Men suffer mouth ulcers after eating 30kg of oranges to avoid airport fees

They just stood there and polished entire box off

Oranges: tasty but likely to cause ulcers if eaten in bulk (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Everyone’s perhaps done something similar at some point: defiantly polished off a drink or seen off some food after being told we couldn’t take it somewhere.

Four men in China, however, may be regretting undertaking an extreme version of this.

The quartet have been left with severe ulcers after eating 30kg of oranges at an airport rather than pay the excess baggage fee to take the fruits on board.

The men refused to shell out the extra payment at Kunming Changshui International airport, in Yunnan province, and instead chose to munch their way through the goodies.

They made the decision because the fee of 300 yuan – about £34 – was six times the 50 yuan they had paid for the fruit in the first place, China’s Global Times newspaper reports.

Their exploits, on 20 January, went viral in China after being revealed on social media this week.

“We just stood there and ate the whole thing up, it took about 20-30 minutes," one of the four said. “We never want to have any oranges again.”

The quartet are by no means the only travellers who have done something outrageous to avoid excess baggage fees.

In 2018, Ryan Carney Williams, an artist and designer, made headlines after attempting to wear eight pairs of trousers and 10 shirts for his British Airways flight home from Keflavik, in Iceland. He was refused a boarding pass.

In 2015, meanwhile, a member of a boyband passed out on an easyJet flight from London to Glasgow after wearing all his clothes on board to avoid the £45 excess baggage fee.

James McElvar, a singer with Scottish band Rewind, collapsed from heat exhaustion having put on six t-shirts, four jumpers, three pairs of jeans, two pairs of jogging bottoms, a pair of jackets and two hats.

Speaking at the time, the 19-year-old said: “It was impossible to walk, I could barely get on the plane. I wanted to take them all off as soon as I got to my seat…but was told I had to wait until we were up in the air.”

He started to feel unwell and was violently sick before passing out; a paramedic who happened to be on board put him in the recovery position.