In Hanoi it costs $0.50 to have a baby.

Of the hundred and seventy-eight countries in the United Nations, Viet Nam’s per capita income ranks one hundred and forty-sixth. The average salary in Ho Chi Minh City is approximately $700 US a year, while in Hanoi, Joe Nguyen takes home just under six million dong or $400. According to Lonely Planet, the foreigners’ guide to such places, four people can eat a five-star French meal at Hoa Sua for $35 including tip. In Dalat, you can stay in a three-star hotel for $12 a night, a full-size replica of the Eiffel Tower lighting the sky outside your window. In the major cities you can go anywhere on a motorbike for less than a buck. Outside Danang, you can rent a car and a driver to take you for four hours to My Lai and back for $25. In Hoi An, you can have a Chinese silk dress custom made for less than ten.

According to Lonely Planet, the foreigners’ guide to such places, four people can eat a five-star French meal at Hoa Sua for $35 including tip. In Dalat, you can stay in a three-star hotel for $12 a night, a full-size replica of the Eiffel Tower lighting the sky outside your window. In the major cities you can go anywhere on a motorbike for less than a buck.

For the Vietnamese, life is cheaper. On the street a meal costs around $0.07, a ride on a motorbike about the same. People work each and every day from sun up until they literally can’t see, even the children out in the fields transplanting rice. Outside Tay Ninh a woman might spend fifteen hours at a stretch feeding rice husks into an oven, all the while cooking gruel into thin sheets of paper, and make a dollar for the whole day. Those lucky enough to work in the Nike factory in Lao Cai will probably make twice that, though at times the carcinogens visibly speckle the air. The life of a government employee is marginally better. A cop might take home $10 a week, double that if he accepts things on the side. An unmarried government translator earns $35 a month, while the one-room apartment where he lives with his parents is the size of your average American two-car garage.

For the Viet Kieu, the price scale is vastly different. When they come back, the Overseas Vietnamese pay through the nose, often forking over 75% more than everyone else. The local Vietnamese, the ones who stayed, say the Viet Kieu are paying for their sins, namely for leaving. Reportedly at Tan Son Nhat International Airport it can cost the Viet Kieu $50 US per person just to get through customs.

The air conditioning inside the Samsonite store feels arctic. You’re afraid of what might happen if you stop moving, how your blood will congeal right there in your veins. The store staff is bundled up accordingly, the woman behind the register dressed like Julie Christie in the Russian tundra scenes in Doctor Zhivago. “If you need any help,” she says, “just ask,” her words practically visible in the August air.

Unlike any other luggage store you’ve ever been in, this one has a theme — Wonders of the World, each hulking display reminiscent of a high school prom. Along one wall there’s the Pyramids at Giza, the ancient structures composed entirely of luggage, even the Nile made out of cornflower blue fanny packs snaking along the floor. Against another wall, the Golden Gate Bridge — in the midnight blue computer case ocean, Alcatraz is just three forest green handbags. An instrumental version of “We Are the Champions” is lilting through the winterized air, the violins like helium. People are taking the song to heart, yes, no time for losers, and grab everything they can, the garment bag turrets in the Great Wall of China suffering horribly.

Dúc pulls a page from a weekly circular out of his pocket. “Do you see this anywhere?” he asks, pointing at a hard-sided yellow suitcase in the ad. You nod toward the Times Square display, the canary-yellow suitcases supposedly taxis motoring down 42nd Street. Dúc walks over and eyes things, unsure of which one to pull out for fear of toppling the whole New York skyline. Finally he settles on one, a suitcase near the Port Authority, and coaxes it out, rolls it back and forth for a while like it’s a pound puppy he’s considering adopting. “What do you think?” he says.