Vietnam

Traveling to Vietnam? Find out what you're in for first.

What Dr. Mike encounters in Vietnam:

Beef Tapeworm
Dr. Mike buys some beef in a local market and finds a tape worm cyst in it. As he eats it, he describes the monster it can grow into over 20 years in our guts.

Cryptosporidium
Dr. Mike gets bogged down and stinky in a lotus flower pond and tells us about the stomach-churning Crypto parasite that could be lurking in the water around him.

Blood Soup
Dr. Mike goes undercover to find a soup made from duck blood and baby urine, once drank to commemorate the dead. Following a major outbreak of Bird Flu, it's now banned but some still sell it. Mike has a taste.

Rat Fleas
On Metal Street, Dr. Mike buys a rat trap, a doughnut, and then hides down an alley and catches a rat. He digs out a killer flea from its fur to explain that the plague that many think of as a medieval disease is still very much with us.

Head Lice
Follicley challenged Dr. Mike uses his first outdoor haircut in the streets of Hanoi to introduce us to the lice crawling around his scalp.

Asian Liver Fluke
Dr. Mike pits himself against the locals with his fishing rod. He eventually catches a fish that could be carrying a parasite that can cause liver cancer if the fish isn't cooked properly.

Scorpion
Dr. Mike goes down into the notorious Cu Chi Tunnels used by Vietnamese soldiers in the 1960s and '70s and uses a special UV light to find a deadly Asian Forest Scorpion whose bite more than compensates for its diminutive size

Centipede
Dr. Mike tries to keep up with a very fast centipede with a phenomenally painful bite.

Rove Beetle
Dr. Mike hunts down a beetle that's causing a great deal of discomfort at a local university.

Sack Tree
Dr. Mike heads into the forest to find a tree that all the locals avoid because it can kill unwary passersby with its milky resin.

Melioidosis
Dr. Mike takes a gentle stroll with a water buffalo through a rice paddy field to tell us about a water-borne disease which even now still afflicts veterans of the Vietnam War.

Malayan Krait
With local help, Dr. Mike hunts down and holds a snake that produces venom 16 times more poisonous than a cobra's, killing up to 90% of those it bites.

Eye Lash Mite
Dr. Mike tells us about a mite that lives on our eyelashes that can cause a dandruff-like condition and in extreme cases can actually make your eyelashes fall out. The scary thing is, up to 95% of the population are infested with these mites.