Having extremely long hair is not exclusive to the ladies. Tran Van Hay, who died in 2010, is thought to have had hair up to 6.8 meters long (22 ft), although it had never been officially measured for a record attempt. It stretched in a thick, matted cord around his body, resembling a massive, furry boa constrictor.
The official world record for the longest hair is held by Xie Qiuping of China, whose hair was measured in 2004 at 4.2 meters (14 ft) long. If Hay’s hair was as long as it is claimed to be – or even as long as the 6.2 meters that was reported in 2006 – it would have taken the record by a considerable distance.
79-year-old Hay, who lived in the Kien Giang province of southern Vietnam, worked as an herbalist and lived a simple life. However, his hair did cause him some difficulties, notably that he couldn’t take a motorcycle taxi anywhere because he couldn’t fit a helmet around his hair. He had been growing his hair for over fifty years because he often felt sick after a haircut, according to his wife Nguyen Thi Hoa.
