Peaking Doug.

Just a peek.

Victoria Peak, Hong Kong – The day’s journey begins as a slalom between cheap umbrellas spitting the morning’s weather onto my face. It’s a rushed blur of colour set against the mist.

At my height, it’s also a risk to the eyes.

Incense and pungent dried herbs paint colourful scenes as shop owners toss cardboard and styrofoam boxes into the road while setting up for the day. Streetside butchers bathed in bright lights cleave their wares to barked orders.

As we make our way up steep, bamboo-lined hills toward Victoria Peak, cicadas scream like small saws from moss-covered trees. With each step, skyscrapers fall into the sea behind us.

I pity the Foo (Dog).

Our lungs fill with clouds as we make our way up the 2,800-metre trail to the summit. All the while, the humidity reminds us of our humanity. Butterflies with jewelled wings flutter by like ballet-dancing broaches. A flautist, out for  a stroll, sets the scene as our sweat nurtures the soil.

The hike has taken us close to an hour in the rain, the start of which was quite steep, before settling in for an even, circuitous trail.

As the skies finally open up, though, so do the views, glass stalagmites rising into the rainforest.

It's why we made the trek.

Take a Bao.

I was the only thing not steamed.

Sheung Wan, Hong Kong – A steel trolley rattles by, its front-left wheel inevitably catching and, like a figure skater, doing a pirouette.

On it, bamboo steamers stand stacked, filled with cha siu bao, steamed pork meatballs with quails’ eggs and other traditional dim sum. (Your tally card is emphatically stamped when you see something you like.)

Pointing is our language of choice in the absence of common words.

Another trolley carries a large steel pot of congee. A woman pushing a third tut-tuts me when I refuse her offer of har gow. She is right — it’s immediately evident it’s my mistake to miss out.

But, we’ve been travelling a long time and have immediately thrown ourselves into the fray. Our whole breakfast comes to $20.

The Lin Heung Tea House was founded in 1889 and has stood on this spot for nearly 40 years. It offers loose leaf tea, filling your pot from a large kettle, while food comes down the dumbwaiter, or is carted out of the kitchen before winding around your shared table – women doffing the steamers’ lids like an old British gentleman tipping his cap.

We don’t know the language. Don’t know the food. But we know it’s exactly what we’re looking for.

And I have the heavily red-stamped order card to prove it.

Nature Versus Nurture.

We've been building to this.

Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong – Lush, green hills hooded in rain clouds unfold beside us. They’d be more lush without several layers of weathered vellum laid over them.

The phallic machismo of shipping cranes and industrial steel, meanwhile, thrust from the water on the other side. Again, I question progress in the face of scarred beauty.

With a smooth purr, however, the train ride from the airport into the city strikes a balance: past versus future; beauty versus enterprise. Sometimes it's just a matter of the side you choose to look at.

Our arrival is like velvet.

And yet, I’m unsure what’s foggier: the landscape, or my mind after a 15-hour flight that left at 1:30 a.m. old-local time.

At what point do daydreams evaporate into the clouds around us?