Family in Ao Dai on Nguyen Hue for Tet

I was blithely going to post this as nothing more than a cute example of family doing the compulsory posed pictures for Tet then I happened to read the comments on a picture on Saigon Today blog which made me realise that to many my title would be meaningless at worst and confusing at best.

So first the cute picture.


Now my poor attempt at a translation and even poorer attempts at phonetics - my Vietnamese teacher despairs of me. Before I start I know there should be diacritics on most of the Vietnamese words, I even know what most of them should be but I also know that most people reading this just see them as boxes as in Nguyễn Huệ.

Ao Dai - pronounced Aow Zha or Aow Yha depending on where you come from because it's a "soft d" so doesn't sound like a "d" as I know it at all. The traditional dress of Vietnam usually only worn on special days or if you have to for your work or in some schools or probably for a hundred other reasons that I haven't discovered yet. Definition - long garment or tunic.

Nguyen Hue - is a road in central Saigon as well as in many other towns and cities, also a celebrated general of the 1700s. Pronounced very roughly Win Way. No, I can't work out that one either, I'll need to ask my Vietnamese teacher why Nguyen is Win because not all "ng's" are "w's".

Tet - Lunar New Year maybe more commonly known as Chinese New Year

So a cute family posing on a road called Nguyen Hue wearing traditional Vietnamese dress for Lunar New Year. My original title is snappier.

On a side note it looks like the girl in red has spotted the missing anatomy on the bull/ox/water buffalo.