The prostitutes nearly ruined my meat on a stick.

The Filipino barbecue — fat-moistened chunks of flesh practically dissolved in sweetly seasoned marinade — called to me like a street preacher intoning the gospel of pork. After walking around all afternoon, all I wanted was a snack. Unfortunately, the middle-aged hooker who spotted me studying my map had other plans.

“Just one beer," she said, "you no like, you leave.”

As our lopsided conversation wore on, her tone grew to resemble a weary insurance salesman, subtly implying that good manners required me to at least listen to her pitch. I stared at my map. She leaned in.

“Listen, I find you good pussy.”

Much like junior high, in certain neighborhoods no one believes you have a girlfriend unless she's physically present at the time. As I tried to walk back the way I'd come, the madam grabbed my arm, leaving me scarcely a moment to consider whether I should risk a physical altercation with an old lady in a foreign country or take my chances drinking discount booze in a whorehouse. Then one of her chubby young colleagues joined in, pushing on my back as I grabbed what I could — the door frame in one hand and my cherished pork baton in the other.

Two more wide-smiling prostitutes inside soon took note of my plight and were about to pull me into their neon-hued darkness just as I managed to wrest myself free and jog down the street.

Hong Kong: Truly a buffet for the senses.

I'd come by train from the mainland a few days earlier, cruised past infrared forehead scanners used to detect bird flu at the border and plunged myself into arguably the most spectacular urban landscape on Earth.

Need a badminton pro shop? Corgi puppy? Crate of men's slacks? Fake Rolex? Real Rolex? Indian chewing tobacco? Live crickets for your bird? After three days, I could have rounded up every one of those things without leaving Kowloon. Fresh fish? I saw one vendor so skilled all his knife left behind was a head, inflated swim bladder and still-beating heart.

Hong Kong's legendary density also results in some humorous contrasts, like the small red-light district all of one block from the gleaming convention center I’d just visited on Victoria Harbor. Likewise, some of the most expensive real estate in the world surrounded my first guesthouse in a legendarily cheap tenement.

Chungking Mansions has a reputation in the minds of Asia backpackers and Hong Kongers alike as the kind of place where you could buy Burmese heroin then arrange a ménage a trios with immigrant sex workers from three different countries in a $10 room rented by a guy who sells men’s suits on the side. Above a lively two-level shopping arcade, air shafts separate a tight wad of concrete towers where garment factories, import-export businesses, curry shops and cheap guest houses reach another 15 floors into the Kowloon skyline.

But in spite of 15-minute wait times for the elevators and rumors of sealed-off fire escapes, I actually became quite endeared to the place during my stay.

After all, what big city doesn’t have drugs, hookers and fake Rolexes?

None that I want to cross the International Date Line to visit. Inside, aggressive touts and the building's fearful reputation dissipate in quickly under the gaze of CCTV cameras and bored security guards. At the first-floor Internet café I frequented, the Indian couple running the place once signed my receipt with "Happy Diwali" above a swastika that's symbolized good luck in India since centuries before Hitler. Down the hall, African guys taped up sacks of random cargo destined for the bellies of Air France and British Airways flights.

Some 90 percent of mobile phones sold in Africa change hands in Chungking, by one anthropologist’s count, just one fascinating example of the building’s compressed mélange of immigrant life. Had I not picked a guest house infested with bedbugs, I would have stayed more than one night.

Even lodging at the tamer Mirador Mansions next door or in one of many nearby luxe accommodations, the city can’t help but enthrall. Every corner offers so much to look at. It’s hard not to constantly block traffic on the sidewalk, gob stopped by the thriving mass of people and light. Take a creaky wood ferry across the harbor at night, and there’s a good chance you’ll see a light show choreographed among the gleaming skyscrapers.

On Victoria peak, a creaky wood funicular crawls through a forest of 50-story towers where apartment prices often exceed $2,500 per square foot. Nearby, the world’s longest series of escalators helps riders ascend through the steep and trendy Mid-Levels neighborhood.

Unless you’re seated in a well tended park or eating at one of thousands of restaurants, the city feels perpetually in motion. It’s easy to get carried away.

Editor's note: This is the second story in a three-part series on Peter Barnes' Far East travels. Don't miss his first entry — Say cheese: In China travel, foreigners find themselves unwitting stars

Peter Barnes' exclusive CultureMap video on Hong Kong: