The world’s top 10 party towns.
November 19th, 2009
In today’s Age newspaper there was a piece on the world’s top 10 party towns – which came from Lonely Planet’s list in it’s new guide ‘1000 Ultimate experiences’. Here’s the list:
1. Belgrade, Serbia
2. Montreal, Canada
3. Buenos Aires, Argentina
4. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
5. Thessaloniki, Greece
6. La Paz, Bolivia
7. Cape Town, South Africa
8. Baku, Azerbaijan
9. Auckland, New Zealand
10. Tel Aviv, Israel
Well, I don’t mind a good party, but I haven’t been to a single place on the list. Not one. And here’s me thinking I know where to party in the world. So, I’ve decided to make up my own top 10 list of cities and towns that I’ve partied in like it’s 1999. Here’s my top 10:
1. Reykjavik, Iceland
One word: Rúntur. Rúntur, which means ’round tour’ is the name given to the weekend pub crawl, when partiers make their way around town to multiple bars and clubs. Ask any Icelander and they’ll be the first to admit – they drink a lot. In summer they drink to celebrate the long sunny days and in winter they drink to make it through the cold, dark ones. Straight-laced and sober during the week, Icelanders let loose on weekends. It seems that alcohol is so expensive, they figure if they are going to pay a fortune to drink, they might as well really go at it. They sure do. I was whisked though dance clubs and bars so quickly I couldn’t keep track of where I was (or how much I’d drunk). I seem to remember dancing a lot and handing my credit card over the bar as freely as if I was Bjork.
2. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Yes there are great nightclubs, bars and all-night restaurants, but what made it for me were the samba bars. My favourite was Casa Rosa (The Pink House) for the Sunday night roda de samba party. The seven-dollar entrance fee included dinner and a perpetual parade of girls wiggling their perfect bottoms. A band were all sitting around a table that was covered in bottles of beer and the musicians were singing while thumping drums (surdos) and bongos and swinging their cavaquinhos. The music was so contagious that I couldn’t help but wiggle my not-so-perfect bottom.
3. Munich, Germany
‘Ein Prosit Der Gemutlichkeit…’ Munich is a great party town with numerous beer halls, beer gardens and the nightlife in Schwabing, but the biggest party of all (with 6 million visitors every year) is Oktoberfest. I’ve been three times. I can just about remember one of them. But, I do remember dancing on the seats in the Hackerbräu-Festhalle and falling onto the East German weightlifting team on the next table and knocking over all their beers and then having to buy them all beers so they wouldn’t kill me.
4. Sapporo, Japan
I started my night in the Sapporo beer hall, which is a huge smoky place full of people skulling beer. You pay around $40 and you have 100 minutes to eat and drink as much as possible. The locals can eat, drink and smoke all at the same time. Then it was off to the Sapporo Snow Festival to watch drunk people fall on the ice and then finish the night off with, naturally, karaoke.
5. Hora, Greece
Ios. That’s all I need to say really for anyone who has been there. I went there in the late 80s with a water bed salesman from Rotorua called Sleazy and we partied so hard that we couldn’t leave. We kept missing the one and only morning ferry to Santorini because we’d been out till four in the morning every night. Sadly, after finally escaping from Ios we went back after Santorini for more tequila slammers.
6. Sydney, Australia
Twenty thousand men dancing with no shirts on. Now that’s a party! The after party for the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is one wild, fantastic party. I’ve been three times now and I don’t really like dance music or Barbara Streisand. I do like the Chupa Chup stand, though.
7. London, England
I love old London pubs. And one time I tried to drink in 27 of them in one day. I was attempting the Circle Line Pub Crawl. This entails drinking half a pint of beer in a pub at each and every one of the 27 stops on London Underground’s Circle Line. That’s 13 and a half pints of beer in 12 hours. We got to 20. I think. Luckily I wrote down the names of the pubs, though, because there were some classic names: Old Dr. Butlers head, Slurpin Toad, Hoops & Grapes, Chesire Cheese, Ye olde Cock Tavern, Halfway to Heaven, Lord Moon of the Mall, The Plumber’s Arms and The Rat and Parrot.
8. Bangkok, Thailand
Roof top bars, snazzy nightclubs and ‘me love you long time’. Admittedly I haven’t done the girly bars (no, really), but I’ve been to a couple of amazing roof top bars (Vertigo at Banyan Tree and Red Sky at Central). And when I was there earlier this year with my girlfriend Beth we went to a such a cool nightclub that we danced all night (and neither of us can dance).
9. Saut d’Eau, Haiti
Woman throwing off their underwear, people getting possessed by spirits, great live music, incessant drumming all night, a potent and dangerous local rum and folk biting heads of chickens. Now that’s a real party. I was in Saut d’Eau for the annual vodou festival and the party (and biting off chicken heads) went all night. Although it was hard to tell whether people were possessed by spirits or had just drunk too much spirits.
10. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
A large glass of beer for 10 cents. That’s a good enough reason to be a great party town. You can buy locally brewed beer (bia hoi) on the street where, usually, a lady has a big container of beer that she sucks out with a garden hose into a bottle and you get a big chunk of ice in your glass to cool it down. Tet (the Lunar New Year) is a week long celebration with lots of garden hose sucking going on.
Do you have a favourite party city or town?
On November 20th, 2009 Epiphanie said:
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