Hon Chuoi Island, around 32 km from the mainland, is one of many islands in the southwest of Vietnam where border guards are stationed.
Rocky reefs surround the island, which is often hit by strong winds and rough seas.
Besides 70 civilian families who live on the island, there are troops, military engineers and radar operators.
Getting to the central parts of the island involves climbing over 300 stair steps.
Last month naval officials and representatives of southern localities visited the island to give its residents Tet gifts.
There are around 200 people on the island, most of them farming or catching fish and selling goods for a living. People build houses that are seemingly embedded in the rocks.
There are two distinct monsoon seasons on Hon Chuoi: one from April to September and the other from December to March.
In March, as the season changes, they move houses to avoid the northwesterly winds, and move back for the rest of the year to avoid the southern winds.
Every time they move the military personnel help the people reinforce their homes and carry their belongings.
"There have been years when the monsoon season ended and we returned to our house on the cliff to see only the beams remain," Bui Phuong Thi, who has been living on the island for 19 years, says, adding she has gotten used to it.
She married and moved to the island in 2005. She sells goods at the foot of the cliff, while her husband farms fish. In good years the fish fetch the family VND50 million (US$2,050).
The few plants Thi grows while living on the cliffs are kept inside pots to shield them from the sun and wind.
With limited access to the Internet and electrical devices, children on the island create their own games out of cans and bottles.
The island has neither medical centers nor a school of national standard. The only classroom on the island is for all students from first to seventh grades, and is managed by Tran Binh Phuc, deputy head of the mass mobilization department of the Hon Chuoi border guard station.
He volunteered to run the classroom in 2009 after seeing how the kids on the island could not attend school. In its early days there were only a few old chairs and tables, but its infrastructure has kept improving thanks to contributions from various sources.
Dao Thi Yen Nhi (R), a third grader, says she has two older siblings in eighth and tenth grades who have gone to the mainland to continue studying. Nhi does not know what she will do when she grows up, but wants to keep studying so that she can leave the island one day.
In the last 15 years 45 children have studied in the classroom. Of them 24 have gone to the mainland to continue their education, including four who have gone to college.
Life on the Hon Chuoi Island. Video by VnExpress/Hoang Phuong
