Apparently people in Vietnam were using gold as a secure store of wealth and an alternate form of payment or some such thing. The government has cracked down on this immoral activity with new laws.
http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/vietnam-to-ban-gold-as-legal-tender.html
This ties in with the article on war winners really being losers! The communists ‘won’, but the vietnamese are the real losers, and the communists are stuck in a stagnant economy. Maybe what they need is a good war to kick-start their economy? Anyone up for a border dispute?