Thank you everyone for your posts on this topic. It sounds like we should be grateful to the pilot for his decisive actions.
Looking back on it now my memory of the incident does feel slightly hazy but this is what I remember.
In hindsight I would definitely admit that maybe we weren't flying so low for as long as 60 seconds (maybe 20 seconds or so) even though it seemed that long at the time.
I remember the engines became really loud (louder than takeoff) as soon as the pilot decided to ascend again and that continued until we started to really climb again. that's probably where I got the 60 seconds from.
When the engines quietened down that's when I and other passengers stopped panicking.
Will this incident be reported anywhere? It would be interesting to get some definite facts. The plane was an Airbus A321 flight VN740 from SIN-SGN on 21/05/2010.