Luc Ngan District is nearly a 2-hour drive from Hanoi and has long been renowned as the lychee capital of the northern region. The district boasts over 200 cooperatives growing lychees, offering tourism services, including sightseeing, dining, accommodation, and entertainment. Touring lychee orchards allows visitors to enjoy this typical summer’s fresh fruit and delicious taste while exploring the simple and tranquil rural life. Hundreds of lychee gardens and vast lychee hills, from afar, appear dotted with red, embellishing the deep green foliage, yet up close, each cluster is laden heavily with ripe red fruits. Lychee branches are low, so visitors can easily pick the fruits or pose for photos. Luc Ngan lychees are distributed nationwide, but according to many tourists, the experience of handpicking and eating them right under the trees is a distinctly emotional experience, where the aroma and sweetness seem more intense.
Evening lychee-picking tour has become an interesting activity in recent years. The tour comprises having dinner with the hosts, overnight stays, and joining farmers in harvesting lychees. By 5 am, when the baskets are full of juicy fruits, guests continue to follow the gardens’ owners to the wholesale market to sell lychees to traders or retail customers. From above, the image of motorbikes laden with ripe lychees covers every road, creating an impressive scenery. In addition to domestic tourists, many foreign visitors delight in witnessing and hearing the stories about the lychee trees’ flowers, their fruition and ripening. Their photos, videos, and live streams have effectively promoted Vietnamese agricultural products and local agritourism.
Besides enjoying lychees, tourists can camp in lychee orchards, visit the Chu noodle craft village, take boat rides on Cam Son Lake or Khuon Than Lake, and immerse themselves in the natural scenery. Bringing back specialties from Luc Ngan as gifts for loved ones, such as freshly picked lychees, lychee flower honey, or dried noodle packs, is an incomparable delight.
