PHOTOGRAPH FOR TIME BY KARL CHIU

By Liam Fitzpatrick

Posted Monday, June 27, 2005; 20:00 HKT
Sometimes, it's hard to separate my love of Hong Kong from my love of a particular few square meters of it, sequestered high above the city, on the spa deck of the InterContinental Hotel. Here, ringed by opulent greenery, are the hotel's three infinity pools. Their waters seem to sluice magically into Victoria Harbour, from the opposite side of which looms the magnificence of the Hong Kong skyline. (At night, when the buildings are incandescent with neon, the view is almost hallucinatory.) Waiters hover with champagne. The city's frenzied masses are nowhere to be seen. The setting, in other words, is emblematic of Hong Kong at its sybaritic best—and the pools are so discreetly situated that hotel guests are often unaware of them. Most arrive at the spa deck in bathrobe and slippers, and instinctively veer left toward the main swimming pool, where portly business types laze on sun loungers or shatter the tranquility with their noxious phone calls. But those who happen to head up the small flight of stairs to the right are rewarded with the discovery of a lifetime (or, at least, of a vacation). An audible gasp is the typical response, not only to the first sight of these pools and the view they afford but to the fact that, usually, there is no one else there—meaning that one is allowed to enjoy the ultimate Hong Kong luxury of privacy in surroundings of delicious decadence. Away with your Lourdes and your Ganges. When I need healing, it is to these sacred waters that I shall always return—assuming this story doesn't send everyone else there, too.

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