Imagine enjoying a hot cup of java or your favorite soft drink in the middle of a pond filled with beautiful koi fish that you can actually hand-feed and you get an idea of what Vietnam’s koi fish cafes are like.

When it comes to fish-themed cafes, Ho Chi Minh City has a leg up on pretty much every other city in the world. Back in 2018 we featured Amix Coffee, a flooded cafe that allowed patrons to enjoy their favorite drinks with dozens of small fish literally at their feet, but this was apparently not the only cool fish-themed venue in town. In fact, the bustling metropolis apparently has about a dozen cafes that double as koi ponds, where the popular fish swim among patrons.

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Ram Kand Mool, a drum-shaped tuber that has been sold as a hearty snack on Indian street corners for at least several decades remains a mystery to scientists, as no one can figure out what plant produces it.

Indian botanists developed an interest in ram kand mool in the 1980s, after trying and failing to find out the origins of the almost paper-thin snacks cut out of giant reddish tubers by street vendors. None of them were willing to reveal the plant that produced it, and those that did gave conflicting answers. Some claimed that it was a root, others that it was the stem of a plant, but most either refused to answer or claimed that they bought the tubers from third parties and genuinely didn’t know the source. Stranger still was the fact that not even science could provide a clear answer to the botanists’ questions.

Ram kand mool is often advertised as the only food source of Lord Ram when he was exiled to forests along with his wife Sita and brother Lakshman, and vendors claim it can cool you down during the summer, quench both hunger and thirst, and provide all sorts of medicinal relief. It is served with all sorts of seasonings, from chili and salt, to lime and sugar. It’s cut and served as very thin slices out of tubers that can reportedly weigh up to 300 kilograms.

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Canelo, a pit bull suffering from a debilitating medical condition that forbids him from moving normally, may just have the best dad in the world.

The heartwarming story of Canelo and his owner was shared on TikTok by the man’s daughter, Jooseline. She posted a touching video explaining that her pet dog was suffering from canine hypertrophic osteodystrophy, a condition that drastically restricts his mobility, making it painful for him to run with the family’s three other pit bulls. Sadly, hanging out with his brothers and running through the fields was his favorite pastime, so in order to let Canelo enjoy the experience despite his condition, Jooseline’s dad routinely picks him up and runs with him in his arms alongside the other dogs.

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Indonesian media recently reported the bizarre story of a young man who ended up marrying both his fiancée and his ex-girlfriend at the same time, after the latter crashed his wedding ceremony.

Late last month, 20-year-old Korik Akbar, from the regency of Central Lombok in the Indonesian state of West Nusa Tenggara, was in the process of marrying his betrothed, when his ex-girlfriend burst in asking that she marry him as well, as his second wife, claiming that she couldn’t get over their relationship. Instead of making a scene, Akbar’s fiancée, Kotimah, actually agreed to the proposal and told the young man that she accepted his former fling as his second wife. So he ended up marrying the both of them in the same ceremony.

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The Bass River Valley of South Gippsland, in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria is home to the world’s largest earthworms, which can grow up to 6.6 feet in length.

The giant Gippsland earthworm (Megascolides australis) is one of the world’s most elusive and fascinating creatures, able to survive in an environment completely changed by its human inhabitants and rarely showing up above ground. These enormous earthworms can only be found in a 150 square mile area, a habitat once blanketed by dense forests but that has now been completely converted to farmland. Apart from its size, this ability to survive in a landscape in which the native vegetation has been entirely removed is another fascinating trait of the giant Gippsland earthworm.

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Buying works of art can become an expensive habit, but what if you didn’t have to buy the artworks and instead lease them for however long you wanted? That’s the premise of an ingenious Japanese business that lets people rent paintings.

Casie is an innovative service that connects painters and art lovers in a whole new way. Instead of brokering the sale of artworks it offers clients the possibility of leasing them by the month. It sounds a bit strange, maybe because it just hasn’t been done before, but if people can rent designer clothes and expensive jewelry, why can’t they do the same with art? Apparently, this model benefits both artists, who are able to generate more revenue from their works in the long term, and clients, who get to keep the paintings until they get bored of them and decided to swap them for new ones.

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Welwitschia is a fascinating plant that can not only survive for several thousands of years, but it can do so in one of the most inhospitable environments on the planet, the Namib Desert.

Named after Austrian botanist Friedrich Welwitsch, who discovered it in Angola in 1859, Welwitschia is actually called ‘tweeblaarkanniedood’ in Afrikaans, which translates to “two leaves that cannot die”. That’s a surprisingly accurate name for a plant that grows only two leaves and can survive thousands of years in the world’s oldest desert. Some parts of the Namib Desert receive less than two inches of precipitation a year, but that’s apparently all Welwitschia needs to survive, thanks to its extremely “efficient, low-cost genome”.

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Kagami Numa is a mythical Japanese lake that turns into a giant eye every spring, during the thawing process, hence its nickname, Dragon’s Eye Lake.

Located near the summit of Mount Hachimantai in north-eastern Japan, in the middle of a dense forest, Kagami Numa doesn’t look much different than the many other volcanic lakes in the area, most of the year. But for about a week – ate May to early June – it turns into a giant blue eye that inspired its intriguing nickname, Dragon’s Eye Lake. The unique appearance of the circular lake during this one week has inspired a legend of two dragons in love that chose this body of water as their meeting spot.

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A tree seemingly growing out of a pristine white salt island in the heart of the Dead Sea isn’t something you’d expect to see when visiting the world’s saltiest body of water, and yet that’s exactly the sight you’re treated to near the beach of Ein Bokek.

With a salt concentration over 10 times that of the ocean, the Dead Sea is incapable of sustaining any plant or animal life, so come there’s a tree growing there, and on an island made of salt, of all places? Within swimming distance of the beach in Ein Bokek, an Israeli resort near Arad, lies the iconic Dead Sea Salt Island, a surreal natural formation made of dazzling white salt and surrounded by turquoise water. At its center are a pool of shallow, inviting water, and a tree that has no place being there. And yet…

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Araucaria columnaris, also known as the coral reef araucaria, Cook pine or New Caledonia pine, is a species of conifer native to New Caledonia that tends to tilt sideways when planted outside its natural habitat.

First classified by Johann Reinhold Forster, a botanist accompanying Captain James Cook on his second voyage to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible, the araucaria columnaris soon became popular all around the world, thanks to its distinctive narrowly conical shape and its height (up to 60 meters). Nowadays, these evergreen giants are planted as ornamental trees in various areas with warm and temperate climate on five continents, and they generally don’t attract too much attention, but in some cases they have one noticeable particularity – they lean heavily to one side, and when there are more of them planted in the same area, they all lean in the same direction…

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Gijs Schalkx, a Dutch inventor and engineering student, modified his motorcycle to run on methane harvested from roadside bogs and ponds.

Aptly named Sloot Motor (sloot means ‘ditch’ in Dutch), Gijs Schalkx’s ingenious vehicle features a modified Honda GX160 motorcycle engine, with a hole into the airbox, through which it receives the methane. The bright inventor than hooks a balloon filled with methane to the hole, which acts as the fuel tank. The engine still starts with gasoline, but once it starts, it uses the methane to keep going. But what truly makes Gijs’ project special is the fact that he manually harvests the methane himself from roadside swamps and ponds, a labor that takes approximately eight hours. The methane only lasts 12 miles at a top speed of 27mph.

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Synsepalum dulcificum, aka the miracle fruit or miracle berry, is a unique plant known to produce fruits that, when eaten, make all sour foods and drinks subsequently ingested taste sweet.

For centuries, indigenous tribes of Ghana, in West Africa, used the fruits of the Synsepalum dulcificum plant to sweeten sour or tart fruits, foods, and drinks, but it wasn’t until 1968 that the miraculin protein that makes the fruits special was finally extracted and turned into tablets. That made it possible for virtually anyone in the world to experience the “taste tripping” that miracle berries are so famous for. Miraculin essentially alters your senses, causing things that should taste sour, like lemon or vinegar, to taste sweet, or even too sweet for up to 60 minutes after the protein is consumed.

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A 42-year-man in India recently made international headlines for suffering from a condition that causes him to sleep 300 days a year.

Indian media recently reported the bizarre case of Purkharam, a middle-aged resident of Bhadwa village, in Rajasthan, who allegedly suffers from “HPA axis hypersomnia”, a rare condition that causes him to sleep for long stretches of time that can last up to 25 days. 23 years ago, when Purkharam was first diagnosed with the rare disorder, he slept for about 15 hours at a time, but his symptoms gradually got worse and by 2015 his family started counting his sleeping schedule in days instead of hours. The small shop owner would sleep for more than 7 or 8 days at a time, but the condition kept worsening, and he now sleeps for up to 25 days. Out of 365 days, he spends about 300 sleeping.

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The latest and strangest trend in DIY teeth whitening involves rubbing your not-so-pearly whites with pieces of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers for some surprisingly impressive results.

When it comes to removing grime and leaving surfaces looking shiny, Mr. Clean is an established solution, but until recently most of the world had no idea that it could also be used on teeth. Last month, news reports of viral TikTok videos promoting Mr. Clean Magic Eraser as an effective and cheap way of whitening your teeth in the comfort of your own home went viral, attracting mixed responses from both the general public and dentists.

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The Golden Boy, a decadent delicacy made with 100 percent Wagyu A5, Beluga caviar, king crab, white truffle, among other premium ingredients, has just broken the record for world’s most expensive burger, with a price of 5,000 euros ($6,000).

The Golden Boy burger was created by Robbert Jan de Veen, owner of Dutch restaurant De Daltons, who came up with the idea while sitting in his restaurant pretending to get some work done. As he browsed the internet to pass the time, he stumbled over the previous record for the world’s most expensive burger, held by an Oregon restaurant that made a $5,000 burger that weight a whopping 352 kilograms, back in 2011. He found it cool, but decided he could make an even more expensive burger, and one that could actually be finished by one person.

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