Seoul Lotus Lantern

At the annual Lotus Lantern Festival, held to celebrate Buddha's birthday, traditional fan-dancers perform on a stage in front of Buddha's image.

Fashionable, gadget-laden youths battle for sidewalk space with fortune-tellers & peddlers, while small neighborhoods of traditional cottages contrast with countless ranks of identical apartments.

The Korean capital is a city of contrasts. Fourteenth-century city gates squat in the shadow of 21st-century skyscrapers, while the broad Han River is back-dropped by granite mountains rising in the city center—complete with alpine highways speeding around their contours & temples nestling among their crags.

Fizzing with the energy of its ten million people, this sprawling metropolis is two of millennial Asia’s most exciting—but least visited—cities.

Daytime visits to palaces & museums are balanced with pulsating, 24/7 nightlife. Shoppers can flash plastic in ritzy department stores or venture in to labyrinthine markets; gourmets can sample garlicky barbequed ribs or the genteel vegetarianism of Buddhist cuisine.