"Enterprising Spirit"

Solved! OK, next problem . . . The place: Hanoi, Prime Minister's office. The subject: How to deal with the smuggled goods from China and Cambodia (oringinating mostly in Singapore). Vietnamese manufacturers and tax officials both are complaining that they cannot compete with the cheap prices and high quality of these smuggled goods. The players: PM Vo Van Kiet, border guard commanders, general directors of the state-owned tobacco, booze, bicycle and motorbike corporations. Outcome: Problem solved. Border guards were granted the right to confiscate smuggled goods and auction them - to Vietnamese distributors.  In 1998 this included 32 million packs of cigarettes. Domestic competitors get a cut.

How far would you go for a little head? . . . A seasoned diplomat tells us of an scam revolving around a Hue museum's prize display. Seems that collectors find their way to the spot and when they see a particular ancient carved stone head are beside themselves. They simply must have it and will pay whatever. Sorry, says the museum director, this is a museum, not a shop, and besides, it's illegal to bring antiquities out of Vietnam. Anyway, that night he shows up at the collector's hotel and sells the head for one or two grand. The next day the collector goes to the airport with this magnificent head, where it is promptly extracted from his luggage. By the chief of airport security, who just happens to be the museum director's brother.

"Keep the meter running" . . . It is rare in Saigon for a man to climb into a taxi driven by a fellow who can't make your bawdiest fantasy a reality. In ten minutes, he'll promise, you'll be dancing with your masseuse, etc. The latest entrepreneurial twist threatens his bread and butter. In a solitary act of efficiency, a Vietnamese middleman has actually been eliminated! With one company it is now the masseuses who have taken to piloting taxis.

Landlocked entrepreneurial ideas . . . This, noticed in a regional business directory: "Laos Shipping Company."

No, I don't watch Baywatch, I just prefer the superior production qualities of the ads . . . To pick up those extra TV stations that make the difference, Vietnam residents have taken to buying jumbo antennae and pointing them at the dishes mounted on roofs of major hotels (only foreigners can receive foreign television signals). An even more brazen and obvious scheme has become commonplace -- from each antenna one can observe a jumble of smaller wires leading to other buildings, often tapped in without the antenna owner's permission (as is my case!).

No such thing as a free press . . . A marketing official contracted by local (mostly foreign) companies explained to Mr. Nguyen the delicate art of attracting journalists to press conferences and other meetings. "Coverage for a boring and unimportant conference costs fifty bucks," she reports. It goes down from there. A press conference that takes less than one hour and is within ten minutes from the reporter's office can cost as little as VND 50,000. Average is VND 150,000, a bit more if the journalist must explain technology, say, in the case of the launch of a new line of telecom switches.

The craft of making the actual payoff centers around two piles of press material - one for Vietnamese and the other for foreigners. Slipping the payoff envelope into a foreigners packet is a marketing no-no. It's the hot button to righteousness. Consider the young international journalist who picked up the wrong packet at a recent bank press conference on Europe's new currency, and found VND 100,000 inside. The Euro? Very inappropriate. Now, if it had been VND 200,000 and a free lunch, we probably wouldn't have heard about it.