An Australian backpacker who got stuck in one of the world’s highest cable cars shared a Tiktok video showing the ordeal. The three-minute video has now been viewed more than half a million times.
Haris Minhaj, a 29-year civil engineer from Perth, Australia, was with a group of tourists when they were stranded 3,000 meters above sea level for three hours. He was traveling across south-east Asia and took a ride in a cable car on Mount Fansipan in Sapa, Vietnam.
The cable car ride offers spectacular views of the Hoang Lien Son mountain range; the ride should have taken 15 minutes and instead lasted three hours. Minhaj had only been in the cable car for a few minutes before it got stuck. “I thought, am I going to die here? Let’s stay positive and cheer everyone up,” he says in the video. “I better start filming everything in case we die, so there is a good record of the event.”
@fully.fledged Stuck in a cable car for 3 hours in a Vietnam, I don’t think I’m getting into a cable car ever again 🇻🇳 #f#fypf#foryouv#vietnam ♬ original sound – fully.fledged
Over the course of the three hours, Minhaj tried to make diffuse the tension by making people laugh. One passenger did not react as Minhaj expected and instead replied: “No dark jokes right now.” After being told that they would have to wait until the problem was resolved, Minhaj suggested that they had to come up with a “survival plan”. He then proposed rationing out the food.
Am I going to die here? Let’s stay positive and cheer everyone up.
Haris Minhaj
Minhaj provided an update after one hour of being trapped; people were beginning to panic. Over the next 30 minutes, some progress was made to get down the mountain. “The mood has certainly lifted,” he said.
Eventually, the cable car started moving and made its way back down. “After a few hours of waiting, electrical engineers reinstated the power to the cable car with backup power and the descent down was 10 times slower than normal,” Minhaj said.
According to The Independent, several users on Tiktok praised the Minhaj positive attitude during the difficult moment. One of the users wrote: “People wouldn’t [have] had a chance to worry focusing on his antics. Annoying or not, he would [have] helped them all”. Another one added, “At least this guy is making it fun he probably calmed everyone down”.
Minhaj told The Express that after exiting the cable car at the bottom he didn’t get a refund, but “they offered us a cup of tea.” He confessed to The Mirror that he had in fact felt panic during the whole ordeal.
