Shangri-La

Shangri-La spends its effort on the first hour. At Pudong, in Shanghai, someone met the car, walked us up to the room and checked us in there over hot tea and pastries, then handed us pillowcases with our initials embroidered on them. The housekeepers later folded my dirty gym clothes. In Dubai the welcome was a cake made to look like a bed, with a little bathrobe draped over it. The room it came with was the one real miss of the five — comfortable for two, tight for the three of us once Axel’s cot was in.

Then there’s where they put you. The China World Summit Wing takes the top floors of the tallest building in Beijing — the lobby is on the 80th, and on a clear day I could pick the Forbidden City out of our windows. Shangri-La had six hotels in Beijing when we booked, most of them on one block with near-identical names, so we spent a while explaining to a cab driver which one we meant. The Shard in London hides its entrance at street level, and then the lift opens on a 34th-floor lobby where every wall is a window. Go up to GONG on the 52nd and order the Fields of Gold. It’s garnished with ants. Actual ants.

The food is where they stop feeling like one chain. In Colombo — a city I had nearly written off as the airport we’d fly out of — the hotel has an oven built just for duck, makes its dim sum where guests can watch, and sends a specially trained server to pour your tea the traditional way. In Dubai, the spring rolls at Hoi An are rolled at your table. And Jade on 36, on the top floor in Shanghai, serves a dish called the garden: an edible flower pot, edible soil included.