Entree Kibbles: Cable Car Ride from Hoang Lien Cable Car Station to Fansipan Station @ Sapa in Vietnam

Saturday, October 04, 2025

Cable Car Ride from Hoang Lien Cable Car Station to Fansipan Station @ Sapa in Vietnam

The journey to Fansipan required a few transfers and after we took the Muong Hoa Funicular train, another cable car from Hoang Lien station would be needed to get to Fansipan station, which wasn't even the end of the journey!

Seeing a queue is always stressful as we wouldn't know how fast it would clear and that's one thing I hate when I travel as this could literally be time consuming and take up too much of our precious time.

Thankfully, the queue cleared fast.

And we were almost at the start of the line in 10 minutes.

No wonder the queue cleared so fast! The cable car was huge and can sit around 30-35 persons each! With 33 cars in the system, it can carry an average of 2,000 passengers an hour.

Handphones out to memorialize the views to come!

This should be the Muong Hoa Valley; known for its terraced rice fields, it looked nice from high above although one natural factor marred the experience.

The clouds took charge and limited visibility across the valley! It made us feel like we were caged up, and with pent up excitement since we wouldn't know what else would come to sight. Maybe a brachiosaurus with its long neck?

A cloud of nothingness.

While the sky slowly cleared up, it was already past the valley and what's around us were just forests and more forests that didn't wow us. Nothing special and reminded me somewhat of the cable car ride up Genting Highlands.

Boring everyone was.

So, wefie time!

Finally some clarity although again, the view was meh.

Until we turned to the side! Peaks peeking out from the clouds. And the blue, oh so blue sky. In the past few days since we arrived at Hanoi for this trip, it had been continuously hazy, with no sign of the blue sky, until now! Sometimes, we really take such things (like sunlight, blue sky, green ocean etc) for granted.

Before long, we were enveloped once again with gloominess.

This angle still looked alright; with the sea of clouds below us. As we were pretty far from Hanoi, said to have terrible air pollution, I am guessing the situation in Sapa was more due to the winter season.

Dad was still happy with the experience. Even though this cable car system is no longer the longest in the world now, it still maintained the "world’s largest height difference between the departure and arrival terminal at 1,410 meters"!

My mobile phone was used for time-lapsed video taking.

Arrival at Fansipan Station.

Distance covered: 6,292.5 meters.

Purposely let the others depart first so that I could have the full cable car for myself for the above photograph showing the seating configuration. If you like to take photographs / video, do make sure to plan in advance to sit at the side. Remember, there will be about 30 persons jostling with you in the same car.

Picture time!

More than two hours later, we were back at the same station, this time making our way back to Hoang Lien station. Visibility had worsened but well, we can't control the weather and the most we can do was to embrace and make the best out of it.

Let's start the journey down!

Well, it's literally the same way that we came up from. So you shouldn't be expecting something different, except for the fact that there was something I noticed on my way up but didn't have enough time to take a photo.

This wooden structure that appeared out of nowhere, where there's nothing around it. What does it remind me of? The movie "The Cabin in the Woods"!

Continuation of journey.

Nothing outside caught my attention but something within the cable car did. There was like a amulet pasted in the car; anyone has any idea what it meant? The only character I am somewhat familiar with was the last one, which could have meant suppress.