Vote for Atiatihan in the World's Best Parties 2008

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In the sixteenth century, a pious Spanish friar noted that among the Visayan people of the Philippines it was not quite proper to drink alone or to appear drunk in public. Drinking was always done in small groups or in “gatherings where men as well as women sat on opposite sides of the room”. The good friar would have revised his opinion if he had been to Ati-Atihan, a quasi-religious Mardi Gras where much of the fervour is fuelled by free-flowing locally brewed grog. Throw in the unending beat of massed drums and the average Filipino’s predisposition for a good party, and the result is a flamboyant al fresco rave that claims – with some justification – to be the biggest and most prolonged in the Philippines. And this, remember, in a country where fiestas are as common as sunny days.