This is a city where the old and the new coexist. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer

I’ve never been to Asia before, and in the weeks leading up to my art trip to Hong Kong, I experience far more pre-travel anxiety than usual. I obsess over losing an entire day, fret about what to pack, worry about jet lag and fail repeatedly to memorize what is easily the most ambitious itinerary of my growing travelogue series. (Forty-eight hours of art is not long enough when you’re flying halfway round the world.) I also become oddly superstitious, reading portents into everyday moments. This is not my normal, and even now, weeks after returning, I’m still not sure what rattled me so deeply.

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But in a strange but welcome twist, the very first leg of my journey offers reassurance: my tough-guy Uber driver plays soothing spa music. Score one for the universe. And then it’s priority check-in, empty security lines at 10 p.m. and smooth sailing all the way into the Delta One lounge, where I snack, study Hong Kong’s art scene and eventually notice I’m already surrounded by artworks: Gregory Block doughnuts, a Miles Jaffe matchbook piece and a balloon work by Patrick Nevins, whose adorable “crayon” painting delighted me in Denver once upon a time.

Am I relaxed? Not exactly. I still believe humans were never meant to fly, but priority boarding gets me into my business-class seat about 40 minutes before takeoff, leaving time to settle in. My husband always says, “You’re just in a room,” and on no plane has that ever felt more accurate. The Airbus A350 ceilings are unexpectedly high, and I’m tucked into a window cubicle that will be home for the next 15 hours.

Waiting for dinner, I explore the amenities of my cube: noise-canceling headphones, a remote that doubles as a video game controller, Bamford toiletries and several storage nooks. Then I eat noodle soup with dumplings while binge-watching The Office and Silicon Valley, sip the airline’s signature in-flight drinks (a non-alcoholic Cathay Delight and a boozy Cloud Nine) and play a little Tetris. I assume they’ll dim the cabin lights after the coffee service—chamomile tea for me—and pretty chocolates, but when I return to my cubicle after changing into pajamas and brushing my teeth, my seat has become a bed and it’s dark. Really dark. And surprisingly quiet. I needn’t have worried about sleeping on the flight. I snooze for roughly nine hours, waking with plenty of time for a couple of cups of coffee before breakfast: pumpkin and crab congee with lots of Lee Kum Kee Guilin-style chili sauce, Singapore Mei Fun and another Cathay Delight.

For all my anxiety, I do begin every journey believing something beautiful will happen. And so it already has. This is the calmest, most enjoyable and most delicious flight I’ve ever taken. When we touch down in Hong Kong in the pre-dawn darkness, Yunchan Lim’s recording of Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons” playing in my headphones, I’ve officially time-traveled through Tuesday, and a big, busy Wednesday awaits.

Day 1

I arrive in a mostly empty Hong Kong International Airport at roughly 5:30 a.m., though it’s hard to tell because my body clock is screaming at me incoherently. I blearily make my way to the taxi stands, stopping to double-check which color cab I’m meant to take. (Red.) There’s little to see in the dark until we reach Tsim Sha Tsui, quiet at this hour but brightly lit. The Langham, Hong Kong, by contrast, is anything but subdued—Christmas music fills the vast neoclassical lobby, which is dominated by a massive pink Christmas tree.

Naturally, my room isn’t ready, so I head to the dual-level Health Club to freshen up. Sauna’ed and showered, I eat breakfast in the Club Lounge, a space that nods to the brand’s London roots with its button-tufted velvet, gilt wallpaper and chandeliers. There’s a full spread of American breakfast staples, but I go straight for the chicken congee, piling it with century egg and chili sauce, and adding a side of dumplings.

I’m not jet lagged exactly, but I feel gauzy-headed and the world gently rocking around me. I drink a drip coffee, then a flat white, while mapping my way to West Kowloon Art Park and the Hong Kong Palace Museum for the editor’s preview of “Ancient Egypt Unveiled: Treasures from Egyptian Museums,” led by associate curator Wenxin Wang. It’s only about a mile and a half away, and a walk in mild weather seems like the best way to convince my brain it really is Wednesday morning.

Jonathan, the lounge’s ebullient host, is about to store my bag when he gets word that my room is ready. It’s cozy, with curved floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Dior, Chanel and Cartier storefronts, which I quickly learn is very Hong Kong. The table has been laid with dainty strawberries and hilariously large grapes, plus chilled bottles of Saicho sparkling jasmine tea, a welcome alternative to the usual champagne.

The walk to West Kowloon Art Park is easy, though waterfront construction means more crossings than expected. Still, I arrive at the Hong Kong Palace Museum with time to grab my earpiece and join the tour of 250 treasures from pharaonic times, on loan from seven major museums and the Saqqara archaeological site. The irony is obvious—the first art I see in Hong Kong is Egyptian—but there hasn’t been a major exhibition of Egyptian antiquities here in decades, and it feels special to be part of it.

The show is excellent, presenting ancient Egypt through daily life as much as royalty. “We tried really hard to connect what ancient Egyptians wanted and what modern people want,” Dr. Wang says, noting how challenging the installation was. Organized into four sections—“The Land of Pharaohs,” “The World of Tutankhamun,” “The Secrets of Saqqara” and “Ancient Egypt and the World”—it mixes statues, coffins and gold ornaments with humbler objects: a Senet set, a pigment-stained painter’s palette, sandals, a toilet seat, a 4,000-year-old piece of bread and even several mummified cats.

From there, I move on to “Brilliance: Ming Dynasty Ceramic Treasures from the Palace Museum, 1368–1644,” and then “The Quest for Originality: Contemporary Design and Traditional Craft in Dialogue.” I’ve never been much of a plate-and-vase person, but the latter’s dialogue between historic objects and contemporary Hong Kong designers deepens my appreciation of the porcelain artifacts by several degrees.

I grab lunch in the park, which has everything from fine dining to food trucks, before walking a few hundred meters to the M , billed as Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture. With 33 galleries, a roof garden and four permanent collections, including one of the world’s strongest holdings of contemporary Chinese art, it deserves hours I don’t have. Beyond works by Qiu Shihua, Kan Xuan, Chang Xugong, Duan Jianyu and Shao Fan, along with Hassan Khan’s fantastic Jewel (2010) and Chiharu Shiota’s immersive Infinite Memory, what stays with me are the music pairings and wall prompts. My favorite asks, “Can sadness be beautiful?”

On my way out, I stumble into “Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now,” where I see people removing their shoes. I’m powerless to resist a hands-on show, and inside is pure delight: Pinaree Sanpitak’s monumental pillow fort, The House Is Crumbling; rebirth via Lygia Clark’s A casa é o corpo: penetração, ovulação, germinação, expulsão (The House is the Body); and, best of all, Judy Chicago’s Feather Room, tucked away around a corner and so blissfully uncrowded.

Back at the hotel, I tour The Langham, Hong Kong, Art Collection with Emilie Zhang, director of marketing services. In all its common areas, the hotel displays a rotating selection of works by established Chinese artists collected by Langham Hospitality Group chair Ka Shui Lo. Aside from a few fixed pieces, including a particularly Instagrammable painting near the elevator bank, the collection changes constantly. The lone non-Chinese work is a modest Dale Chihuly behind reception; it’s overshadowed by stronger pieces in the lobby, the Palm Court and T’ang Court, one of the few Cantonese restaurants with a MICHELIN three-star rating and my destination for tonight’s dinner.

Zhang joins me for a glass of champagne before I dive into a tasting menu featuring four courses and dessert. The stuffed crab shell is a Hong Kong classic, with every restaurant claiming supremacy. The Wagyu beef may be the best thing I’ve ever eaten, with the cod fish with honey close behind. Dessert is a classic egg tart and, unexpectedly, a fragrant almond cream soup. Then, as exhausted as I am, I make my way to the Avenue of Stars for “A Symphony of Lights,” the nightly lightshow on the........

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