AT 3,147 meters, Mount Fansipan is the highest mountain in both Vietnam and the Indochinese Peninsula. There are three ways to get to the peak: easy, moderate, and quite difficult.
The easy way up really is easy, with 3 funicular trains and 1 cable car bringing you up in less than 2 hours and only 50 steps or so. In Sapa Town, you buy a funicular ticket at Fansipan Legend’s Sapa Station (conveniently located at the corner of Fansipan Road, across from the BB hotel). I would also recommend hitting up the Vietcombank ATM across the street because the easy way up is not cheap! Between tickets (which you must purchase individually for each train) and the cups of hot chocolate or snacks you will absolutely want for fuel, you will spend around $40. And that’s assuming you’re properly dressed . . . I had to blow another $20 or $30 on earmuffs and gloves.
Funicular tickets are available from 7am to 5pm, and the funicular leaves every half hour. Sapa Station is clogged with shops selling overpriced, terrible quality cold weather gear (counterfeit Chanel and Gucci shawls; acrylic berets; those ubiquitous stuffed animal earmuffs) and Vietnamese specialties (indigo, honey, medicinal liquor complete with preserved reptiles).
The funicular ride to SunWorld is lovely no matter the time of day. The train was built with an antique vibe, is extremely clean, and the maybe ten minute trip is picturesque. You wind away from Sapa Town on a narrow track, cutting through mountainsides and emerging above little villages and rice terraces.
The funicular stops in a second station that is pretty in a Disney kind of way. There’s an unnecessarily large outdoor market with tons of local produce, souvenirs, and restaurants. There’s a giant new-but-old-fashioned-style Buddhist temple. There’s a long hill everyone seems to walk up, not realizing it just goes to a parking lot. There are local crops contrived into formal gardens. It’s all very Instagram-y. The entrance to the cable car is sort of hidden in the station, tricking people into exploring.
To not exaggerate at all, the cable car ride is majestic. It is both the world's longest (at 6,282meters) and features the highest ascent (rising 1,410 meters); I found myself fathoming its construction. The view over the steep mountains is predictably beautiful. It’s even better at sunset, or on a cloudy day when you enter the cloud ceiling and then pop out above it.
Once you arrive at the welcome station on Mount Fansipan, the cold hits. I instantly regretted not bringing a warm coat/scarf/gloves. Luckily there is a shop up there for people like me! There is also a restaurant that sells basic junk meals like fried noodles with veggies, french fries, pizza, and ice cream.
Out of the station, you need to walk perhaps a couple hundred steps up to another funicular station. That train will take you further up the mountain to the temple complex. These Buddhist temples and statues are undoubtedly beautiful, but look like real life CGI. They are only 5 years old now, and were built for Vietnamese and Chinese tourists. The ethnic minority people in the region are primarily Animist or even Catholic.
A third funicular goes up a narrow and very steep track to a beautiful café that never has coffee. This is where the Instagram girls (who tricked you into thinking this was comfortable and easy!) drink their $7 hot chocolates, peel off their parkas and boots, and put on their heels and makeup. The café is only 20 steps or so from the peak.
If I were to do it again, I would visit in the summer. Even with the heat cranked up to the max, the café could not get warmer than 40 degrees. Outside it was bitterly cold and windy. If I were bundled up in my NY winter gear I would have been OK, but even with double sweatshirt and double leggings, gloves, scarf and earmuffs, I was terribly underdressed.
There are wide decks all around the peak that pack with tourists doing their photoshoots. The views are sublime; the horizon goes on forever. Sapa Town and its constellation of small villages look tiny and distant.
The medium-difficulty route is the one most Westerners take. With this method, you take the funicular and cable car to the mountain welcome station, but walk 630+ steps up to the top. That doesn’t seem like much, but is physically taxing at altitude, in the cold. I found myself popping into the temples and praying for motivation!
The truly difficult route was the only way up before 2016. You can either take a grab cab from Sapa (30 to 45 minutes) or trek half a day to the base of the mountain. Once there, you need to arrange for a guide with the Hoang Lien National Park Service, if you haven’t already made arrangements through a tour company.
The hike isn’t technically tough by mountain climbing standards, but there are sections of ladders and handholds on steep faces. Courage, fitness and some skill and/or guidance are required! Your possession of these determines how quickly you can make it up: practiced climbers can do it in one 16 hour day, but most people take 2 or 3 days. There are 3 camps on the way up; none have hot water and it’s a BYO food and bedding situation. There are sheds to sleep in (so you don’t need to bring a tent), but nothing to cook with and no restrooms.
Summiting Mount Fansipan is a rite of passage for young couples in Vietnam; helping each other to the top apparently reflects the strength and endurance of a love match. I enjoyed the trip, but perhaps not enough to drag a lover back. In the words of Marvin Gaye, ain’t no mountain high enough!
