Every time she is at InterContinental Hong Kong a gal has things-to-do on her list. One is to head for the gym (24-hours, and – as in all top fitness-oriented places, Technogym).
At some point there will be a swim in the outdoor, multi-sided pool, followed by a spell in the super-hot glass-side hot tub, looking over to Hong Kong Island. That is finished off with a quick dip, shoulders-under, in the adjacent, really REALLY cold cold tub.
Do this routine anytime between 8pm and 8.13pm and you can look across to the nightly laser show.
Dozens of buildings on Hong Kong Island brilliantly coordinate with beams into the air, and patterns leaping up and down such buildings as Bank of China Building, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, China Building, and Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
If a gal or a guy is in town for a meeting, no-one can host it better, anywhere in the Tsimshatsui area of Kowloon mainland, than this place. The ballroom has the most original ceiling I have ever seen (designer is Stephen Jones of Woods Bagot).
Look how it flows, like a wave that crashes in, crashes out, and the flow cuts in up, so to speak, right into the ceiling. Impossible to describe. The assorted-reds carpet also flows like waves.
Another plus is that this room seats 700, with no pillars in the way, so great for massive weddings or big meetings where you want to see everyone – and, of course, be seen, as you sit on a chair oh-so-stylishly covered in Perrier-Jouët-coloured damask (that is the house Champagne, by the way, and those clever enough to have paid extra for entry to the super-duper Club InterContinental lounge, run by Ida Wong who, like her team, anticipates every need before you know it, can drink their elegant fill).
Every gal needs to recover after sitting for hours in meetings. Nothing is more sybaritically worthwhile at this stage than a session in the hotel’s third floor iSpa. Manager Thea Wong suggested an Endermolift redensify session, with Andi – actually I do not know what happened as I slept blissfully, like a baby, but the M6 machine, part of LPG Integral Endermologie Spa Solutions, and the following Kerstin Florian, did miracles. Afterwards, everyone asked the girl where her energy came from.
Perhaps it was partly the iHealth vegetable risotto eaten in room 1626, looking out across beautiful Victoria Harbour – iHealth anti-oxidant nutri-dishes are devised with the help of Hongkong Adventist Hospital, and promise to fight diabetes, heart disease and hypertension.
Perhaps it was dinner in the gal’s favourite Steak House winebar + grill, one of HOTELS magazine’s top ten hotel restaurants of 2011. Choose from the salad bar, choose your steak, choose one of 11 steak knives, including a Porsche, choose salt from a special trolley, and mustard… but let the sommelier siphon a glass of Rioja Conde de Valdema 1995 from a five-litre Jereboam bottle that sits atop its own wine cask.
This is a luxury hotel with lots of surprises. To celebrate its tenth year as InterCon, the hotel is hosting one of lifetime’s ultimate luxury travel contests, with online travel club Indagare, run by former travel editor of Town & Country magazine Melissa Biggs Bradley and live.gourmet.com/anniversary-contest The lucky winner gets five nights at the hotel and a pair of Cathay Pacific round-trip tickets from the USA.