friday night, 8pm

There's no place like this in the United States. Chicago isn't like this. New York isn't like this either. And maybe Las Vegas is a little like this but I don't think it's quite the same. What we have here is a non-stop flow of people and light in every direction. All coated with a mysterious yellow dust that fills your mouth with a metallic taste.

It's hard to get used to, but in Seoul the flow of life goes both outwards and upwards. The buildings here have a focus on verticality that catches westerners off-guard. If you only look at what's in front of you - at what lives on the first floor - you're missing more than half the story. Because in Seoul the buildings are layer cakes of shopping, dining, hair-styling...



It's important to clarify that I'm not talking about a mall or a shopping center. It's a city street. And taking two steps forward is as varied as walking two flights up. The bold, tall, stretching signage that clings to these buildings is there to shake you free of the idea that what lives at the root of the building is the same as what graces its crown. Here you need to look at every floor or you'll never find the restaurant you're looking for. Koreans have no problem with this upward thinking - even the highest floors are filled.

But ground level has its pleasures too. The streets are full of vendors selling every kind of crap you can think of. The whole point of being out for the evening seems to be shopping; in brick and mortar stores, sure, but even more so at tables covered with cheap headbands, sunglasses, and flip-flops. Or better yet, knock-off purses... if you don't find what you want at the LeSportSac store you can always exit the store and walk ten paces to a street vendor selling the knock-off versions for pennies.



Street food is everywhere. There's the ubiquitous dried octopus seller, and the potato sticks in paper cups. Slices of fresh fruit sitting on slabs of melting ice. Tomatoes and kiwi ready to be whirred into juice by a blender plugged into some magical electrical source stretching from a far-off land.

The coffee shops are full, the restaurants are full. The vendors are surrounded by teenagers with money to burn. And the people just keep coming, streams of them. All arm in arm - couples, friends, old men. All dressed well and looking good in the light of the vertical signs. If you think of Times Square in New York or Piccadilly Circus in London... it's that kind of energy with the light and the swarms and the feeling that if you stood still and tried to withstand the flow you'd be carried away into the wild urban beyond.



Another risk the urbanites of Seoul face is a mysterious yellow dust that arrives here by way of winds from China. It's the only negative we've found in this city and even the mild levels we sucked into our lungs on Friday made our heads ache and our mouths go acrid. Alas, every pleasure has its accompanying toll to pay.

But even with the dust, Seoul is a city that we should all be hearing more about. Once you get here and start exploring you wonder why people back home aren't talking about this place. You wonder why no one was telling us that we just had to come here to see and shop and eat. But then you get distracted by four stories of glowing signs, and the crowd pushes you forward, and you fast forget what it was like to not know Seoul.