An avid gamer, Le Hong Minh, 32, started VinaGame in 2004 with other players after getting an undergrad degree in finance from Australia's Monash University and giving up his investment banking career.

FORBES: Commentary

Even street food is being gentrified: at Quan An Ngon in Ho Chi Minh city, bejewelled ladies wash down their stuffed pancakes and hot-and-sour soup with sips of chardonnay.

ECONOMIST: As communism crumbles, a great cuisine revives

"There was physical appeal to him you didn't generally get in traditional representations of Asian men, " says Minh-Ha Pham, an assistant professor of Asian-American studies at Cornell University.

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