With an average annual income of around $2,000, most Vietnamese would not consider themselves especially wealthy. But in the afterlife, you can be a billionaire thanks to paper offerings made by your scions.

In a Hanoi workshop artisans are putting the finishing touches to a nearly life size cardboard model of a Rolls Royce. Close by is a giant paper airplane - a blue Boeing 787 Dreamliner complete with crew members.

But these are not children toys. They are hang ma, paper offerings representing real life items that are burned in the belief they will travel as smoke to the afterlife to be used by the dead.