As birds awaken the early risers at dawn on the farm, one person is already up; in fact, he hasn’t even been to bed. Sixty-four-year-old Thai Ngoc, from central Quang Nam province in Vietnam, claims that he has not slept for 33 years! “My insomnia started many years ago after I got a fever. I have tried sleeping pills and Vietnamese traditional medicine, but nothing helps, not even to get me to sleep for a few minutes,” said Ngoc. But amazingly, despite 11,700 41 sleepless nights since then, he has never once been sick. “Fortunately, the insomnia doesn’t seem to have had a negative 42 on my health. I still feel healthy and can farm like other men. I even carry two 50-kilogram bags of fertilizer for four kilometers every day.” 43 his wife, when Ngoc went for a medical checkup recently, his doctor said he was in perfect health except for a minor 44 in liver function. Ngoc lives with his six children on his farm at the foot of a mountain. He spends the day farming and taking care of his pigs and chickens, and at night he often does extra farm work or guards his farm to prevent theft. His neighbor Vu said that Ngoc volunteered to help beat a drum during the night and guard the house for the relatives of the dead during 45 ceremonies so that they could take a nap. Vu also said that when the villagers were planting sugar cane, several people asked Ngoc to be their “alarm clock” and wake them up early in the morning to go to work as he was up anyway.