The rent room in Da Lat where two high school girls were found dead on a hanging rope on December 11, 2014. Photo: Lam Vien

Two high school students were found hanging from the two ends of the same rope in their rent room in Vietnam's resort town of Da Lat Tuesday morning.

According to local police, Nguyen Khanh Linh was a 12th grader and Tran Phan Mai Phuong a 11th grader at the Thang Long Da Lat High School for Gifted Students.

Phuong dressed, acted like a boy and she wanted to be treated as one, according to her family and teachers.

The landlady said she went to check the girls' room that morning when she didn't see them going to school.

She found the girls strangled in the two loops formed on the same rope that was hung across a wardrobe in their room.

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Dung, the school principal, said the girls were good students.

They were still going to school without any abnormal sign on Monday, Dung said.

They had shared the room for several months.

She said when Phuong’s parents sent her to the school, they made it clear that while she were biologically female, she would wear boy’s clothes and haircut and be treated as a boy.

Dung said the school had paid special attention to Phuong to make sure she had a normal relationship with friends.

The girls' families refused a hospital autopsy of the deceased or a police investigation into their deaths.

Vietnam still has strong gender appearance stereotypes and same-sex romance is still a taboo in many parts of the country.