Tours · Booking

Booking, with the terms written before you need them

The sequence from first email to document pack, the payment and cancellation terms in figures, how far ahead sleeper berths need to be asked for, and what happens to your dates when the cable car closes for weather.

Plan my trip See guide prices

paid to confirm: 100%
balance due later: 0
first reply, working hours: 12 h

The sequence, start to finish

01
You send four things
Dates or a month, the number of travellers and their ages, which tour, and anything that changes the plan: a knee, a fear of heights, somebody who cannot sleep on a train.
02
Feasibility, inside twelve working hours
Whether the dates work, what the cable car operating window is on those days, and what we would change about the plan before quoting it.
03
Written itinerary and quotation, within two working days
The hotel by name, the train service by number, the exact fare for your date, which tickets are inside the price, and the group size the figure is calculated at.
04
You confirm by paying in full
This is the point at which berths and rooms are bought in your names. Before it, nothing is held; we do not claim to hold what we have not paid for.
05
No balance to follow
One invoice, paid at confirmation, no separate charges added later except options you ask for after confirmation.
06
Document pack, seven days out
Tickets, the hotel voucher, the meeting point with a time in GMT+7, the guide's name and the on-the-ground numbers to use during the trip.

Every booking is a single payment at confirmation, including bookings made inside fourteen days of departure. Those are possible more often than people expect outside holiday weeks, and much less often inside them. What the figure itself is built from is set out on the pricing page.

Payment and what it buys

Payment100 percent of the total, due to confirm

What the payment buysRail berths or coach seats in your names, the hotel booking, and the guide held for your dates

BalanceNone; nothing further is due before travel

Late bookingsThe same: the full amount is due at confirmation

Options added laterFuniculars, buffet, a private guide upgrade: invoiced separately when you ask for them

CurrencyQuoted and invoiced in US dollars; tickets bought on the day in the villages are paid in dong

The payment is not a booking fee. Most of it is spent almost immediately on things that carry your name, which is also why the cancellation terms below tighten as the date approaches rather than staying flat.

Standard terms, confirmed in writing

The figures on this page are our standard terms. The version that binds is the one written on your quotation, and if anything differs for your dates it is stated there rather than buried here.

Cancellation, in plain figures

When you cancel	What is refunded	Why
30 days or more before the first travel date	Everything paid, less any transport ticket already bought under a non-refundable fare	At this distance nothing else has been committed
15 to 29 days	50 percent of the total paid	Rooms and berths are committed and the resale window is short
14 days or less	Nothing	Everything has been bought and the date cannot be resold
No-show, or leaving part-way through	Nothing for the unused portion	The cost has already been incurred

Transport tickets are the exception that runs through the whole table. Rail berths and coach seats are bought in your name and their refund terms are set by the carrier, not by us. Before we buy them we tell you what those terms are for the specific service and class you have chosen, so a cancellation never produces a figure you have not already seen.

If we cancel a departure, for example because a group falls below the minimum of two, the full amount paid is returned, including any ticket cost we cannot recover. That is our loss rather than yours.

Berths: how far ahead to ask

Sleeper accommodation is the one element of a Sa Pa trip that genuinely sells out, and it sells out unevenly. Four-berth cabins go first, Friday and Saturday departures go before midweek ones, and national holidays clear the whole class weeks ahead. Six-berth cabins and coach sleepers hold on much longer.

Ordinary midweek dates: three to four weeks ahead gives a free choice of train service, cabin class and hotel.
Friday and Saturday departures: four to six weeks, because the four-berth cabins are the first thing to go on those nights.
September to November harvest weeks: six weeks, and expect hotel rates at the top of the published range.
National holidays: six to eight weeks. Private carriages publish a 10 to 30 percent uplift on these dates and the two-berth VIP cabins disappear first.
Inside a week: often still possible, usually in a six-berth cabin or on the road. Ask rather than assume; we will say plainly if the answer is no.

The daytime option is the one most travellers forget. SP8 leaves Lao Cai at 13:40 and reaches Hanoi at 21:42, which turns a three-day trip into four days and removes the second night in transit entirely. It is often available when the night services are not.

Sources: vetau247 — Hanoi to Lao Cai timetable; vetau247 — Chapa Express carriages · checked 2026-09-24.

Documents we need, and documents you need

Rail tickets in Vietnam are issued against identity details, and hotels record passports at check-in, so two pieces of information have to be exact rather than approximate.

Full name exactly as printed on the passport, in the passport's own spelling, for every traveller. A mismatch is a ticket that has to be reissued.
Passport number, nationality and date of birth, for the rail booking and the hotel register.
Ages for children, because cable car, funicular and village entrance tickets all have separate child fares.
Anything medical the guide should know, sent to us rather than mentioned on the morning. Altitude at the summit is 3,143 metres and the valley day is twelve kilometres.

What you need to hold: a passport valid for your stay, whatever entry permission your nationality requires, and travel insurance. Entry rules are yours to arrange and we do not give immigration advice, because getting it wrong on your behalf is not a risk worth taking with somebody's trip.

Paying

Payment is by bank transfer. The account details are on the invoice, they do not change during a booking, and every payment is receipted. Transfer charges levied by your own bank sit outside the invoice total.

We do not take card details by email, by message or over the phone, and we will never ask for them. A message that appears to come from us asking for card details did not come from us.
The account name on the invoice is the only account to pay into. If anything about payment details appears to change mid-booking, stop and write to the address on your original quotation.
Entrance tickets you add on the day, a buffet or a funicular you decide on at the base station, are paid where you buy them.

Nothing is held before payment

Some operators will tell you a room or a berth is being held while you decide. We do not, because it is not true until something has been paid for. What we will do is tell you how fast that particular class is going on your date.

When the mountain closes: changing a date

The cable car operator suspends the line in high wind or bad weather and publishes no numerical threshold, so closure is a morning decision rather than a forecast. The operating window itself also differs by day: Monday to Friday takes passengers up from 08:00 to 14:30, Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 07:30 to 15:30, with the last descent between 16:00 and 17:00.

On a three-day trip, the mountain moves to the other free day. This is the main practical argument for three days rather than two.
On a day tour with another day in Sa Pa, we move it to that day at no charge.
On a day tour with no spare day, you choose: switch to the valley walk and pay the difference in price, or cancel the day, in which case the cable car ticket cost comes back to you and the guide and transport element does not.
If the whole trip has to move, the constraint is the transport tickets, not us. Rail and coach carriers set their own change terms and we tell you what they are for your specific ticket before it is bought.

None of this is compensation for a missed view. Cloud sits on this summit for a large part of the year and an early start improves the odds without fixing them. Travel insurance that covers a missed activity is the only thing that turns a weather closure into money back.

Sources: Fansipan cable car operating hours and weather policy · checked 2026-09-24.

Plan your trip

Send dates and we will tell you what is still available

Cabin class, hotel and the operating window for your specific days, in one reply. Twelve working hours, Monday to Saturday, GMT+7.

Check availability

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Can we hold a date while we decide?

Not in the sense of a guaranteed hold, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. Nothing is reserved until payment is made, because berths and rooms are bought rather than blocked.

What we can do is tell you honestly how quickly the class you want is moving on your date, and warn you when a Friday four-berth cabin is down to the last places.

What happens if our train is late?

The transfer at Lao Cai is timed to your service rather than to a clock, so a late arrival does not leave anybody at the station. In the June to August rain season delays of 15 to 30 minutes are common enough that the first morning is planned with the margin already in it.

A delay long enough to cost an activity is handled the same way as a weather closure: it moves to another day if there is one, and the ticket element is returned if there is not.

Do you need our passport details before we pay?

Only the full name as printed in the passport, so the quotation matches what the ticket will say. Numbers and dates of birth are needed once payment is made and the tickets are actually being issued.

Details are used for the rail booking and the hotel register and for nothing else.

Can we change the group size after booking?

Adding travellers is usually straightforward up to the cap of twelve, subject to berths being available in the same class and cabin.

Reducing the group changes the per-person price, because the guide, the vehicle and the transfers do not get cheaper. We reissue the quotation at the new size rather than absorbing it silently.