Rumors of immortality, buying geckos for hundreds of millions of dong each

Gecko traders even go online to buy them for a price of billions of dong each, giving instructions on how to catch them and leaving a very complete contact phone number. Although not too noisy, the gecko "fever" has also spread to Yen Bai. Gecko hunters have gone to many rural areas in Luc Yen and Van Chan to buy this reptile.

It can be said that Vietnam's forests and mountains are not lacking in geckos. Occasionally, these reptiles even come to live with humans for decades.

Folklore, even some oriental medicine books clearly state that gecko soaked in wine can be used to nourish the lungs, relieve asthma, nourish the kidneys and strengthen yang, and treat kidney yang deficiency, back pain, knee pain, nocturia, and asthma (cold deficiency).

There are many geckos in the forests of Vietnam.

Due to the high demand for geckos soaked in wine, many families have cleverly switched to raising geckos, allowing them to reproduce and raise them in large numbers...

However, all the geckos we have seen, grazing on farms or sold on the streets, are only small ones, 25 to 30 cm long, weighing about 100 grams, and selling for 30,000 - 70,000 VND each.

Geckos weighing over 300 grams, 43 cm long, especially 46 cm as people still hunt for and are willing to pay from several hundred million to billions of dong are extremely rare, to be more exact, only exist through stories or rumors!

Professor Vo Quy - Vietnam's leading biologist once said on the VTV2 program "Animal World" that: "Geckos have a fairly large body (ranked second in the gecko genus), males can be up to 30 - 40 cm long, females 20 - 30 cm with a weight ranging from 150 - 300 grams.

The average lifespan is 7 - 10 years, however, some have been recorded to live up to 18 years. The back is light gray-green, with bright yellow or red spots, and many bumps. The male is more colorful than the female. The gecko's belly is opaque white or gray with many small yellow spots.

From the opinion of Professor Vo Quy to folk experience, it shows that geckos weigh no more than 300 grams and are only up to 40 cm long. Perhaps because of a firm grasp of the characteristics and body structure of such reptiles, people have set the standard of "length from 43 cm or more, weight over 300 grams", making it impossible for hunters to get such a long and heavy gecko.

Talking to Mr. Pham Van H - an antique dealer who is currently expanding into the "gecko" industry, we learned that he is willing to spend 1 billion VND to buy a 46 cm long gecko.

When asked about the uses of such a large and long gecko, he only said in general: "Billionaires all want such a large gecko to make an elixir of life. Other information shows that geckos weighing 300 grams or more and measuring 43 cm in length begin to secrete substances that can cure many incurable diseases."

Mr. H said he had not yet made any successful gecko deals. Once, a Mong person in Muong Nhe district, Dien Bien province reported that he had caught a gecko, 45 cm long from snout to tail. They also took pictures and sent them to him, but when they arrived, unfortunately, the gecko had... lost its tail, so it was no longer valuable.

From information on social networks and through the story with Mr. Pham Van H, it is very possible that the story of "giant gecko" is just a scam. Somehow, the scammers have bred large, long geckos that cannot be found in nature.

When they have a number of mutant geckos, they go to the countryside to buy them at very high prices, and they are even willing to spend billions to buy back a few of their own to create trust and fever! When the "prey" has fallen into the trap, they bring dozens, hundreds of geckos to sell, earn a lot of money, then turn off the phone, remove the SIM card, delete the number, causing the secondary to hold the "huge item" and go bankrupt. This trick is old but can make many people become new victims.