I wake in ache, but my spirit is renewed. There is no way in hell I am going to sit in this apartment crippled by unknowing. We are going to the peak to observe our surroundings. I look up the location of the peak tram and we head out, I now have my own blue powerful dot. The way is steep and our breathing labored. The blue dot moves farther from our target, we reverse and make our way down the slope this time. Its all looking on course then we see the sidewalk runs out in twenty feet and the road has no shoulder. Ugh. I pull out the paper map, and look at the blue dot, confounded by how one can reach the target without a set of wings.

Enter fairy godmother. This time I remember her well. She has taken the form of a woman from Ecuador with 8 children- all grown. She has been in Hong Kong for a year and started out in the very apartments we now occupy but lives around the block now. She saw the kids lined up behind me like little ducks and thought of the years with her own children in tow. She does not discount the glass of water I hold- she has done the same here in this place and knows the weight of it and wants to help. We follow her down a wind of stairs and across what looks like a dangerous curve, then cross another street and back from the street under a graffiti laden overpass to a path where we wait for her to drop her bag at home. We walk by one peak tram station and she warns us the tram never stops there to not bother then she shows us to the main peak tram station. She explains that no one that speaks English really takes the PS buses because the drivers speak only Chinese. She didn't know how they worked but was impressed we took one. We both figured they probably just run along the streets published on their sign and you flag them down like a cab. They don't stop if they are full. She encouraged me to take cabs- they are cheap and easy to find. I often feel like a sell out relying on them instead of public transport but she lifted this burden.

She then showed me on the map the way to town. It's just 15 minutes when you know where to go! It is across another street and through a mostly closed gate to the back of a church parking lot where a labeled path can then be found that leads right down to a great access point in Central. In an instant, my life changed.

We go to the Peak and the realization of where we are snaps into view. Am I seeing double or does this place trump New York? I look down upon matching Manhattans.