Hmong houses

  We visited many houses, our guide gaining us access to enter any house   we wanted as the people casually went about their daily chores. The more prosperous villagers had wood planked exteriors with concrete floors, others had wicker or mud (?) plastered walls with packed dirt floors. At best they are drafty in this cool mountain climate. Cooking and heating fires are  in crude cement fireplaces or just on the dirt floor. I never saw a chimney, smoke drifted up and out through the open loft area where rice was cured and stored. Typically they were 3 room houses, a common room for cooking and prayer , and a couple of " bedrooms " where they sleep  on simple plank platforms about 6 feet square,  raised off the floor 8". No mattress or pillows, just blankets. It was always extended families with infants to grandparents sharing a very communal way of life. 

   These tribal people do not consider themselves Vietnamese, with their Mongolian  features, they don't look like them either. They are tiny people , adult women are 4 ft 6" to 4'10, men rarely over 5 feet. It's very hard to judge their age. Women marry at 15-16, and give birth at home alone, no Doctors, mid wives etc. They are back to work in the rice fields in a week or 10 days. These are hard working, tough people, always ready with a smile, I have the deepest respect for them.