You rise from ground level where the skyscrapers hold sway past feverish markets and haughty government buildings - and

You rise from ground level, where the skyscrapers hold sway, past feverish markets and haughty government buildings - and relish the prospect of skipping down again.To try to make sense of a city-state that somehow manages to sprawl vertically as well as horizontally, you need to take the Victoria Peak tram, which climbs sharply to the crown of the island, leaving the escalator way beneath.All places that are blessed with a particularly splendid panorama tend to despoil them, and the Peak has made its bid for high-altitude infamy with a tawdry three-storey shopping centre. It was designed as a serious piece of infrastructure to whisk commuters between the Mid-Levels (halfway between the Peak and the sea) and their offices, but as a tourist wheeze it has few rivals. On Lantau Island you climb; on Hong Kong Island you slouch as the ground moves beneath you. I had found Discovery Bay, complete with its apartment complexes, fast-food joints and twice-hourly fast ferries to Hong Kong Island.

I caught one.The island's financial district features the ultimate in street furniture: an escalator nearly a mile long. A little further, the picture of Chinese tranquillity turned into a Western abrasion. A village of sorts appeared: low wooden buildings fastened to a rickety quay of jostling boats. Many of the half-submerged boulders that go to make up Hong Kong's archipelago of 235 islands had by now shrugged off their blanketing of haze and were parading through the South China Sea, the last pebbles of colonialism skimming through their final 20 months of British rule.On the far side, past a Trappist monastery, I followed the pathway that twisted around the peninsula. Ten minutes of scrambling and a few hundred feet higher, I found a silent pagoda, its scarlet frame twirling gracefully into the brutish, steely sky. I took a path that cut up past a clutter of tiny cottages on to a grandly convex slope that was naked except for coarse grass and a scattering of scrub.

The tourist's Hong Kong is over-populated and overly popular; the secret Hong Kong is under-valued and misunderstood.As the mists gave up their struggle to cling to the placid sea and rumpled hillsides, I walked along a beach deserted except for a scruffy dog and its well-kempt owner. The street-level energy of Kowloon, conducted frenetically in a language as alien as the local food, dissipates only where the harbour begins. This famous gouge of water frets with ferries around the clock and acts as a buffer to the architectural, financial and geological heights of Hong Kong Island.None of this will concern anyone who takes the sensible course and strikes out towards one of the straggle of islands that have yet to acquire the critical masses. Within two hours of touchdown, you can be meandering along the seafront at Silvermine Bay on Lantau Island, confusing your jetlagged appetite mightily as you nibble your way through the waterside huddle of open-air restaurants, and planning your hike the next day. Hong Kong is one of those places you know before you have gone there.

It will drop you at the Outlying Islands quay, where you earn no points for predicting that the next stage of the journey is a trip to an outlying island. A mosquito net will enhance your chance of getting some sleep.. Forget shopping; ignore the fact that the world's most populous country is 30 miles north and approaching fast Hong Kong is a good place for a hike. When you arrive at the airport, reject the temptation to check into a flashy hotel. Instead, get on the bus that burrows beneath the harbour to Hong Kong Island. In Hoi An, Hoi An Hotel, 6 Tran Hung Dao St; $6 per night for dormitory accommodation.How to stay healthyNo vaccinations are compulsory, but precautions are recommended against tetanus, polio, cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and malaria. Discounted tickets on many other airlines are available, particularly on Thai and Cathay Pacific.Where to stayIn Nha Trang, Vien Dong Hotel, 1 Tran Hung Dao St; rooms from $25 a night.

A one-month visa costs pounds 40.Getting thereCheap flights to Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City on Aeroflot (via Moscow) are around pounds 700 through agents such as Regent Holidays (0117-921 1711). And no one had mentioned the war.How to get a visaApplication forms and tourist visas are available in person or by post from the Vietnamese Embassy at 12-14 Victoria Road, London W8 (0171-937 1912). A local bus that looked like a survivor of a demolition derby drove past, and I was glad I wasn't on it. Ahead of me lay the beach and an iced coffee, then fish for supper at the Cafe des Amis with some fellow backpackers. But the heat finally defeated me and I got back on the bike and hardly felt the potholes as we went back to Hoi An.On the way we passed people harvesting rice and threshing it with a pedal-powered mill, spreading the grain in flat round baskets by the roadside to dry The air smelt of newly cut grass, and the breeze was cool.