Once every year. Late May – Early June. Lychee season. If you’ve never had them fresh, you are missing out on one of the earth’s best fruit. Incredibly juicy and sweet, with a small to medium size pit. Lychee is grown in sub-tropical, Asian climates like southern China and northern Vietnam, where I became acquainted with them.

When we lived in Haiphong from 1994-1997, during late May we would stop in Hai Duong province, conveniently tucked right in the middle between Haiphong and Hanoi. We would buy the precious fruit just picked earlier that day – especially the special variety with a tiny little pit. This, of course, always led to endless lychee eating games with the person with the smallest pit eventually being the winner. The smallest would sometimes be about half a size of a dime – tiny – which meant more luscious fruit in every bite.

They don’t grow them in Malaysia, but they arrive in limited quantity in our open markets. I’ve only seen them twice in the past two weeks. Here’s the ones I had yesterday. Simply wonderful – even though they  were the large-pit variety.

So yesterday, my blog took a lychee break. Here they are: