A Vietnamese receptionist in Chinese- style yellow silk dress was leading banking staff Nguyen Thanh Ha to an upstairs dining room at the crowded Red East Restaurant, in which her friends were waiting for her to jointly enjoy a buffet on a Friday noon.

The scene of a large group of colleagues or family members enjoying buffet at a restaurant selling foreign foods, which could hardly be seen around Vietnam a decade ago, has become more and more common in the country whose economy is growing the second fastest in Asia after China.

Ha, 34, together with her friends or colleagues, often come to the Chinese restaurant in Ngoc Khanh street in Hanoi to have buffets. At weekends, she often goes there with her family to enjoy her favorites: Guangdong roasted ducks, Sichuan hotpot or abalone soup.

"We often go to the restaurant. The food is delicious," Ha said, pouring more sauce into her plate of appetizing hot beef. "Few foreign restaurants were available in Vietnam in the past, and few Vietnamese people could afford such exotic foods. In the past, having a small family party at home was difficult, let alone dining out," she said with a smile.

Demand for dining out in Vietnam is increasing along with the country's high economic growth since it started to adopt the "doi moi" (renovation) policy in late 1986.

Restaurants and hotels, from genteel Western fast-food chains selling hamburgers and fried chicken to street-side shops serving instant noodles and cakes, are mushrooming across the buzzing city. It is easy to catch a sight of many restaurant patrons sitting on clusters of small plastic chairs, on the sidewalks, and choosing exotic foods.

After implementing the "doi moi", which prioritizes economic reforms on the foundation of the social and political stability, the country's economic life has gradually improved.

Vietnam, from a country encountering food shortage and having to annually import some one million tons of grain in the late 1970s and early 1980s, became a rice exporter for the first time in 1991 with total volume of 1.42 million tons. It shipped abroad 3.86 million tons of the commodity in 2003, becoming the world's second biggest rice exporter after Thailand. Last year, Vietnam sold overseas 5.2 million tons of rice.

The country's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rose to 640 U.S. dollars in 2005 from about 500 dollars in 2004. The poverty rate in its rural areas, home to over 70 percent of the Vietnamese population, also decreased to 8.7 percent in 2005 from 20.8 percent in 2001.

The economic development and modern life cadence have also changed many other habits of local people. Now, many of them, instead of buying items in open-air markets, dote on supermarkets flooded with eye-catching goods, some locally produced, some imported.

In the Trang Tien Plaza, an upscale department store where French perfumes and Italian shoes are sold to an emerging urban middle class, housewife Nguyen Thi Lien, 34, was opting for a sleek gemstone necklace. The well-coiffured woman came to the counter with shopping cart loaded with imported goods.

Demands of local people for home appliances have also changed a lot. Pit toilets have given ways to flush ones, cars and motorbikes have replaced bicycles, and TV sets, fridges, washing machines, even computers have become requisites of many urban families.

"I cannot image how to live without modern appliances. Now, everyone watches TV. LCD and plasma TV sets are becoming popular in big cities," smiling schoolgirl Nguyen Minh Hang, gluing her eyes to a large Japanese LCD television to watch the game-show " Music Game."

The better living standards have also made many Vietnamese people pay more attention to entertainment. During holidays or at weekends, they often visit domestic landscapes or even travel abroad.

Relaxing at sun-beds in five-star seaside resorts or enjoying sweet melody of a Beethoven symphony at the Grand Theater in the city's downtown have become part of local people's life.

With the changing of life, the cities have also taken on a new look. More and more high-rise apartment blocks, five-star hotels and modern office buildings have been built, replacing cramped houses.

"I believe that Vietnam's economy will continue to develop, and Vietnamese people will get richer," Nguyen Viet Hung, a freelancer from Hanoi, said, while sipping a frothing capuchino at one of the city's many cafes.

Source: Xinhua