This Is a Small World After All for Americans : Tourism: You may be surprised to know that there are few restrictions on visiting foreign countries, even the sensitive ones. A little creativity can help.

Can you name the countries to which it is currently illegal for American citizens to travel?

Cuba, Albania, North Korea, Libya, Cambodia, Nicaragua and Vietnam always seem to make most lists.

How about Laos, Iran and Iraq?

The correct answer is none of the above. The only country it is illegal for an American to visit (for the purpose of employment) is Lebanon.

Surprised?

Many people are when they discover that there are no U.S. government restrictions on travel to these countries.

As a result, many adventurous U.S. tourists are booking passage to those nations.

In recent months, Vietnam has joined the Pacific Asia Travel Assn. A number of Hong Kong-based luxury-hotel companies have announced plans to build in Ho Chi Minh City.

Harper and Row just published the “Vietnam Guidebook” ($16.95), a comprehensive guide to the country. The book is written by Barbara Cohen, who once served as a major with the U.S. Army medical corps in Da Nang, Vietnam.

The Communist government in Hanoi has declared 1990 “Visit Vietnam Year.”

In Laos, two American tour operators have announced plans for escorted tours to Laos.

In Cambodia, government officials have established the General Direction of Kampuchea Tourism.

In Eastern Europe, Albania is poised to open its doors to Western tourists. The region’s most isolated country has recently expressed interest in restoring diplomatic relations with the United States.

And, in the past few weeks, a few American tourists have received visas from Albanian embassies in Belgrade and Rome.

In Hong Kong, a number of travel agencies are now promoting tourist visas for Americans who wish to visit North Korea.

Cuba, also, is poised for a virtual explosion of U.S. tourists, as new hotels are being built.

There are a few restrictions, however. In most cases, travel agents can’t sell land tours. Travel agents can, however, sell airline tickets to these destinations.

Officially, no U.S. travel company is allowed by law to trade with Cuba. Hence, no U.S. tour operators can sell Cuba as a destination.

But virtually every U.S.-based cruise line has Cuba on its contingency plans as a preferred destination if restrictions are lifted.

Already, the president of one cruise line--Ed Mass of Dolphin Cruises--predicts a resumption of mass tourism to Cuba by the end of this year. Once that happens, he says, Havana could be added as a port of call within 90 days.

At this writing, the Castro government is encouraging foreign investors to prepare for just that possibility. In 1989, Cuba earned only $130 million from tourism. But most Caribbean tourism officials see that figure soaring to more than $1 billion by the year 2000.

With more than 100 beaches dotting a 5,000-mile coastline, Cuba is now realizing its tourism potential. The country is trying to woo foreign investors to develop resort hotels.

Already, Spanish, Finnish and Soviet investors are working with the Cuban tourism ministry to build hotels. By the end of this year, an additional 2,000 hotel rooms are expected to be in place.

Any number of Canadian or Mexican travel agencies can easily arrange such a trip, as well as obtain the proper Cuban visas.

To simplify matters when returning from Cuba, many Canadian travel agents will advise you to ask the Cubans not to stamp your passport. That way, you officially took a trip only to Canada or Mexico.

However, if you do have your passport stamped by the Cuban authorities, remember one important U.S. Customs regulation.

For most overseas travel, American citizens are allowed to bring $400 worth of duty-free goods back into the United States. Any purchases over that amount and up to $1,000 are usually charged a flat 10% duty, with a sliding scale in place thereafter.

This rule does not apply to travel to places such as Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Cambodia. In an attempt to discourage hard U.S. currency from being spent in those countries, returning Americans are allowed to bring back only $100 worth of purchases duty-free. Anything over that amount is confiscated!

Cubana, the Cuban national airline, has regularly scheduled service from Toronto (as does Canadian Airlines), and a host of charter flights leave major Canadian cities regularly. (Last year, more than 15% of tourists to Cuba came from Canada.)

Most travel agents can sell you a ticket to countries where the United States maintains no diplomatic relations, such as Cuba, as long as certain rules are followed.

For example, it is illegal for a U.S. travel agent to sell you a ticket on an airline considered a “banned flag carrier.” This includes the national airlines of Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, Libya, Albania and Laos.

However, if you wanted to go to Vietnam, a U.S. travel agent is not prohibited from selling you a ticket on Philippine Airlines from Los Angeles to Manila. You would then purchase your own ticket on the Vietnamese airline from Manila.

For flights to North Korea, agents could sell you a ticket to Hong Kong or Beijing. You would then make an additional ticket purchase and make your connections in either of those two cities.

“It’s very simple,” says a spokesman for Diethelm Travel in Bangkok. “We do this dozens of times a day for people wanting to visit Cambodia, Laos or Vietnam.”

Diethelm offers a five-day/four-night tour of Laos and Cambodia, as well as combination tours of those two countries with Vietnam. The Vietnam and Cambodia tour, which includes visits to major cultural sites such as Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh in Cambodia and Wat Phra Keo in Laos, costs $1,350 per person.

If you are interested in a trip to any of these countries but are concerned about safety factors, one suggestion is to call the U.S. State Department advisory hot line--(202) 647-5225. You’ll get a recorded message, giving you a menu of country designations. Using your touch-tone phone, pick a country, punch it in and you’ll hear the advisory.

One bit of caution: Try not to interpret the advisories as warnings or prohibitions. The State Department currently has no less than three dozen such advisories warning Americans about certain dangers abroad.

With remarkably few exceptions, this information is merely an advisory about specific areas of certain countries and not a widespread warning about the country itself.

In recent years, statistics have proven that few, if any, American citizens have been truly at risk in most of the countries listed by the State Department.

Listen to the advisories carefully. If they tell you to defer all travel to a particular country and/or that it has also advised all Americans there to leave--as it recently did for Liberia--you should definitely avoid going to that country.

But if the advisory simply states that you should avoid going to a particular region of a country, due to either political instability or an outbreak of disease, then just avoid that region. You don’t have to avoid the entire country.