Day 144 – Sapa
The Legend of Fansipan
With my wife feeling marginally better today, we decided to go to Fansipan Mountain. Fansipan is the tallest mountain in Vietnam with a height of 3,143m. We were going to walk to Sapa Station, and then catch a train to the bottom of the cable car, but when we got there, we were enjoying the rare sunshine too much so kept going another 50 minutes to the top ourselves.
Sapa Station 
Good deed for the day
Along the way, there was a guy lifting a heavy tree onto his bike. I decided to help him out and hold it as he tied it on to the bike. After this, we went to the top, and found out that this cable car system was under the Sunworld group, which is the same company that created Ba Na Hills (Day 129).
The Sunworld Fansipan Legend amusement park cost 700,000 VND / $42.36 AUD, but this time there was only one cable car, and it was longer than 6km. For some reason, when we got there, no one else was going up, so we had no queues for anything and we ended up with a private cable car!
As the cable car ascended the mountain range we disappeared into the clouds. It was still sunny, but the wind was cold. Once we got to the top, we entered where I guarantee 100% the air benders from Avatar: The Last Airbender would have lived! There were various temples and shrines in the clouds. Oh and heaps of stairs to the peak.
As we walked up the stairs, we felt a lot more tired than we normally would have due to the lack of oxygen, so we were walking slowly. At the peak, there is a pyramid structure with a massive flag on top that signifies the peak. There are also several pyramids, made for photo opportunities.
After a while, we decided to have a coffee, but the prices were as high as the mountain at 80,000 VND / $4.80 AUD. We ended up buying coffee at the bottom cable car station for 30,000 VND / $1.80 AUD instead.
We walked back to town and with my wife not feeling well again, we went back to Sapa Romance Hotel to rest. At night time, I went out looking for some take away Banh Mi. While asking the various shops if they did take away, I am sure one store tried to sell me Horse meat! It wasn’t available in take away so I politely refused. I was luckily able to find a nice place, that did take away Banh Mi.