Passenger spots trippy sight out of plane window, solves mystery on TikTok

December 27, 2023

He thought he was on a different kind of “trip.”

An airplane passenger was left flabbergasted after spotting a bizarre luminescent sight out of his window while flying from Vietnam to Australia.

Footage of the apparent in-flight optical illusion has amassed over 14 million views on TikTok as viewers helped the traveler figure out the mystery.

“Somebody help me please,” user Brad Stewart pleaded in the caption to clip, which he filmed on a night flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Melbourne.

The mind-bending clip, taken as the plane was leaving Vietnam, shows the outside nightscape riddled with neon-colored squares, which evoke confetti at a rave or some magical holiday realm from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Stewart implored the commentariat to help him decipher the bizarre sight, writing: “Can someone please tell me what these are?”

Unfortunately, many viewers were equally flummoxed, with many joking that the squares were “post-it notes” or a video game map that hadn’t been fully rendered.

Some even joked it looked like a nightclub floor covered in confetti, or as one person hilariously put it: “All the confetti from these stupid gender revel parties.”

But as several astute viewers pointed out, the trippy vista was actually rows and rows of illuminated dragon fruit farms.

“Wow that’s insane thank you!!!” Stewart commented on one such response after the mystery was solved.

These agricultural facilities centers are lit up at night to extend the growing season of the flamboyant-looking pink fruit, which typically runs from April to October.

During this peak cultivation time, there are usually more than 12 hours of light a day, according to Chinese horticultural lighting company Atop Lighting.

By deploying LED grow lights at night during the off-season, farmers can trick the plants into “thinking that it’s still summer,” per the site.

This artificially triggers them to flower and fruit, thereby extending the growing season and boosting yields and profits.

While dragon fruit originally hail from Central America, they’ve long been cultivated in Vietnam, which produces around 1.3 tons of the crop per year.

Interestingly, this resplendent crop grows on a somewhat unremarkable-looking climbing cactus, evoking a burlesque version of the desert cactus pear, which is a distant cousin.

Much like their desert relative, dragon fruit flesh is mildly sweet and seed-filled with a mouthfeel similar to that of a kiwi.