Festivals / Fairs / Events

Thailand's songkran Festival. This event, rather like Christmas in the West, has been diluted somewhat from what it was originally meant to be. Celebrated across Indo-China, Songkran is a primarily Buddhist religious occurence, that also has strong astrological overtures. Whilst it relates to ths sun moving into any zodiacal sign, it more specifically refers to entry into Aries, hence its celebration in April, alias the ram zodiac sign. Its full derivative name is Maha Songkran, or Major Songkran to clearly delineate it from other similar festivals. It is the Thai's traditional New Year celebration, and they approach it with the same kind of ...  Read the complete review

Everyone loves a good party and no race can party like the Spanish. If you happen to be in Spain on the 23rd-24th June you should not expect to sleep because the whole country will be celebrating the festival of San Juan. The history of the celebration seems to date back to Pagan times and many of the rituals and customs are therefore of Pagan origin. The San Juan rituals are also inherent in the people of Spain and the celebrations go on long into the night. If you have no knowledge of this festival then you will be pleasantly surprised if you arrive during the celebrations. The 23rd June is the transition between the dark nights of winter and ...  Read the complete review

WOW ... like nothing you've ever seen before, World of Wearable Art is mind-blowing, zany, unbelievably creative and best of all it transports you to another world. For a few nights in September, in Nelson, New Zealand the Trafalgar Centre has been a wonderland of outrageous creations from artists/designers/sculptors, professional and extremely amateur competitors from all over the world. What you see now, when you are lucky enough to get a ticket, is grand, out-of-this-world music, light and sound extravaganza where local models parade a catwalk of non-stop garments, all have to be ''wearable'' but that's about the only rule. It wasn't ...  Read the complete review

Ask Germans what they associate with the city of Cologne, Köln in German (the ´ö´is pronounced like the ´u ´ in burn), and I bet you´ll hear, ´Dom und Karneval (cathedral and carnival)´ or the other way round. (There´s fierce competition between the cities Aachen, Düsseldorf, Mainz and Köln (all in the west of Germany, the so-called Rhineland) each proclaiming itself the keeper of the one and only original carnival, from the outside, however, Köln appears to be the epicentre (don´t tell the inhabitants of the other cities that I said that!) As the cathedral is always there and right in the centre, it´s impossible for tourists not to notice it, Karneval on ...  Read the complete review

Just before we left for San Francisco, we found out that it was Gay Pride month (June) and on Sunday 30th it would be the Gay Pride Parade down Market Street, so with nothing planned for that day, we decided to take a look. On the news the night before we saw pictures of thousands of people in the street celebrating and over a million people were expected to attend the parade, so true to British form, we arrived in Market Street 1.5 hours early and the street was bare! Hardly anyone was around, so again being British we picked a spot and sat and waited. Within 20 minutes of the start time, throngs of people started to arrive, suddenly we were surrounded by ...  Read the complete review