twice had to remove roving hands from her purse, within steps of the meeting hall door where a policeman was posted.

Calling for police seems as useless as it was during the war. The GI's called South Vietnamese police "The White Mice" for their pristine uniforms and total disinclination to uphold the law. They're still as ineffectual but are slightly more enterprising. Guidebooks warn visitors not to carry their passports when on the town for the evening. It is not unknown for a police patrol to stop them, demand identity papers and then offer to sell the passport back to them. Visitors are advised to leave their passports in hotel safes and to carry photocopies of the key pages. The need for constant vigilance mars an otherwise pleasant stroll down city streets, many of them lined with fragrant linden trees planted by French colonists, and all of them throbbing with vibrant life -- filled with street vendors, simple sidewalk cafes serving filter coffee and delicious baguettes, women gossiping on doorsills, men in pajamas lounging in lawn chairs watching children shouting and cavorting. Such a perambulation, however, requires keeping a wary eye cocked for miscreants.

I was only aware of how defensive I had become when, days later, back in my own hometown, I found myself scrutinizing each passerby and child and tensing whenever I heard a motorcycle. My sense of my own vulnerability was a constant annoyance in Saigon, but that annoyance was tempered by guilt coupled with new knowledge about the city's street children.

N E X T+P A G E+| The street kids become people