Southern fruit festival to feature strange fruits

      Some kinds of new fruits will appear for the first time at the southern fruit festivals at the Suoi Tien Cultural Tourist Park, HCM City, opening on May 24.
More than 50 species of fruit will be featured, including famous specialties of southern provinces like Lai Thieu jackfruit, Tan Trieu and Dong Nai grapefruit, Go Cong watermelon, and Tra Vinh guava.
The organising board revealed that giant fruits of 50-60kg, collected from throughout the whole country, will be on display at the festival, besides new species of fruits such as butter star apple, red-segment, no-seed orange from Ben Tre, Ba Den and Tay Ninh custard-apple.
The southern fruit festival will have various other activities as well. The most special events will be the fruit procession with 400 artists, an exhibition of ornamental trees and animals, display of a collection of stones which look like fruits, a fruit market, a contest of making artworks by fruit for 100 artisans, and introduction of 26 fruit-made cuisines.
The safe, delicious fruit competition is a new activity this year to encourage gardeners to apply sci-tech advancements to create high-quality fruit species.
HCM City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s vice head La Quoc Khanh told VietNamNet that the festival has become a tourism brand of Vietnam.
“Thai tourism officials said they learnt from this festival to organise fruit festivals in Thailand,” Khanh said.
Organisers expect that the festival will lure over 1 million visitors, selling over 1,000 tonnes of fruit.
The festival is an annual event held by the HCM City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Suoi Tien Cultural Tourist Park to introduce fruits of the south to local and foreign tourists.
The event will run from May 24 until the end of August 2009.