With container traffic growing at 20 percent per year, cargo ships often have to wait for a space among the limited berths. To reduce congestion, the country is developing four new additional port projects, the first of which is opening sometime next year.

So, besides fish, what's in all those shipping containers? Many of those leaving the port are carrying rice. Vietnam is the world's second-largest exporter of rice (the predominant crop in nearly every region) and this year possibly the largest single producer of cashew nuts. The country also exports significant amounts of pepper, coffee, tea, clothing, furniture, oil, rubber, and high-tech products.

"China tends to flood markets with [lower-end] goods, your dollar-store variety, if you will. Vietnam has focused more on niche areas that tend to be on the higher end," says Robert K. Brigham, a Vietnam scholar and a professor of history and international relations at Vassar College.

"Ford, General Electric, Nike, and other big U.S. manufacturing concerns have joined European and Japanese and South Korean companies in making Vietnam a high-end, high-tech manufacturer," Brigham adds. "Some of the more advanced technology plants in Asia are now in Vietnam."

One such plant, currently under construction at Saigon Hi-Tech Park, north of Ho Chi Minh City, is destined to be a whopper. Intel has announced that it's investing $1 billion in the new 500,000-square-foot test-and-assembly chip facility, which will eventually employ 4,000 people. Canon Electronics has embraced Vietnam, too, and has built three manufacturing plants there, including the world's largest ink-jet printer factory, capable of producing four million printers a month.

All of this seems even more astonishing when you realize that in 1990, Vietnam was ranked one of the poorest countries in the world.