ASIA LETTER/VIETNAM: Good Morning Vietnam! Music booms out over the public address system around Hoan Kiem Lake in central Hanoi. It is only 6 a.m. but already this bustling, emerging city is bursting to life as thousands of people prepare for the day ahead.
Witnessing the Vietnamese capital wake up makes one dizzy. Even at this unearthly hour, residents are jogging, doing tai'chi exercises, playing badminton and soccer. A large group of women do aerobics to the theme music from Dr Zhivago.
As the day progresses, downtown Hanoi is taken hostage by tens of thousands of scooters and mopeds which swarm like bees though its narrow streets. Crossing the roads is a risky business.
Everywhere you turn there is someone trying to make a quick dollar; from the cyclo drivers and reckless motorcyclists offering visitors a lift, to the young people selling tourists books and postcards. There are even men with weighing scales who, for 50 cents, will happily tell Westerners how many pounds they have put on.
Hanoi's 1,000-year-old Old Quarter is a hotch-potch of streets with creaking French and Vietnamese buildings. Here you will find dozens of little eating houses serving the most delicious of meals for a dollar a head.
The Old Quarter is the most curious of places and home to some of the busiest markets in southeast Asia. You can buy anything from a pair of silk pyjamas to a gravestone.
We were offered a freshly roasted dog at the famous Dong Xuan Market. Monkeys captured from the forests were tied up in cages. They are a "must have" pet for Hanoi's nouveau riche and can be bought for between $30 and $50.
In the crazy mix that makes up modern-day Hanoi are the tourists who cram its guesthouses and cafes.
A feature in Vietnam, and indeed across the region, are the "designer" back-packers, well-off young people who betray the great tradition of living it rough with their overflowing wallets and top-of-the-range rucksacks and travelling clothes.
In the space of a day, you can witness all human life in Hanoi and, at the same time, get some sense of the troubled history of this officially classified "Third World" nation of 80 million people.
Vietnam is a country made famous by war. It is easy to forget that it has a unique and rich history, spectacular scenery to rival anywhere in the world, and a highly cultured and gentle people.
Twenty seven years since the Americans left and the fall of South Vietnam to the Communist forces, it is clear that the war still weighs heavily on the consciousness of all those who remember the fighting.
But today Vietnam is a country of peace.
Since 1986, it has been vying to capitalise on the economic reforms of "doi moi", the switch to a market economy, which has opened up the country to the outside world.
Thuy (24) is part of the Vietnam's post-war generation. She graduated from university, where she studied tourism, last year. She works as a guide now for Dublin-born Stephen Kinlough, who runs Orient Tours based in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
Her grandfather was killed by a bomb during the "American War". Both her parents were soldiers in the North Vietnamese Army, and were separated for a decade while her engineer father went south to Ho Chi Minh to assist in the "re-construction" of the country following independence in 1975.
He returned north on just four occasions during those 10 years. Thuy and her younger brother were both conceived during that period. She says people of her age are much more conciliatory in outlook.
"Many older people are still angry about what the French and Americans did to this country, but younger people are much more positive and are influenced in a big way by western culture," she says.
According to Stephen Kinlough, the "red tape" which hampered every overseas tourist coming to the country is slowly but surely disappearing.
Despite being widely touted as Asia's next "tiger economy", Vietnam is still among the poorest nations in the world.
A World Bank report on poverty puts the average annual income at less than $240 per person.
A recent government report estimates that 22 per cent of households are poor and hungry.
As the world's third largest exporter of rice, Vietnam calculates "poor" as families unable to purchase 13 kg of rice per person each month, and "hungry" as less than 8 kg.
The healthcare system deteriorated rapidly after the country's economic liberalisation.
Government cutbacks led to layoffs in commune clinics. Poverty and malnutrition increased, despite national gains in agricultural output.
Since the war ended more than two decades ago, the country has been the subject of many relief and aid efforts aimed at providing food and reforesting environmentally devastated areas.
Corruption is a huge problem and the wealth of senior government officials has become a major cause of anger in communist-ruled Vietnam.
It will be the number one issue in next Sunday's elections to the country's new five-year 500-member National Assembly.
Vietnam is one of the jewels in Asia's crown, a country that boasts the mix of an ancient civilisation and the modern ways of the west.