Hong Kong

The Ngong Ping 360 cable car takes about 25 minutes up from Tung Chung on Lantau, then leaves the last 268 steps to you. At the top is the Big Buddha, 34 metres of bronze. The other way up is on Hong Kong Island, where the Peak Tram has been hauling people up Victoria Peak since 1888 and has yet to run out of them. From the Sky Terrace the harbour and the skyline are, for once, below you rather than above. Do both. Then take a ferry.

In Central, where the towers run straight up from the waterfront, it is easy to forget that Hong Kong is surrounded by water. Lamma is about 30 minutes out, for a walk through the car-free village of Yung Shue Wan; Cheung Chau, 40 minutes by fast ferry, has Tung Wan Beach and its temples. Far fewer people live on the Outlying Islands, and in a city this densely packed that is the draw: room to get properly lost in nature, and a fair chance of coming out on a beach.

Where to sleep is a choice between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, and they make different trips. Tsim Sha Tsui, on the Kowloon harbourfront, has the promenade for the nightly Symphony of Lights and the Star Ferry across to Central. North of it, Nathan Road runs towards Yau Ma Tei past the cheap stays, a less polished Hong Kong and a very different one. On the Island the skyscrapers are where you are; from Kowloon they are what you look at. The Island splits again, between the party in Lan Kwai Fong and the corporate towers; Admiralty, next to Central, has the towers without the bars.

Eating, on either side, is quite hard to get wrong. There is great food at every price, and a trip ought to take in both ends, a street stall one night and a tasting menu the next. The two bills will look as though they came from different cities.

We have been twice, once in boiling heat and once in typhoon rain, and loved both trips, which says more for Hong Kong than for the weather. The comfortable months are October to early December: cooler, far less humid and the sunniest of the year. Summer, roughly May to September, is hot, humid and the wettest stretch, and typhoon season officially runs July to September. At Typhoon Signal 8 or above, outdoor plans are off and public transport shuts down, and the islands will keep.