AS HONGKONG'S summer months approach, most people begin to question where can they go to escape the sauna-room humidity that hits the territory.
The way to keep cool is to get high. For every 300 metres you rise above sea level, the temperature drops a few degrees. The heat also becomes more dry and, therefore, more comfortable.
But you do not have to scale the Alps or the Andes to cool down. There are plenty of cool places within a few hours' flying time from Hongkong.
Probably the best known of these is the ''summer capital'' of the Philippines - Baguio. Built by the cool-headed Americans at the turn of the century, Baguio is 2,800 metres up in the pine-forested Sierra Madre mountains.
Just a 45-minute flight from steamy Manila, Baguio's pine forests resemble Bavaria's Black Forest more than the tropics.
Though devastated by an earthquake in 1990, much of Baguio has been rebuilt, and there is now a score of small hotels where fresh strawberries and mountain honey are offered for breakfast and superb farm-fresh salads make lunch a cool delight.
