It is summer and Vietnamese growers are busy picking ripe fruit and delivering it to Suoi Tien Park in HCMC’s District 9 as the Southern Fruit Festival returns to the city from May 24 to 28.

There is no better way to sample southern fruit in one place than going to the park, and better still, the prices are 20% to 40% below what one would pay at the markets.

Sixty stalls will introduce over 50 kinds of fruit as well as new kinds appearing at the festival for the first time such as Lo Ren Vinh Kim star apples from Tien Giang Province, Mat Troi Do (red sun) watermelon without seed from Dong Nai Province, oranges without seed and butter star apples from Ben Tre Province. The three month fruit market is going to open on May 23.

There will be a fruit arrangement contest among nearly 100 artisans, new dishes made from fruit, an ornamental exhibition, an exhibition of rocks having the shapes and colors of fruit and a freak show of giant fruits and bulbs that weigh up to 60kg.

Fruit parades, cultural performances and folk games will also entertain visitors.

La Quoc Khanh, deputy director of the HCMC Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said at a press conference to promote the festival that the new feature of the festival would be a vote for the most delicious and the safest fruits. The contest among nearly 300 growers is to encourage new technology, new varieties, quality and high productivity.

Since the department joined hands with the park’s management board in 2004 to make the annual festival a major tourist attraction, the fruit festival has drawn increasing crowds of tourists.

Khanh said that Thailand, after seeing Vietnam’s example, also holds a fruit festival at a farm 70km outside Bangkok which has become a destination offered by Thailand travel companies.

The U.S will be represented at this year’s festival by American grapes and oranges.

Khanh anticipates over one million tourists will visit the festival and about 2,000 tons of fruit will be sold. He said that over the first four months of this year, foreign tourists dropped by 8% but local tourists increased by 20% compared to the same period last year.

Last year’s festival drew nearly one million tourists and sold about 1,500 tons of fruit.

(Source: SGT)