Best Pools

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...