SIDE TRIP 5: Ao Dai

Postscript on the Vietnamese Ao Dai


On my last day in the old imperial city of Hue, colleagues at the Hue
University treated me to lunch before my flight back to Hanoi.
Expectedly, they ordered a feast. Yum yum! And as is customary in
Vietnamese cuisine, puro ulam halos, walang rice. Kaya pala ang
papayat nila.

Except for a pretty lady lecturer, all the others in the group were
guys. Young single lecturers at the university and who possessed
tolerable English skills. Anyway, the lady hardly ate - - just
picking on her food. I told her: "You know what, you should eat more;
you're so small and thin!"

One of the guys had an immediate reaction: "You think she's small?
You think she's SMALL?!" he blurted out, wide-eyed. "She's not small!
She's medium!"

Uh, OK.

By their standards, yeah I guess she's a bit big. But compared to
Manila girls, she is definitely on the small and thin category.

So I asked them again: "If a girl were fat, could she still wear the
ao dai?"

"Yes, of course!" they chorused. "But she stay home. No go out."

Ouch.

GIRLS IN AO DAI