Tim Roxborogh's travel bugs: The sickening addiction of chewing betel nut

NZ Herald·

24 May, 2018 11:00 PM4 mins to read

Betelnut and Kebui Pepper Leaf for chewing, Micronesia, Pacific Ocean, Palau. Photo / Getty Images

A weekly ode to the joys of moaning about your holiday.

At first glance it looks like little splotches of blood on the footpath, as though someone's been running with a leaky blood bag. Not the most attractive sight, though pretty common in parts of Asia and Melanesia, in particular Myanmar, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. And though plenty of blood has been shed in anger, war and poverty in those countries, any red patch you see by your feet today is more likely to be of the plant-based variety.

"Oh, so it's not blood!" I remember saying this with relief in Myanmar when I visited in 2013. I'd dropped my bags at the hotel in Yangon and ventured out into the streets and everywhere I looked were splashes of red. I asked someone selling fruit and veges on the side of the road what it was and they said, "Betel nut! It's good!"

Well, a bit of further research would show that yes, it's good it isn't blood, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good, full-stop. Or good with an exclamation mark. Indeed, the opposite appears to be the case.

There's evidence that the practice of chewing betel nut may go back as far as 4000 years. It normally involves the combination of the areca nut and the betel leaf and from India to Taiwan, Nepal to Papua New Guinea and Myanmar to the Solomon Islands, people have been chewing and spitting out this bloody-looking goop for generations.

As to why, the answer lies in the age-old human desire to transcend reality. In short, it gets you high. Not Class A or Class B kind of high, but probably more within the vicinity of a good-old fashioned Class C. As in, millions of people chew betel nut because it relaxes you while at the same time making you more alert. Once you've done your chewing, you spit out the red residue and you go about the rest of your day. No worries if you can't find a handy sink or drain, simply spit on to the footpath safe in the knowledge naive tourists may think someone's dying.

Well, turns out a lot of people are doing just that, the dying part, that is. Whether it's throat cancer, mouth cancer and lung cancer or merely just infertility and the rotting of all your teeth, chewing betel nut is a sickly, sickening habit. Statistics are shaky because almost all the addicts are in developing nations, but the problem is so huge in Papua New Guinea, for example, that an estimated one out of every 500 new international cases of mouth and throat cancer are in that country alone.

Like smoking, merely warning people that something their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents have done is deadly isn't always enough. Appeal to their vanity though? You might just get through. I thought my guide in the Solomon Islands in 2016 was a cross-dresser (not that there's anything wrong with that) when I met him, courtesy of his bright red lipstick. Only it wasn't lipstick. Hooked since he was 10, my now 46-year old guide was trying to quit. "I'm sick of tourists thinking I wear lipstick."

Unusually numbered lists

I accept I'm fighting a losing battle on this one. The first time I remember unusually numbered lists bothering me was about a dozen years ago when a New Zealand men's mag started doing it with every issue. Each cover seemed to shout, "The eight things to eat to shrink your waistline!", or, "Nine ways to prevent baldness". I'd always think, couldn't they just find another two health foods and make it 10? Or one more measly anti-baldness potion?

Unusually numbered listicles are now so ubiquitous that even the 15th edition of Lonely Planet's India guide is not immune. That's right, more than one billion people, more than three million square kilometres and a human history that maybe in the hundreds of thousands of years and you get this: "India's Top 17". From temples to palaces to beaches to jungles, they could only find 17 top experiences. In India!