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Tag: Dance

Dawn in Hanoi – the calm before the storm

  To truly appreciate the early morning calm of dawn in Hanoi you really need to endure the full frontal assault of the night before in the old city. It is here that the full gamut of bars, restaurants and nocturnal services endeavour to lure the abundance of tourists and locals alike into wallet emptying rapture. Terms like hustle and bustle don’t do justice to the relentless hard sell from personnel stationed outside each venue. Menus are thrust under your…

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Love Latin music? Don’t go to Latin America

I’m sure most of you would recognise Latin music when you hear it, even though you might have trouble describing it. “Sounds like salsa”, you might say before some pedant informs you, “actually this is merengue”. Terms like bossa nova and rumba float indefinably in the public consciousness, with echoes of plastic buttons on the rhythm options on cheap, 1970’s electric organs. At least for old farts like me. Maybe these days it comes as a largely ignored, free sample…

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Bacchanalian delights of Carnival, Trinidad

Celebrating Carnival in Trinidad    In much of the English-speaking world, the term Bacchanalia has been largely abandoned to the classics and literary references. However in Trinidad the spirit of the Roman cult’s frenzied celebration of Bacchus, the god of wine, freedom, intoxication and ecstasy, has been embraced in popular culture. Although modern carnivals in general are Christian in origin, a final indulgence before the abstinence of Lent, the pagan roots are brought to the fore in Trinidad. Bacchanale is a…

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Park life in Xinjiang

The niggling possibility of getting hacked to death by axe wielding terrorists has, for some strange reason deterred some tourists from coming to Xinjiang, so the streets of the region’s capital Urumqi were hardly awash with foreign faces. Locals are obviously made of stern enough stuff to not let such a trifling matter interfere with their daily routine and for many this means going to the park. In Urumqi the security concerns for patrons of the People’s Park were subtly…

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Trabzon shows Yerevan how to rock the party

I wouldn’t normally have considered a post about Turkey as its somewhere you are probably reasonably familiar with, but it provided a suitable contrast to the atmosphere of city life I experienced in the neighbouring Caucasus. The instant I stepped off the bus in the port city of Trabzon on a Sunday afternoon it was obvious that it had a vitality which was missing throughout the Caucasus. Just the simple heart beat of everyday life hummed with an enthusiasm and…

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