He claims to have attracted his wife with his flute-playing prowess. In conversations with our host, Nham's son, we learned he was having success selling ready-made stilt houses to city folk around Hanoi. But compared to Hanoi's construction standards, the stilt house would be sturdier, larger and provide more efficient ventilation. During our stay, the only evident shortcoming was the bamboo floor's inability to stifle the shrieks when the water buffalo stepped on the hen at 4 a.m. While Mai Chau's hamlets are in danger of losing some of their genuine flavor as more tourists descend on Vietnam, there still is plenty of authenticity left, including very limited sanitary facilities.
Family life goes on, with or without house guests.
The wife of our host had spent much of her day toiling in the fields before coming home to fix us dinner. She invited the two women in our three-person party to share a glass of wine in her kitchen as she and her daughter ate dinner. In rural Vietnam, the women eat in the kitchen, the men in the main room. And for the more energetic traveler, villagers are happy to lead overnight hikes from Mai Chau to more remote mountain villages reached only by scenic narrow paths. But, in the end, it wasn't the scenery that we marveled at most.