It looks the easiest way to move goods across the narrow river that separates the Vietnamese city of Mong Cai from China, but there is surprisingly little traffic on the official border bridge.
Apart from the odd truck and a few Vietnamese tourists returning from China with cheap electronic goods, there is little to suggest that the city is one of the busiest transit points for the extensive trade between these two communist neighbours, which reached $36bn last year.
The reason is clear. Dotted along the river for miles each way are numerous illegal crossing points at which dozens of barges loaded with contraband land every few minutes.