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.