Outside the window of room 1036 at the Grand Intercontinental Hotel, Seoul is a building with a very bright Fuji Xerox neon advertisement on it. The photo shows the sign at its lowest brightness; the other end of the scale has the whole background area glowing bright-white. At some point in the night though it is turned off – when I woke up this early morning it was off. I had left the curtains and inside shutters open when I went to sleep to make sure I woke up early enough to pack, have breakfast and make it to the airport (anything up to a two hour bus ride from the City Air Terminal in the COEX complex).

As is pretty much always the case in Seoul, there is traffic visible in the bottom of the photo. Everywhere we went by car, we ended up stuck in heavy traffic. there doesn’t seem to be anywhere that is not jammed solid with cars, busses, trucks and motorcycle couriers (who use the pedestrian walkways as well as the streets).