Fansipan is the highest point in Vietnam and in all of Indochina, 3,143 metres in the Hoàng Liên range above the hill town of Sa Pa, and what stands on top of it is a monastery. Stone paths carry you past eighteen carved arhats that appear and vanish as the cloud rolls through, up to Bích Vân Thiền Tự, built in Trần-dynasty style. Incense smoke drifts across the cold air. The path ends at a bronze Quan Âm, the Goddess of Mercy, 21.5 metres tall and among the largest cast Buddhas in Asia, on a terrace above the drifting white. A few hundred stone steps beyond it is the summit, marked by a plain steel pyramid stamped 3143m. That figure comes from a French survey in 1909 and falls about four metres short of the real height. Pilgrims and trekkers queue together to lay a hand on it.
Getting up here used to take two or three days on foot, and still can. Since 2016 a cable car has covered more than six kilometres of span in fifteen minutes, climbing straight into the mist. On a good day the cloud pulls apart beneath you to show ridgelines and terraces far below. What everyone comes for is under the summit, not beyond it. Cool damp air settles into the valleys overnight while warmer, clearer air sits above, so the peak, and you on it, stands over a flat white ceiling. This is biển mây, the sea of clouds, most dependable from September to November, when it flushes pink at dawn before the sun turns it crystalline blue. On the coldest winter days rime frost glazes the steps and the bronze. From mid-April into May rhododendrons come in red and pink waves across these slopes, the richest such forests in Vietnam. Down in the valley the old trekking route still passes H'mong and Red Dao villages. By mid-morning the ground warms, the white floor breaks apart, and the temple standing on cloud turns back into a mountain with a long drop under your feet.