Back in the early 2000s, it wasn t easy for a stock investor to get exposure in China, Russia or India, save for a few oddball closed-end-funds that traded at wide discounts to their net asset values.

Nor was there much interest in these seemingly far-off locales. When compared with investing in Microsoft, Lucent, Cisco or any of the other large-cap plays on sale from the tech collapse, investing in these emerging markets seemed, well, crazy. Now all are among the most popular and rapidly developing investment destinations on the globe.

For an authentic, old fashioned emerging market -- volatile, unstable and dangerous -- there are few equals right now to Vietnam. Back in 2000, Vietnam s stock market didn t even exist. Poverty, which was near 60% in the early 1990s, still exceeds 20%. The country s 47 million workers exist on a per capital income of $2,900 a year.

While the country s government has been slowly liberalizing its communist-era economy, it remains rife with corruption and bureaucracy. Just this month Vietnam devalued the country s currency, the dong, for the second time in just three months. Inflation, now at a 10-month high, is estimated to run at 9% in 2010.

In recent decades, however, significant progress has been made: State-owned firms, which totaled more than 12,000 in the early 1990s, dropped to some 2000 by 2008, and will number only 500 by the end of 2010. Rice and rubber are major exports, although more manufacturers, including Intel and Olympus, are building facilities to taking advantage of the country s low-cost labor. There are now 248 companies listed on the fledgling Ho Chi Mihn Stock Exchange, where a busy day sees $60 million worth of stock change hands. Qualcomm trades that much in the first minute of every day on Nasdaq. That lack of liquidity keeps many foreign investors away, just as was the case with Peruvian stocks more than seven years ago.

With that risk comes the potential for commensurate return. The country s benchmark VN-Index, which lost two-thirds of its value in 2008, ended 2009 with a surge of nearly 57%. It has since dropped some 10%.

Vietnam is by no means a free market or even a safe economy in which to do business. But neither was China back in the early 2000s, when problem loans at state-owned banks caused most investors to pass on putting money to work. Many of those banks became the decade s hottest investments.

Apocalypse, Now?

Van Eck Market Vectors Vietnam ETF (VNM) -- 6 months

The sole option for American investors to gain exposure to this highly speculative market is via Market Vectors Vietnam ETF, which launched last year tracking provider Van Eck s index of 31 companies. Major holdings include not-so-household-names like Saigon-Hanoi Commercial (1.70%), Pah Lai Thermal Power (2.70%) and Hoa Phat Group (2.76%), with 44% of the fund allocated to financials, 25% to energy and 17% to industrials.

For many investors raised in the wake of the Vietnam War or those who have seen the movie "Platoon" -- the thought of investing in this historically unstable country might seem insane. Yet if a sustained risk appetite returns to global markets, this high-risk play could pay off.