A little under three hours' drive north of Hanoi, in Lang Son Province near the border with China, farmers' fields are starting to turn into 'pick-your-own tourist sites.' Vietnamese agriculture paper Dan Viet reported that a Hai Den grape orchard in Huu Lung district and chestnut groves on the outskirts of Lang Son city let visitors harvest for free and run on-the-spot direct sales and tastings, earning several hundred million dong per household a year. When it comes to northern mountain tourismAn Orchard Picking Festival Held on the Si Ma Cai Plateau, Deep in Sapa<\/a>has become well known, but day-trip-range orchards from Hanoi are now offering the same kind of fun. For travelers, it becomes a seasonal detour where \"go, pick, eat, and head home\" fits into a single day.<\/p>\n There are two star crops. One is Ha Den grapes grown in Huu Lung district. The other is chestnuts from the Luong Van Tri area (formerly Quang Lac) adjacent to Lang Son city. What both share is that farmers have opened their fields to visitors and switched to a model where those who come harvest by their own hands and buy on the spot to take home.<\/p>\n Grape farmer Hoang Van Tom owns three orchards and, combining visitor reception with online direct sales, earns about 500 million dong a year\u2014roughly 3 million yen. In the chestnut areas, some households have reached 300 to 400 million dong a year, about 1.8 to 2.4 million yen. Rather than wholesaling cheap to middlemen, they deliver directly to tourists and keep the full unit price in their own hands. This is the way to earn that Lang Son's farmers have found.<\/p>\n Ha Den is a seedless black grape, and you walk beneath the trellised vines and snip off whole clusters with scissors. Lang Son Province has expanded the same style of tourist grape orchards to Binh Gia, Van Quan, Huu Lung, Bac Son, and elsewhere, with 11 model orchards running in the province. According to local media, some orchards report that \"even priced above imported grapes, there isn't enough to sell.\"<\/p>\n For what you pick, the price is roughly 150,000\u2013200,000 dong per kg, about 900\u20131,200 yen. Some orchards charge no admission, while others take 20,000\u201330,000 dong (about 120\u2013180 yen). At peak harvest, each orchard takes in about 500\u2013800 visitors a season, which for some translates to sales of 100\u2013150 million dong (about 600,000\u2013900,000 yen). One woman farmer invested close to 700 million dong to turn a barren hill into a vineyard running a twice-a-year fruiting cycle, and for this orchard roughly June\u2013July and November\u2013December are the times to aim for picking.<\/p>\n Another highlight is chestnuts. The chestnut groves around the Luong Van Tri area cover about 100 hectares, with some households raising around 3,000 trees. It's a region certified VietGAP and awarded OCOP three stars, and the nuts are large, fluffy, and sweet.<\/p>\n The harvest runs from August to October; the fruit ripens all at once over about a month from mid-August to mid-September, and chestnut-picking tours are busiest in September. Families drive in even from places like Bac Ninh Province, more than 100 km from Hanoi. At the orchard, a guide hands you work gloves, shears, and a basket, and the experience runs from searching out the burr-covered nuts at the base of the trees and picking them to peeling off the hard, spiny husks. It takes a bit of climbing and handwork, making it just right as an outing with kids.<\/p>\nFields turned into a tourist spot: what\u2019s happening in Lang Son<\/h2>\n
Ha Den Grapes: Why They Sell Out Even at Prices Above Imported Grapes<\/h2>\n
Chestnut picking peaks in September, when Hanoi families flock in<\/h2>\n
Lang Son's pick-your-own farms by the numbers<\/h2>\n