Keep an eye on Ho Chi Minh City. Talk to residents, businesspeople and city officials, and there is a palpable sense of momentum surrounding its development, a belief that the point of no return has been reached in terms of progress and reform.
For many, it has been a tough 15 years or so after successive waves of hype, expectation and dashed hopes. This time round, however, people are talking a little differently about the chances of Vietnam's biggest city and economic dynamo taking its place among the region's leading centres.
Enough foreign-backed projects have been completed to raise confidence in the hundreds now in the pipeline and Vietnam's new membership of the World Trade Organisation is further buttressing that belief.
The current buzz also is being fuelled by the city's embryonic stock market, which is soaring amid unprecedented international interest as some of Vietnam's largest firms prepare to list.
Tourism figures are up and the city's expanding hospitality industry is struggling to find enough beds - or staff - to cope.
Then there are the socio-economic development plans of the city's government, determined to forge a thoroughly modern metropolis from the ashes of its French colonial and the Vietnam war-era infrastructure.