The Southeast Asian correspondent wrote the hundreds of bustling market stalls that make up Ho Chi Minh City's Ben Thanh market could not be more different from the sparkling `shopfronts of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills or London's Bond Street. But data released by the tax office in Vietnam's commercial centre shows that shop space in the 147-year-old market is changing hands for probably more than anywhere else on the planet.

Prices in Ben Thanh have jumped about 40 percent in the past two years to 230 taels of gold, or £91,000, a square metre, Reuters said. The prices even eclipse Tokyo's Ginza shopping district, long-reputed to be the world's priciest shopping district, where retail space sells for £69,000 per square metre.

Most stalls are open from 7am to 6pm and trade is almost always brisk, the paper said. "The best-placed stalls are so prized they don't usually change hands very often," Mr Townsend said.

There is another major difference between Ben Thanh and Ginza, Bond Street or Rodeo Drive. While shops in the latter three locations usually occupy hundreds, if not thousands, of square metres, the vast majority of stalls in Ben Thanh measure little more than 1.5 sq metres. And while the Bond Street pavements are a couple of metres wide, the gap between the stalls in Ben Thanh is barely wide enough for the average person to walk along comfortably.