Of all the journalist hangouts in all the world … this one perhaps is the most famous and revered.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, in Hong Kong.

This is a place that figures in plot lines of all sorts of novels, including “The Honourable Schoolboy,” written by John Le Carre (of “Spy Who Came in from the Cold” fame).

It’s old. It’s big. It’s funky. It’s cool. It’s British Empire. It’s war correspondents and freelance photogs and crabby expat editors. All standing around a huge bar and doing what journalists used to be famous for — drinking themselves into a giddy (or argumentative) haze.

Lots of bars and pubs and dives the world over get a big chunk of their clientele from journalists — usually from the newspaper office across the street or around the corner, where reporters and editors unwind and play back what just happened in the rush to deadline.

This watering hole, however, is the most eclectic and (I’m fairly certain) the most ornate. With the most history and class and Lost World ambience.

Not just anyone walks into the FCC (as it is known here in Hong Kong). You have to be a member, or in a member’s company. That isn’t quite democratic, but that appeals to the snob in all of us.

My entree Friday night was Sam Teaford, a copy editor at the International Herald Tribune’s Asia edition, a guy who by now can be considered almost an “old Asia hand” — and a member in good standing of the FCC.

We were there because it was his last night (this time around) in HK with the IHT. Everyone expects he will be back (he’s been here something like 33 of the last 36 months), but for the moment, this is it, and journos love to fete departing colleagues, especially colleagues as universally popular as Sam.

Because I knew Sam from a previous lifetime, and had checked in at the IHT’s waterside offices earlier in the day, we were invited along — with the editors who had just finished up the Saturday paper. We filled two cabs and road over to the Central district, and to the end of Ice House Road.

A crowd was outside the front door, smoking heavily … and we wended our way through them and past the ancient Chinese doorman — who won’t remind anyone of a bouncer (he’s about 5-foot-6, maybe 120 pounds) but clearly looks ready to bark “no” to anyone who doesn’t belong.

The wikipedia entry I linked to (above) gives a sense of the layout of the place. It’s basically three levels.

In the basement is a work room that requires a key and a password to enter … a small gym, a sauna, a dark “No. 2” bar that often features live music (a jazz combo was getting busy, late Friday) and a pool table.

Upstairs is the main dining room, another small bar, and a meeting room — where press conferences often are staged.

The main level is mostly given to the main bar, a large square in a sprawling room (enormous, by Hong Kong standards) and small tables around the edges.

The IHT crowd gathered against the far wall, and exchanged the usual industry gossip and political views … and it was very cool.

It should be noted that a significant chunk of the 1,800 or so members (almost all of whom are men, it seems) are not journalists. Many are bankers, hedge-fund managers, lawyers … just generally “connected” folks who like the ambience of one of the last British-style enclaves.

Those non-journalists, however, apparently pay higher dues (and can afford them), and help keep the place solvent.

So we stood around and drank and watched replays of the vice-presidential debate, and a colleague went over the travails of trying to file on deadline from Myanmar — which is almost impossible to get into in the first place. And another guy was in talking about the English-language newspaper he’s trying to help get off the ground in Jakarta …

And if you can break off from the conversation long enough, you can almost feel the ghosts of the place. The hard-bitten war correspondents taking a break from decades of war and insurrection in Indochina, or the spies under journalistic cover trying to read “Red China” from just across the border. And it’s an honor, really, to be standing in the same room those guys hung out in.

One small, glassed off room between the door and the main bar is filled with tables and booths and called “the bunker,” and the oldest living member of the FCC — Clare Hollingsworth, believed to be approaching 100 — has a table reserved for her if and when she comes by for dinner.

A great place. I don’t know if I will be back. I might be able to join, but can I afford it? Maybe not. I’m not sure how many IHT employees are members. Actually, they should let them all in — because they are what the place is supposed to be about — foreign correspondents, looking for a place to gather and hash out the issues of the world while self-medicating with a bit of hard liquor or stout brew.

A lovely place. Lots of dark, polished wood, and overstuffed chairs, but not stodgy, not cold because it’s journalists and we’re loud and crude and opinionated. Just a wonderful hangout.

Every serious journalist should visit the Foreign Correspondents’ Club at least once. One of the coolest things I’ve done, in a long time.