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"Despite" writes the Lonely Planet City Guide to Seoul "despite its tall buildings and modern infrastructure Seoul offers the visitor a wealth of cultural insights." The modern buildings clearly provide none whatsoever. Why this "despite"?

OK, so much for the Lonely Planet Guides. Let's try another: "Much of the centre is now given over to uninspired modern skyscrapers and office blocks but there are still (still) a few squares" Rough Guide Brazil. Actually I recall some of the modern architecture in Recife as quite characterful. Again, I don't believe the writer looked or wanted to look or knew how to look.

Architecture is a particular problem; architecture is, after all, the most visible and undeniable sign of the modern. Most guides automatically see modern architecture as destructive of local culture. I suspect that for most guidebook writers modern means bad; they don't even know how to look. Apkujong, a major suburb of Seoul just south of the Han river is deemed by the Lonely Planet Guide to be a "modernistic hell". I went there to see. It was just modern; indeed modern in a rather 'traditional' manner. It was like on of those drawings by le Corbusier; rows of massive blocks of flats, beautifully maintained and long straight roads. Why hell? I would gladly live in one of those flats.

'Typical' is another word that is common in the simpler guide books, often those produced by the tourist boards of the countries in question. The tourist seeks the typical, but it is sometimes hard to find; which obliges us to raise a semantic eyebrow, surely, one thinks, if it is typical then, well, at least there should be a good few of it around?

'Typical' goes together nicely with 'still'; so we might get something like "It is still possible to find a typical native costume, ...pizzeria...Indian village...candomble ceremony".The irony is rich.

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