Lights, Camera, Action.

Alighting for an evening.

Central, Hong Kong — Birds fly across the International Commerce Building — once the fourth-tallest building in the world — as laser beams and search lights streak across the sky.

Their feathers are built of blinking offices.

The Symphony of Lights takes place across the Hong Kong Harbour every night for 10 minutes at 8 p.m. and draws quite a crowd. You can even listen to accompanying music performed by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra through an app — if you can hear it over the revellers on the party boat.

Or the amplified singers down at the pier.

Buildings on both side flash like strobes, celebrating the city. Choreographed images light up otherwise boring office windows. Neon signs blink in unison.

There are worse ways to spend an evening than with a box of takeaway dumplings — pork, and kimchi — and a beer, sitting on the pier.

Nearby, a model preens to her own portable lights as five photographers take their best shots. A bride and groom stride down the pier to capture their own memories.

The hearts cascading across the tower across the bay, it seems, are appropriate.

Racy.

Neon and on and on.

Kowloon, Hong Kong — It’s a sprint to the finish. And we took a wrong turn.

We’ve spent the evening at the Temple Street Night Market in Kowloon, and the last ferry to Hong Kong Island leaves at 11:45 p.m.

Time spent sifting through cheap knockoffs and knicknacks that cut out the middle man has left us running to the pier. We left behind the dai pai dong with grilled meats and delicious looking spiced crab as shutters began falling sharply over storefronts like steel blankets.

Prostitutes don’t bat an over-lacquered eyelash. Even the purveyors of pastel cat-printed t-shirts, hand-held fans and Cucci purses barely raise a wrist in limp protest at our rushed departure.

This side of town is a far cry from the opulence of Canton Street — where a Lamborghini passes a pair of Bentleys — underlining the region’s vast wealth disparity.

Only a few blocks separate them, but their worlds could not be farther apart.

With the clock barking in our ears like a drill sergeant, the blocks feel even longer. We make it just in time.

Naturally, I try to pay with my room key.

It has been a long day.

Communal.

I'd be shellfish to eat all of this.

Wan Chai, Hong Kong — At home, communal seating in restaurants isn’t the norm.

Which makes it that much more fun when I find myself seated alone in a half-empty restaurant that suddenly fills up for the midday rush. The menu is a choose-your-own-adventure of what-will-this-be to an English speaker.

A woman then tucks in to the seat across from me and casts her eyes to the side as I tackle my bowl of noodles. Likely improperly. The gulf between us is greater than just Formica. Perhaps it’s caused by the chillies I added, which not only added flavour, but drained my sinuses.

Regardless, the cuttlefish balls, shrimp dumplings and noodles in broth hit the spot after walking around all morning.

Leaving the restaurant, the skies again cave in, leaving vendors tucked under bridges used as umbrellas while unpacking newspapers. LEGO constructions of cardboard boxes, meanwhile, appear on every corner; it seems Monday is re-stocking day.

Women wrapped in trash bags push stick brooms, scratching at the sidewalk; others drag carts to collect garbage and recycling. If nothing else, the city is clean.

As they bustle to work, men and women alike daintily hold thin cigarettes and give them feminine puffs. In the market, fish flop in styrofoam boxes, orchids bloom in great volume and brightly lit produce is haggled for and bundled. The skies clear anew.

Five spice hangs in the air.

Just another day in Hong Kong.

Court of Approval.

Baseline for a great experience.

Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong — I emerge from the rainforest and onto a basketball court, looking to rain jumpers.

I’ve always wanted to join a pickup game during my travels and have only ever found soccer. Even at mid-morning, it’s 30 degrees, with 87 per cent humidity. And, the court is longer than normal.

“You wanna play?”

The request, in stilted English, comes my way not long after I start leaning on the fence to watch the game already underway.

Perhaps I should have had breakfast.

From five-on-five to four-on-four and two-on-three, the heat dribbles off us more than we do. The ball moves. We catch passes, and our breath, swallowing steam.

The men speak Cantonese, but a screen is a screen in any language — especially with my size. Together, we applaud each others’ efforts and enjoy the boundary-breaking nature of sport. In this case, travelling takes on a couple meanings.

Turnarounds, a game-winning three to cap the day, and smiles all around.

I’ve imagined this moment through many countries.

A Peace of the City.

Stream of consciousness.

Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong — My plan had been to wander through the University of Hong Kong, past pools of carp and turtles, and through labyrinthine covered walkways.

But, a wall of green falls onto the back of campus. And, nestled into the peak of jade, a steep, narrow staircase looms like a beacon.

How can I not?

The slopes are polka-dotted by drainage holes, like insect burrows. Giant palms fan themselves in the lazy heat, and a golden silk orb weaver the size of my palm keeps its witch-like eyes on me. All eight of them.

In the tangle of vines, the mossy carpet offers only nature sounds like those that have sold millions of relaxation CDs. Thickets of bamboo stand sentry.

Otherwise, it’s absolute peace in the city.

This path circling Victoria Peak leads to a waterfall, its slippery, moss-covered rocks pushing me away. The only chatter is the stream, telling me ghost stories of time eternal.

With nobody knowing where I am, and the risk of injury high, I decide to turn back prior to reaching its source.

Perhaps I’m getting smarter with age.

Ferry Hot.

A colourful rain boat across the harbour.

Kowloon, Hong Kong – Perched atop wooden benches on the legendary Star Ferry, we bob like rubber ducks across Victoria Harbour to Kowloon. The trip costs about 33 cents.
The ferry has been in service since 1888 and carries 26 million passengers annually (or 70,000 a day). And, for the first time since we've arrived, the sun is out.

Last night's rains, however, have made the air woolly.

I’ve been surprised at how relatively quiet and unrushed Hong Kong has been for a major Asian city of 7.4 million people that is also the world’s fourth-most densely populated region. Saturday has changed that somewhat.

I have to imagine it's just a matter of the areas we have visited.

The day's Star.

Along Canton Road in Kowloon, lineups form in unwrinkled fabrics and cart wheeled luggage bags outside Hermès and Salvatore Ferragamo. They await the nod from black-suited security; I drip in a t-shirt.

I also imagine they would shoo me from the door. The sequined stores drawing daydream eyes are beyond my pay scale anyway.

The rising heat, paired with a looming fatigue from travel, has lowered our lids, cutting short our venture across the harbour. There will be no Temple Street Night Market for us this time.

Along the shore, two ladies sit with a large bag of Cheetos and a 1.5-litre bottle of red wine.

For today, that would be more my pace.

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?