About “Fansipan Waterfall”
The “Fansipan Waterfall” was kind of an incidental waterfall that we weren’t expecting to see while riding the cable car up to Fansipan Mountain – the highest point in Indochina (i.e. Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam).
I only became aware of it when a looping public address announcement in the Sun World Fansipan Legend Park said something about a waterfall that’s 90 stories tall.
When I asked our local Sapa guide about it, she said we could see it from the cable car and so she helped me be on the lookout for it.
She did warn me that since we showed up in mid-April, which was the tail end of Dry Season in most of Vietnam, the waterfall may not have an impressive amount of water.
Well, as you can see from the photo above, it still held its own, but I’m sure if you’re lucky enough to have good weather during the Wet Season, then this waterfall should put on a remarkable show!
Indeed, upon doing that cable car ride, it wasn’t until the latter half of the pretty long 15-minute ride that we finally started to see the full extent of the aforementioned waterfall.
By the way, it was also possible to look to the north and see the Silver Waterfall in the distance towards the beginning of the ride.
Apparently the tall 90-story waterfall doesn’t have an official name, which is why I’m informally calling it the “Fansipan Waterfall”.
Anyways, it plunges and tumbles in a series of at least 3 or 4 tall tiers, which I’d imagine make up the 90-story claim (so we’re looking at something on the order of 900ft or roughly 300m or thereabouts).
Of course with the glare of the cable car windows, it was hard to properly document the sighting, and how you experience it also probably depends on how crowded the cable car would be as well as where you’d be seated.
Nevertheless, this was my waterfalling excuse to talk about our Fansipan experience, which is probably the most popular thing to do for tourists visiting the town of Sapa.
Now if cable cars aren’t your thing (it’s not exactly something I’m a huge fan of), I did think about whether it would be possible to hike down from Fansipan to see this waterfall.
Well, as far as I know, it’s neither sanctioned nor possible without some really rough scrambling and route-finding (perhaps seeking out any roads or trails that people might have used to build the cable car in the first place).
Authorities
The “Fansipan Waterfall” resides on the slopes of Fansipan Mountain within Hoang Lien National Park near the city of Sapa in the San Sa Ho commune of the Sapa District in the Lao Cai Province, Vietnam. It is governed by the Sapa District Government. To inquire about current conditions, you may want to try the Sapa Tourism website or the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity website.
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