Woman Suffering from Chronic Dehydration Has Over 300 Kidney Stones Removed

A 20-year-old woman from Taiwan recently underwent surgery to have no less than 300 small stones removed from her right kidney.

The young woman, identified as Xiao Yu by Taiwanese media, was admitted to a hospital in the city of Tainan earlier this month, after complaining of severe pain in her lower back. She also had a fever and a blood test showed an unusually high white blood cell count. Doctors ordered a CT scan which showed that Yu’s right kidney was full of fluid and virtually full of kidney stones. The first order of business was to put the young woman on antibiotics, then drain the fluid from her kidney, and finally perform minimally invasive surgery to remove the hundreds of stones.

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‘Godzilla Ramen’ Has a Crocodile Leg Sticking Out of the Bowl

A ramen restaurant in Yunlin, Taiwan, recently unveiled its latest menu entry – Godzilla Ramen, a bowl of ramen soup with a braised crocodile leg sticking out of it.

Taiwanese ramen has been getting weirder and weirder in the last few weeks. It all started with the isopod ramen we featured at the end of last month, which featured a giant isopod as the main ingredient. Then it was the ‘Frog Frog Frog Ramen‘ by Yuan Ramen (圓拉麵), which featured a giant unpeeled frog, and recently culminated with another Yunlin area ‘delicacy’, a crocodile ramen aptly named ‘Godzilla Ramen’. The dish is reportedly made with 40 different spices, but the main ingredient literally sticking out of the bowl is a braised crocodile leg.

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Taiwanese Restaurant Serves Whole, Unpeeled Frog Ramen

A ramen shop in Yunlin, Taiwan is giving the phrase “exotic food” a whole new meaning with its latest dish, a ramen bowl containing an uncut, unpeeled frog.

“Frog Frog Frog Ramen” (蛙呀蛙呀蛙拉麵), the latest item on the menu of Taiwanese ramen shop Yuan Ramen (圓拉麵) recently went viral on social media because of a certain ingredient – a large, unpeeled frog perched atop the bowl of noodles. The Yulin-based shop only recently posted photos of the bizarre dish, asking fans to suggest names for it on Facebook. It also announced that the frog ramen would be available on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, in very limited quantities, for the price of NT$250 (US$8) per bowl. But if you only want to come in and take pictures of the frog ramen, you can do that for just NT$100 ($3.20).

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Taiwanese Restaurant Serves Ramen Dish Topped With a Scary Deep-Sea Creature

A Taipei-based restaurant has been getting a lot of attention for its newest addition to the menu- a ramen dish topped with a steamed 14-legged isopod that looks like something out of an Alien movie.

The Ramen Boy restaurant recently took to Facebook to announce its latest dish, a bowl of ramen featuring a generous helping of giant isopod (Bathynomus giganteus), which it describes as a “dream ingredient”. Called “Giant isopod with creamy chicken broth ramen”, the dish consists of a large bowl of ramen and a large isopod steamed in its own shell. To prepare the deep-sea crustacean, the cooks remove the stomach viscera, keeping the creamy glands for consumption, and steam it. The white meat is said to taste like lobster and crab, while the yellow glands are “unexpectedly sweet”.

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Parrot Owner Gets Jail Time After Bird Injures Passer-By

A Taiwanese man was sentenced to two months in jail and fined 3.04 million New Taiwan dollars ($91,350) after his large parrot allegedly caused a jogger to fall and hurt himself.

The bizarre incident reportedly took place in Tainan, when a man surnamed Huang took his two pet macaws for a flight in a local park where people often go to exercise. One of the large birds allegedly landed on the back of a jogger and started flapping its wings vigorously, frightening the man and causing him to fall. The nasty fall caused the man to dislocate his hip joint and fracture his pelvis, both of which required hospitalization and a long recovery period. He ended up suing the parrot owner for damages.

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Taiwanese Student Sparks Controversy With Risqué Roadside Billboard

A Taiwanese student recently made news headlines for a clever art project involving a racy billboard that wasn’t exactly what it looked like.

Facebook has a very strict policy when it comes to nudity, but this policy is often poorly enforced. For example, photos showing female nipples are considered nudity and are almost instantly removed by the Facebook algorithm. However, the tool is far from perfect, and it has a tough time distinguishing between male and female nipples, especially in the case of androgynous men. This was the case with Wu, a slender, long-haired art student from Shezi, village, in Tainan, who recently had an artistic picture removed from Facebook for indecent exposure. The experience gave him an idea…

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This Leaning Temple Is Taiwan’s Version of the Tower of Pisa

Taiwan’s Chiayi County is home to a temple so slanted that it has been dubbed Taiwan’s version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

In August of 2009, Taiwan was ravaged by Typhoon Morakot, the deadliest typhoon to hit the island in its recorded history. It produced copious amounts of rainfall that resulted in enormous mudflows and severe flooding throughout Taiwan. The typhoon caused enormous damage and hundreds of human fatalities, but it also produced one of Taiwan’s most unusual tourist attractions – The Taihe Zhenxing Palace (振興宮舊址), a place of worship tilted at about 45 degrees.

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Man Pays With His Forearm Thanks to Scannable Payment App Barcode Tattoo

A Taiwanese man has been getting a lot of attention on social media after getting a payment app barcode permanently tattooed on his forearm.

The unnamed man recently took to the Taiwanese social media platform Dcard to share a functional barcode tattoo. Apparently, they had been contemplating getting a tattoo for a while, but they wanted something special instead of the artsy things people get inked. One day, while thinking about how cumbersome it was to constantly have to pull out his smartphone to pay for stuff, it hit him: why not get a functional tattoo to solve that problem? So he had a tattoo artist ink his payment app barcode on his forearm so he wouldn’t have to use his phone anymore.

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People Change Their Name to “Salmon” for Free Sushi, Now They Can’t Change It Back

A number of Taiwan sushi fans who legally changed their name to include the characters for the word ‘salmon’, as part of a restaurant promotional stunt, have now become stuck with it.

Taiwanese legislators are currently debating the possibility to change a law that only allows citizens to legally change their names a maximum of three times as a way to mitigate the aftermath of an event known as “Salmon Chaos”. In March of 2021, international news outlets covered the bizarre promotion of Taiwanese restaurant chain Sushiro, which offered sushi at discounted prices or totally free to people who legally changed their names to include the characters for ‘salmon’. Over 300 people reportedly took Sushiro up on their offer, and while most managed to switch back their old names days after taking advantage of the promotion, some have been stuck with hilarious names like ‘Handsom Salmon’, ‘Dancing Salmon’ or ‘Salmon Dream’.

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Taiwan Punishes Drunk Drivers by Having Them Clean Funeral Parlors

Authorities in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, have come up with an ingenious way of getting drunk drivers to reflect on their behavior – they are now required to clean funeral parlors in order to feel what it’s like being close to death.

Last month, Kaohsiung was rocked by a car accident caused by a drunk driver, which left one family man dead and three other people injured. Mayor Chen Qimai announced that those convicted of drunk driving or deferred prosecution should perform social labor service at local funeral parlors as punishment. A couple of days ago, the first batch of 11 drunk drivers went to Kaohsiung City Funeral Management Office to accept their punishment and spent hours cleaning the mortuary, refrigeration unit, and the crematorium.

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Milk Fish Intestines – A Taiwanese Delicacy That’s Hard to Swallow

Taiwanese food is very popular all over the world, but some of the dishes it proposes are hard to swallow even for natives. Take for example milkfish intestines, a delicacy that’s difficult to look at, let alone swallow.

Milkfish is farmed on a large scale in Taiwan, not only for its meat but also its intestines, which are apparently the base of several dishes, including black fried intestines and milkfish intestine soup. Both are reportedly delicious, but you first have to get over the fact that they look like cooked worms, and even then, the idea of eating fish guts doesn’t appeal to everyone. Southern Taiwan, which hosts the most milkfish farms, is reportedly more familiar with milkfish intestine dishes which have become somewhat of a local challenge for visitors.

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Woman Had Plastic Chopsticks Embedded in Her Skull for a Week and Didn’t Even Know It

Taiwanese doctors recently reported the unusual case of a young woman who apparently had two chopstick fragments lodged in her face for a week, without even knowing.

The 29-year-old unnamed woman reportedly went to a hospital emergency room after a violent fight with her sister left her with two minor lacerations on the nose and under her left eye. Doctors examined her and even performed an X-ray, which didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. The woman left the hospital, but as the days went by, she started to suspect that her wounds were more serious than she had originally thought. Pieces of the plastic chopsticks her sister had attacked her with were missing, and she started to think that there was something stuck in her nose.

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Thousands of Cockroaches Released in Restaurant to Settle Debt Dispute

Patrons at a restaurant in Taipei, were recently shocked to see cockroaches crawling all over the place after thousands of them were released on the premises by two masked men.

On May 4th, two masked men entered the G House Taipei restaurant holding large bags filled with over 1,000 cockroaches, which they simply released at the reception desk on the second floor of the establishment, before fleeing the scene. Roaches started crawling on the floor, walls and furniture, and it wasn’t long before patrons enjoying their meals there started noticing them as well. Among the diners were policemen Taipei Police Department who were attending a banquet there, and they immediately created a task force to catch the perpetrators.

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Man Marries 4 Times, Divorces 3 Times in 37 Day to Qualify for Extended Paid Leave

A Taiwanese man came up with an ingenious of getting extended paid leave from work: he got married four times and divorced three times in just 37 days.

According to Taiwanese law, a person has the right to 8 days paid work leave when they get married, which is exactly what one unnamed clerk received when he got married last year, on April 6th. Only that was only meant as the beginning of an extended paid leave, for which the hero of our story had prepared in advance. On the last day of his 8-day leave, the man divorced his wife, only to marry her again the next day and ask for another paid leave, to which he felt he was entitled to, by law. He went on to marry the same woman four times, and divorce her three times in 37 days, for a total of 32 days of paid leave.

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Man Allegedly Gets Salary Cut For Spending Too Much Time in the Bathroom

A Taiwanese man sparked controversy on social media after complaining about getting a pay cut for spending too much time in the bathroom during work hours.

The disgruntled employee, identified only as ‘Mr. A.’, recently took to Facebook to voice his frustration and disappointment at having part of his monthly salary withheld by the company he works at, for having spent too much time in the bathroom the previous month. The man admitted to spending a whopping 49.5 hours in the toilet, which amounts to about two hours of bathroom time per day, but said that his employer failed to inform him that his wages could be cut for taking too long toilet breaks.

The Taiwanese man posted his story on the Blame 2 Commune Facebook Group, asking the other member for advice on how to proceed. He clarified that he had worked 22 days as an intern last month, for a total of 195 hours and an hourly salary of 160 yuan. However, on pay day, he noticed than about 4,400 yuan had been deducted, so he decided to take up the matter with human resources.

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