Fansipan: the Highest Point in Vietnam || Sapa Part 1

In the northern reaches of Vietnam, near the Chinese border, tower the highest peaks in Indochina. Hidden in the mountain valleys are vibrant villages full of unique cultures and magical landscapes sculpted by bright green rice terraces. In part one of my Sapa adventure, we take the world's longest cable car up to Fancy Pin, the highest mountain in the country, and have the most perfect weather to survey the surrounding landscape. And here's how it went. Good morning guys and welcome to Sapa, Vietnam. Yesterday we took a 5-6 hour bus ride up from Hanoi and we are up in the mountains of northern Vietnam, not too far from the Chinese border, and we are amongst some of the highest peaks of the Indochina Peninsula. And right behind me we have Fancy Pin, which is over 10,000 feet, and we're right in the little town square of Sapa. And we've just really lucked out because we have a couple days here to do some hikes and get some mountain viewpoints, and we just have the most beautiful weather after a very gloomy couple days in Hanoi. I'm so excited to just have perfect blue skies. I've seen so many people come here and they'll go up these mountains and it's just shrouded in clouds. So I'm really looking forward to being here. This has been one of my bucket list places for so long. When you picture Vietnam and you picture the bright green rice terraces that are just layered up these mountains, that's where we are in Sapa. And it's just a photographer's dream heading out there. And then we're also going to be doing some village treks. We're going to hike around to a couple different villages in the surrounding Sapa Valley here, and we'll be doing a homestay. And I'm really excited to head out and see a little bit of the local culture and some of the local tribes here in the northern parts of Vietnam. But first thing this morning, since we just have such beautiful weather, we're going to head over to the Sun Plaza here. And they have a train that takes you up to a cable car that'll take us up to the top of Fancy Pan Mountain and start off with just some beautiful 360-degree views of northern Vietnam and some of the surrounding valleys here. So let's head over to Sun Plaza and get our tickets to the cable car. So we've just entered Sun Plaza here. We bought our tickets, and it's definitely one of the more pricey things I'm doing here in Vietnam. It was almost 40 bucks, and we're gonna get a little train that's gonna take us up to the world's longest and steepest cable car and head up to the tallest mountain in the Indochina Peninsula. So we've just come up the cable car, and that is one of the longest cable cars in the world. It's over four miles, taking you from the Sapa town up to here. And we're on the Fancy Pan summit, but it's this massive complex. We're just gonna have some beautiful views. And again, we just have such perfect weather and perfect visibility. Mountains as far as you can see. And then, yeah, so there's still like a kilometer to walk all the way up to the summit of Fancy Pan. So we're just gonna kind of wander through the complex. There's like a massive Buddha statue, some other statues. So yeah, let's just wander around the top of this mountain and take in some of the views from the highest point in Vietnam. So we have just been walking around the massive complex here of Fancy Pan. We just walked by this massive bronze Buddha statue that just overlooks the whole Sapa Valley here. And we're still working our way up to the peak here. So there's a lot to see and do up on this complex. And you just have these beautiful sweeping views. It is so windy and cold up here though. We're at like over 10,000 feet, so I'm starting to really feel the elevation. And yeah, just make sure you bring an extra jacket because it is cold. We've just come up a couple more layers here, and there's just this massive Buddhist temple. We went inside. There's some just amazing statues in there. And now we have just one last final push to the summit. We can see the peak here, the Vietnamese flag waving up there. So let's head up and check out the top. We have made it to the top of Fancy Pan Mountain, and we are at the highest point in the Indochina Peninsula that makes up Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. And we just have the most perfect day. There's not a cloud in the sky. We have 360 degree views, and I just can't believe how lucky we've gotten with the weather here. And with these clear views, you can just see layers and layers of peaks. You can look down on the Sapa Valley, Sapa Town, and it is just absolutely beautiful. And we have this massive Vietnamese flagpole up behind us, and it is actually just packed with people. There are so many people up here. But there's a nice like boardwalk, so there's plenty of room to walk around. There's a couple of these benchmarkers that tell you how high we are. But now, let's spend a little bit of time here, enjoy some of these views, and yeah, just enjoy being some of the highest people in Vietnam. Amazing place to hang out. We probably hung out here for about 20 minutes, and again, you just have such beautiful views. And even though it's so windy all the way up here, it's surprisingly quite calm on some of the boardwalks here, and the sun is just so warm. It's nice and warm up here. So yeah, just beautiful views. And again, pretty expensive experience, 40 bucks to take the cable car and funicular up here, but just totally worth it. There's so many like little temples, statues to see along the way, and then the views from the top of the highest point in Indochina are just unmatched, and we just had the perfect weather for it. Anyways, I think we're gonna start hiking back down to the cable car. We still have a massive village hike that we're gonna do this afternoon, so let's head back to Sapa, and we'll grab a lunch, and then we'll start some of our village trips. So we have just come down from the Phan Tse Pan, and that was really, actually, such a cool experience. There was so much to see and do up there, and just the views were absolutely incredible. And we are back down in the Sapa town here. We just grabbed a quick lunch, and it's already almost about 2 p.m., so we spent most of the morning up in Phan Tse Pan. You can spend quite a few hours up there. And finally, we're gonna start one of the things I'm most excited about here in Sapa. We're gonna start a little village trek where we're gonna hike through this valley that we saw from the cable car. We were looking straight down the valley that we're gonna hike down now, and we're gonna stop in these little villages along the way, meet some of the local hill tribe people of northern Vietnam, and yeah, just have these beautiful views of rice terraces and mountains. And then eventually, we'll be doing a village stay, so we're gonna be doing a homestay in one of the villages tonight. So yeah, we're gonna start the hike and enjoy some of these views, enjoy some of the nature, and yeah, let's start.