Yaly Hydropower visit: can you get in, tickets

Yaly Hydropower is easy to spot in photos and easy to drop into an itinerary, but unlike a waterfall or a lake, the gate here depends on a working power plant that is also being expanded. So the safest plan is to know how far the plant has let visitors in over the years, then check again before you ride the whole way out of town. Other places around town are in things to do around Pleiku.

Can you visit Yaly Hydropower today

The honest answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no, and it changes with the construction site. The company has not posted opening hours or a visiting procedure on its own website, so the only way to be sure is to call. The recent milestones look like this.

The newest milestone is the most reliable, but the July 2026 report only shows that visitors are going in, not whether you could turn up on an ordinary weekday and be let in. In earlier years the plant alone received 1,500 to 2,000 visits over the holidays and Tết, so it is used to visitors rather than closed to them. We recommend treating the trip as conditional: call first, and keep a second stop in mind in case the gate is shut.

On tickets, the only sourced figure is from March 2022, when the price fell from 50,000 VND to 30,000 VND per ticket. That is a 2022 price, from a time when visitors could not enter the underground hall, so do not budget with it for a trip today; ask again.

Before you go: who to call and what to ask

The home page of Ialy Hydropower Company lists its address as 727 Phạm Văn Đồng, Thống Nhất ward, Gia Lai province, and the phone number in the footer is 0269 2222008. That is the company office; the main gate of the plant, per the 2022 article, is in Ialy commune on the Gia Lai side. The company belongs to Vietnam Electricity and runs tourism services, and the plant has been recognised by the provincial authorities as meeting the standard for a local tourist site, so a call about visiting is nothing unusual for them.

When you call, ask four things, because each one changes how you plan the day:

• Whether visitors are let inside on the day you plan to come, and how far you can go: only the spillway and storage dam, or the tunnel and the underground hall too.
• What a ticket costs, where to buy it, and whether independent visitors are allowed or only groups.
• Opening hours and the weekly closing day.
• Whether you can hire a motor boat on the reservoir, where, and at what price.

If you are let in, stick to the set route, the stopping points and the signs, and follow your guide, because that is what the company asked of visitors when it reopened in 2022.

How far is Yaly Hydropower from Pleiku, and how do you get there

The plant is about 40 km north-west of Pleiku. Type “Thủy điện Ialy” into Google Maps to get the route and the drive time for the hour you leave. If you have no vehicle, see how to rent a motorbike in Pleiku.

Administrative names here changed in the merger, which is why you should ask for directions by the name of the plant, not the commune. The complex straddles two sides: the main gate, spillway and storage dam are in Ialy commune on the Gia Lai side, while the memorial, water intake and powerhouse are in Ialy commune on the former Kon Tum side. After the merger those two sides are Ia Ly commune in Gia Lai province and Ya Ly commune in Quảng Ngãi province. If your trip continues towards Kon Tum, Pleiku to Kon Tum covers that stretch separately.

Ia Ly commune is close to sights such as Biển Hồ Lake, Bửu Minh Pagoda and the hundred-year-old pines. So if the plant is not receiving visitors that day you do not have to go home empty-handed: Biển Hồ T’Nưng and Biển Hồ Chè (Biển Hồ Tea Hills) are two fallback stops in the same area.

If you do get in: what you will pass

The 2022 route runs from the plant’s main gate past the spillway, along the storage dam, up to the memorial and back to the main gate, and the whole loop takes about 45 minutes. The spillway has 6 radial gates, each 15 m wide, and on a flood-release morning it is wrapped in drifting mist and sometimes a seven-colour rainbow.

The storage dam curves around the reservoir, about 1,142 to 1,190 m long and roughly 69 to 70 m high. At more than a kilometre, it is long enough to walk part of it, with the reservoir on one side and the river valley on the other.

The memorial is an octagon on a hilltop, honouring those who died building the project. Give yourself time to stop here, because it is the spot where you can look back over the whole site without going inside the mountain.

The underground machine hall is the part that draws the most curiosity, and it is also the part that depends most on whether the plant is open. To get in, you walk a tunnel more than 600 m long through the mountain to the hall at elevation 309 m, where four generating units sit. After almost 25 years since the project was finished, stalactites and stalagmites have started to form at the end of the tunnel, a detail you rarely see at any other plant. Water reaches the plant through 2 pipes 7 m in diameter running through the mountain, each more than 4 km long, but the water intake is the part that was paused to visitors in 2022.

Which month to go

Early December to August of the next year is the ideal window for a visit. If you only have one weekend to choose from, we recommend using that range.

If you want the mist at the spillway, you need to be more careful. Mist and the seven-colour rainbow appear only on mornings when the plant releases flood water, and the release schedule is not fixed. When you call the company, ask whether the day you plan to come is a release day, and go in the morning if it is.

Motor boats, Ia Mơ Nông village and what to bring

Around the plant there is also reservoir time to enjoy. Visitors can ride a motor boat on the reservoir, eat reservoir seafood and experience the culture of the ethnic villages along the shore. You can also visit a Jrai village and take a boat on the Sê San river, and for people coming from far away, the motor boat trip downstream on the Sê San is often the most memorable part.

In Ia Ly commune, not far from Sâm Phát Farmstay, is the Jrai community tourism village of Ia Mơ Nông, where you can learn about local culture. Ask for boat prices and where to hire one when you arrive, because no operator has published them.

You do not need much, but bring enough food and drink for a day trip, especially if you go by boat, because there are few stalls along the shore.

Why the plant closed to visitors, and what the expansion is

The expanded plant has a design capacity of 360 MW with 2 generating units, and construction began in mid-2021. That construction site is the reason the 2022 article lists the water intake and the underground hall as closed to visitors, and in 2024 expansion-project trucks led the plant to pause visitors going inside.

Progress afterwards was quick. Unit 1 joined the grid on 26 November 2024, and unit 2 joined 18 days ahead of schedule, in a report dated 14 December 2024. The expansion adds an average of about 233 million kWh a year. The power from the two new units feeds the national grid; if you live in Pleiku and want to understand your own bill, see electricity prices in Pleiku.

Do not confuse it with Sê San 3 expansion, a different project of 130 MW, due to start construction in May 2027.

What the plant is and what Yaly means

Yaly Hydropower started construction on 4 November 1993 and was inaugurated on 27 April 2002.

It is the third-largest national key project, after Hòa Bình and Sơn La hydropower. The name has a story too: in Jrai, Ya means tears and Ly is a beautiful girl’s name, and by tradition Yaly means the tears of H’Ly. Before the plant was built this was a mighty waterfall more than 40 m high, and now only the scour hole at the foot of the dam remains. So you are visiting a waterfall that has been replaced by a dam; do not expect to see falling water.

Pairing Yaly with another stop for a full day

Because Ia Ly commune is close to Biển Hồ Lake, Bửu Minh Pagoda and the hundred-year-old pines, the easiest plan is to make Yaly the main stop if the plant is open, or the second stop after Biển Hồ T’Nưng and Biển Hồ Chè if you are not sure. The weekend near Pleiku page gathers places around town to choose from, and the Pleiku itinerary for 1, 2 or 3 days shows which day to put Yaly on. If you prefer mountain scenery to dams, see Chư Đăng Ya volcano and Hàm Rồng mountain.