The best April Fools' ads of 2017: Asia edition

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a train? Peach Aviation is so serious about its prank that it's even more funny. After years of research and development, the Japanese airline's new "railway of the air" fleet is about to be on trial, it announced. The number of exclamation marks used to describe this 'flying train' is the big giveaway. "Look at this appearance of a train flying in the air! Do not be afraid of the rush hour! Because more train carriages can be linked up to fly in the air, or even transformed into a robot to scale the mountains! Where do you board this flying train? In southern Osaka, your dreams, of course!"

Havas Riverorchid Vietnam's prank for an ice cream shop in Saigon called Ralf's Artisan Gelato went insane on fish-sauce, hoisin-sauce and beef-pho flavoured gelato, and even one with a real chicken foot sticking out of the scoop. Is this 'pho real'? 

Hong Kong Airlines has launched the world’s first speed-dating service in the sky! Want to have a romantic companion take photos or share local delicacies with you when travelling, but without the need for an awkward 'would you like to share an armrest with me' pickup line...? Slim chance.

At exactly the minute when Sydney hit April Fool's Day, Ikea Australia announced that it is taking to the skies with the launch of a low-cost airline: FLIKEA. The actual Facebook post of this announcement was arguably less humourous than the comments like "Do u have to build your own seat? lol. Is the plane [in a] flat pack? lmao", and this:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome aboard FLIKEA flight 589 with service to Melbourne. Before you settle down, we request all the passengers to deplane and help us install the engine back. We will provide everyone with detailed printed instructions, so you should be able to assemble it by yourself.... in the event of aborted take-off, we ask that you deploy the slides immediately and slide down to the runway and try assembling the engine again. We thank you for your patience. Please sit back and enjoy the meatballs."

You've heard of SaaS & PaaS, but have you heard of GaaS—Garlic-As-A-Service? In China, Alibaba has made its cloud computing service, AliCloud, smell. Check out the pseudo-science you never knew: "during photosynthesis, garlic can process complex algorithms" and "the concentration of allicin is directly proportional to computing capability". To be honest, we were almost fooled by this; they even held a media conference with deadpan wit!