My night in the clouds at the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong – it’s the highest hotel in the world and offers breathtaking views from a height of 1,600ft

The elevator is one of the fastest in the city and travels at a speed of 10 meters per second. That means it takes one minute and ten seconds to reach the check-in counter on the 103rd floor of the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong, where you collect your key and see the view for the first time.

At least that’s the idea. But being the tallest hotel in the world, it is so high that all I can see for much of my stay is clouds.

Still, it’s quite exciting, and it explains why people pay around £380 ($480) a night for such an elevated spot above the twinkling skyline of Hong Kong’s Kowloon region.

The hotel occupies floors 102 to 118 of the International Commerce Center (ICC), a glass beacon only made possible by the 1998 closure of an airport famous for its hair-raising descents, as planes weave between skyscrapers and towering apartment buildings. flew.

The superlatives come thick and fast. The Ritz-Carlton has the highest swimming pool in the world (at almost 490 metres), and the Ozone bar, at the top of the hotel, proudly carries the title of ‘Asia’s highest rooftop bar’.

The hotel is 46 floors higher than The Shard in London, which has only 72 floors, and 153 meters higher than the Eiffel Tower. I had arrived on the Airport Express train, which conveniently pulls into the basement of the ICC (although I am an exception among the other guests, who show up in chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royces).

It’s disappointing not to be at the very top of the tower, but the grumbling quickly disappears as I open the heavy door of my luxury suite and step into a huge living room, with a desk, chaise longue and quilted flower boxes.

The angular floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the South China Sea and Hong Kong Island. Some skyscrapers look so small that you feel like picking them up and putting them in your pocket. After a quick shower after my 13-hour flight from London, I head to the pool and gym on the 118th floor to work up an appetite.

Two hours later I return to find my view has been repainted by the clouds. They feel intimidatingly close – all I can see is white, like I’m on a plane going through a storm.

I spend much of my day exploring the busy markets and back streets of Hong Kong Island, which are full of locals and tourists. They queue outside small tea houses and noodle bars as men push carts full of steaming dim sum.

That evening I go to the 102nd floor of the hotel to Tin Lung Heen for dinner. “Sorry about the view,” the waiter says as he takes me to my table – rain dripping through the window. I can just make out some of the tallest towers in the city.

The next day at breakfast I am asked, “How are you this morning, Mrs. Sime?”

‘On top of the world’ is my answer. He doesn’t pick up on my attempt at a joke, and before I know it, I’m being taken 118 floors back to Earth – in more ways than one.