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?

Another Brick in the Wall.

Teach a man to fish.

Basseterre, Saint Kitts – The low-slung brick wall sports a message: “No nastiness.”

As we wade through the mild humidity past downtown – where faded British phone boxes stand barren, in an apt metaphor for the former colonial state – and into the community, many walls carry similar slogans.

They call for unity, for the elimination of gender-based and sexual violence, and decry crime with crudely scrawled guns and knives. The city has the highest murder rate of any country’s capital.

Interspersed are gang tags and RIPs to fallen comrades like ‘Beat Boy.’ Like billboards to poverty, the street is filled with the disassembled jigsaw puzzles of rusty vehicles. Many of the pieces are missing, never again to be found.

Back downtown, more memories of the slow fade of colonialism and a traffic officer, who barks at me about jaywalking at an uncertain intersection.

It’s supposed to be a $500 fine. But, I get a pass.

No nastiness today.