We’ve seen people grow their hair ridiculously long before, but what sets 81-year-old Trinh Thi Nghien is that her 3-meter-long locks are bundled together in a thick mass that looks like a snake curled on her head. She claims it just started growing like this 22 years ago, and it hasn’t stopped since.

Trinh Thi Nghien’s “dragon hair” recently went viral on Vietnamese social media, with people asking how the 81-year-old woman could bare living with what looks like a pile of unkempt hair for so long. But the woman claims that it wasn’t by choice. Her hair was perfectly normal until 1995, when she noticed a bun of tangled up hair on the back of her head. She tried untangling it with a comb, but to no avail, so she just cut it off. However, it started growing back the same way, and the longer it got, the thicker it became. After cutting it off several times, she decided to just let it grow, and today, 22 years later, her dragon hair measures a whopping 3 meters long.

Living with such unusual hair is as difficult as you can imagine. For one thing, it draws a lot of attention, and Trinh says that she has to curl it into a big bun on her head and cover it up whenever she goes out, because people always want to touch it, and kids ask her all kinds of questions about it. Washing it is no walk in the park either, as shampooing alone takes her at least an hour, and drying can take a whole day, because the strands are so tangled up in a compact mass.

Trinh Thi Nghien’s “dragon hair” is not only tangled up, but it’s also a different color than the rest of her normal hair. She has dark hair that has started going grey, but the tangled long mess is a light brown with no signs of greying.

Despite the difficulties of having to carry a 3-meter-long hair snake around, Trinh Thi Nghien claims that she had gotten used to it and even refers to her unusual locks as “hair from heaven”.

via Dantri