You’re going to have to help me with this one. Whatever did we do before the arrival of the LED table lamp? How did we read restaurant menus before it was possible for a swooping waiter to, with a dramatic three taps atop a spindly downlighter, lower the glare to something mimicking candlelight? The table lamp has become so essential to the global dining experience that it is near impossible to walk into a cosy bar, neighbourhood bistro or sprawling hotel dining room without encountering a little forest of lamps. 

The arrival of the breadbasket used to mark the start of lunch or dinner but with F&B types now bored of their truffle butter, nut spreads and long olive oil pours, the table lamp has become the hospitality industry’s obsession. I believe the original idea was to create small pools of light at a time when there was little in the way of overhead illumination. Over time, as tastes changed, the table lamp was a punctuation point in a dimly lit lounge or clandestine bar. 

Long before anyone had the notion of mass USB-C charging stations powering enough lamps for a 300-strong wedding, there were candles and glass oil vessels dedicated to the strength and warmth of a single flame. The light was bronzy, food looked tasty, drinks elegant and inviting. And the diners, drinkers and canoodlers? Gorgeous and yummy. The outstretched hand was golden, a Patek would dazzle, a Cartier bangle would glisten and the bouncing glow would forgive wrinkles, eye luggage and the odd, stray whisker. 

Today, the table lamp often just sits there, simply throwing more light onto our already overlit world. Why do you need them in a restaurant that is already so bright that it could double as a paint shop for airliners? On a recent trip to the Gulf, I was in a Lebanese joint that insisted on table lamps despite the heavy overhead array of spotlights and LED strips. Were these backups in case a drone took out the power grid, plunging us into a darkness and rendering us unable to find the fattoush salad? Or just added clutter and future landfill?

Restaurants make much of their sommeliers but instead of a lapel pin with a bunch of gold grapes, what about an elaborate glowing flame and a little light bulb. “Good evening, I’m Thierry, your chef d’ambience, and I’m here to oversee all of your lighting needs. I thought that we would start off with everything cosy and low and then we’ll see how the evening progresses.” In a sector that has been upsold lighting systems that are too complex for most staff to use – especially if they have to touch a screen with greasy fingers (most people in hospitality) – it’s time to get back to the original source, to candles and the flicker of real flames on tables. 

Lighting technology has certainly improved but a hotel lobby or resort spa filled with hurricane-like lamps lit by plastic LED candles is a complete mood, brand and “experience” killer. Best to not bother with a candlelit moment if you can’t go with the real thing. It’s a bit like all those moments (take your pick of national holidays, the arrival of a new year, a fancy Indian wedding) that used to be marked by fireworks, now it’s a clinical, numbing, dull drone display. 

There’s a good chance you’ll be entertaining this Sunday eve, this second day of August, so why not pull out your best brass from Skultuna and glass from Svenskt Tenn, find that box of matches and permanently park the LEDs. You and your guests will look much better for it.

Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns. 

Colombian filmmaker Laura Mora spent the past four years “touching the untouchable”, steering Netflix’s adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 literary classic that gave birth to magical realism. The saga follows seven generations of one family – the Buendías – and their crazy, incestuous, delightful and sad lifestyle in the fictional town of Macondo on the Colombian Caribbean.  

Mora directed three of the eight episodes in the first season, which was released in 2024 to much fanfare. It was the streamer’s most ambitious production in the region. This month, Netflix will drop season two in the form of seven episodes on 5 August and then a two-hour long finale on 26 August. This time, Mora is the showrunner. Here she speaks to Monocle about her experience working on the programme and her intentions to tone down the novel’s magical realism and dial up the politics.

How does it feel at the helm this time around?
The first season was good but it was clear that we needed to push the show into a more complex cinematic, poetic and political narrative. To give you an example, readers remember the yellow butterflies [a striking scene in the novel involving the character Mauricio Babilonia, a car mechanic]. They remember the beauty of this image but they don’t remember that the butterflies belong to a character that is a black worker from the banana company. That he is a poor man that falls in love with the wrong girl because she is from the high class. I needed to give that image the political weight of that relationship.

You’ve emphasised more of the historical references, such as the Colombian military’s massacre of the banana workers in 1928, which history books swept under the rug and García Márquez helped bring to light. Why?
We are so attached to magic realism that we look away from the political side of the book. I told Netflix that if I was going to be involved, I had to direct the arrival of the banana company, the Americans and the massacre of the workers. Also, I wanted to show that the rain that lasts for seven years right after was meant to erase the memory of that violence, as we Colombians have always done.

Why was that so important for you?
We haven’t really talked about this part of our history. There has been a lot of denial in what’s true and what’s part of the fiction that García Márquez created. For this season, I made sure that we all took history lessons. I studied the massacre a lot, so I had the intellectual background to approach these episodes. I’m so proud of them.

You shot some of the series in situ. Was that a difference maker? 
I was very lucky. When I told Netflix that I wanted to shoot the scenes of the banana company, the country club and where the Americans lived in their real locations, they accepted. We created the heaviness and the beauty of what he was saying in that novel.

Did you have a specific mission for season two?
It became apparent that the relationship to the novel in Latin America is very different to that of European or Anglo-Saxon audiences. They really have this relationship to the fantastic. Yes, Macondo is a fantastic world – and it is not. I wanted to defend that idea this time around. It’s about much more. Those yellow butterflies come with a character that goes through a very tragic social event. This is not only about a fantastic world. This is a beautiful and poetic way of telling something that is hard and that happens to us here.

[Right-wing politician] Abelardo de la Espriella will become the Colombian president two days after the second season drops. What do you make of the timing?
We are entering a new right-wing government and we hope that this second part gives some enlightenment to our political future. We are going back to the language of violence with our opponents. And we already know what happens. I hope this season will open a conversation. I’m always ready for those conversations to happen. If there is something that art can do – cinema, a show like this, a book such as One Hundred Years of Solitude – it’s that.

I live in a mews in central London. These are the places where the owners of grand houses would have once kept their horses and carriages – two-floored buildings at the backs of posh residences with space upstairs for a groom or a stableboy to live.

Over the years these petite properties were converted into garages, workshops and then homes. Extra floors were added. In our mews there are 30 such houses and many still offer hints of their former lives – doorways with tall, bricked arches to allow for a big old horse to be manoeuvred inside for the night.

Many mews in London are dead ends. Ours finishes in a passageway wide enough for bicycles and pedestrians to cut through but not cars. It means that the road is quiet and residing behind those big old grand houses can make you feel as though you are tucked away in a secret valley. Yet I could walk to a bar in Soho in 20 minutes. Though, seeing as I’m writing this at 06.30, that might be a little unwise. I’ve got stuff to do.

Free of traffic, the street has evolved over the time that I’ve lived here. For a start, it has become quite shaggy. A few years ago, people started putting pot plants outside their homes, hoping that their charges wouldn’t get nicked – and, yes, a few have been unwillingly rehoused, usually by a tipsy youth, nothing sinister. Then the pots got bigger, banana plants with leaves like flapping elephant ears took up residence and handsome silver birches stretched ever taller.

I love plants and gardening – an inherited trait – so when a neighbour asked whether I would help them sort the front of their house, I jumped at the chance. I have now aided – colonised – five properties on the street. And with a hosepipe ban in parched London in play, that’s a lot of watering cans. But each night, as I quench the plants’ thirst, I wave to neighbours doing the same and chat to people passing by. Some soil, some shrubs, that’s all. But it’s time off screen and with no real deadlines and, certainly, no crap AI-generated emails demanding answers.

I sense that we are at an inflection point where more and more people are wanting to find something – anything – where they can use their hands and shelter from the blandishments of technology. This week I had dinner with a successful PR who has just completed his first tailoring course. He showed me a picture of the calico shirt that he made and smiled the smile of a man who might have found his calling. I also caught up with a banking friend who told me that he had thrown it all in and was becoming a gardener (he’s a skilled plantsman). Breakfast with another PR who, after his summer holiday, said that he would be taking a day off each week to do a landscaping course. People finding an antidote to our times, some with a pair of scissors, others with secateurs.

But if you are unsure of where to find your tonic, let me recommend adding a plant or two to your life. In these small acts of nurturing, of aiding and cajoling, you can find all you need to reset your day.

For more of Andrew’s columns, click here.

Summer in Thailand can feel endless, with the hot weather varying between dry and wet seasons. Thai locals are experts at living with high temperatures – and useful guides on how to beat the heat, keep cool and look good all year round. We asked three busy Bangkok tastemakers, working across art, music, retail and culture, to open their suitcases and share their summer travel plans.

---

Pranitan ‘Pete’ Phornprapha
CEO and founder, Scratch First
Scratch First is the company behind the Wonderfruit music festival. Thailand’s answer to Glastonbury or Burning Man is a December fixture on the region’s calendar. This year, Phornphrapha is spreading his wings to Japan with Chapters Kyoto, a cultural gathering debuting in October. The four-day event for 100 ticketholders promises to be as unique and unmissable as the inaugural Wonderfruit in 2014.

Favourite ice cream?
Watermelon and salted fish crumbs. It’s a Thai delicacy and usually [eaten as] an appetiser. I tried it at an ice-cream shop in Pattani, [a city in southern Thailand].

Beach or mountains? 
Always mountains. I like skiing and hiking. I like the energy. I feel more grounded in the mountains. 

Where are you heading this summer?
I just came back from Switzerland – [first to] Villars-sur-Ollon, then Gstaad. It was a short trip to send the kids to summer camp but I always like to leave time to explore. Then it’s Shanghai to send off my other daughter, followed by the Maldives for a real holiday.

Why the Maldives?
I like snorkelling, scuba diving and surfing. It’s shoulder season, so the waves should be good. In the Maldives you can surf in the middle of the ocean, right between the islands.

Where will you stay?
Soneva Fushi. It’s the original Soneva and barefoot-luxury pioneer. It’s important to choose the right island and I like going to the natural ones that are slightly more remote, wild and lush. Very Robinson Crusoe. 

What’s in your suitcase?
Shorts, swimming trunks and sunglasses – classic Ray Bans and a Japanese brand called Nackymade. I’m a creature of habit, so I wear the same labels. Industry of All Nations does basics really well. Its products are all naturally dyed.

What are you reading or watching?
I read four or five books at a time and skip around. I was given The Hidden Life of Trees and my partner bought me Empire of Pain about the Sackler family. I picked up Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830; it’s very academic but I want a deeper understanding of this region.

Any essentials?
My diary. I write a lot, I always have. I found my current journal at Pettinaroli in Milan. It’s leather bound and I really like it. I don’t bring my computer when I’m on holiday. I check in with work a little bit but I usually do calls.

Who’s on your holiday playlist?
There’s this English electronic jazz band called Portico Quartet and one of the members [Jack Wyllie] has a special project called Paradise Cinema. He collaborated with a Senegalese musician. Gorgeous cinematic jazz featuring West African instruments.

Anything to drink? 
I like my wine chilled and crisp. Someone recently introduced me to a beautiful white rioja. Burgundy for reds and mezcal for a little more fun.

---

Adulaya ‘Kim’ Hoontrakul
Director, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre
Art historian Kim Hoontrakul became the youngest director of the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in 2022. Her stewardship has given the publicly funded contemporary-arts centre fresh relevance. Hoontrakul is one of the four curators of the next Bangkok Art Biennale, which opens on 29 October 2026. Exhibitions under the theme “Angels and Mara” will be on show across various venues in the Thai capital until 28 February 2027.

Favourite ice cream? 
Mint chocolate.

What’s your local getaway?
Scuba diving. Any chance I get, I will do a quick escape to one of the islands. Koh Tao is one of the best diving spots and it’s never the same dive. I fly from Bangkok to Koh Samui, then take a boat.

Beach or mountains?
Definitely both. My instinct is always the beach, but for the past 10 years I’ve been doing a lot of trekking. Walking along a path gives a whole different type of view. One of my most memorable treks was in Sikkim, India. 

Where are you heading this summer?
The Sā Ladakh Biennale is this August. It only lasts 10 days and you trek through all of these villages [in Ladakh]. I’m still optimistic that I can find time to go. Either way, I’ll be in Italy in September for a roadtrip through the Dolomites.

What’s in your suitcase?
If I’m diving, my dive gear. If I’m trekking, my Fastpack shoes from The North Face. If it’s just a city break, [then I pack] an array of outfits because I am an overpacker and I must have all options for every kind of weather. My holiday clothes are an amalgamation of everything that I’ve picked up on my travels. I challenged myself to do a 10-day trip to Okinawa with only hand luggage and it was the worst experience of my life. Never again. I will gladly lug around a giant suitcase.

How about your beach bag?
I just transfer [the contents of] my normal day bag – [my] Kindle, AirPods, sunblock and sunglasses – into my huge beach tote, a lime-green Loewe shopper. I stopped buying designer sunglasses and now I only go for specialist eyewear brands. My Ray Bans have served me well for the past five years. 

What’s on your Kindle?
So many half-read books. I’ve been trying to finish Possession, which is about all the looted artworks that are scattered across the Western world, but I keep getting distracted by memoirs. I’m really into provocative writers with a strong, obnoxious voice. I’ve just finished Problems by Jade Sharma. It’s about one part of the author’s life when she was a drug addict. I connected [to the story] as a woman, it helped me to understand addiction and it was a nice break from reading academic papers.

Any essentials?
My red Gucci horsebit loafers and a handheld fan. It’s so strong it can almost blow dry my hair. I bought it for a trip to the Netherlands earlier this year, at the start of the heatwave. Europe has no concept of air conditioning so I had to be prepared.

What’s to drink?
Iced tea.

---

Paul Sirisant 
CEO, Cloud 11
DJ and former executive of Universal Music Thailand, Paul Sirisant jumped into the world of real estate when he was appointed CEO of Cloud 11. The Snøhetta-designed mixed-used development in Bangkok opened in July with offices tailored to production studios and spaces for musicians, filmmakers, designers and other creatives, along with a shopping mall and hotels. Interested to learn more? Sirisant will be speaking at The Monocle Quality of Life Conference in Lisbon this year. Book your ticket here.

Favourite ice cream?
Rum and raisin. A good amount of rum without getting drunk.

How do you escape the heat in Bangkok?
I go wing foiling. When the ground gets too hot, it produces thermal heat and that becomes thermal wind. There’s a great lake in Bangkok about 10km away from Sukhumvit, while Hua Hin has some of the best thermal wind anywhere in the world. 

Where are you heading this summer?
I usually take my family to England. We have a place in Taplow near Windsor. The kids love driving around with the windows down and breathing the fresh air. And Legoland is 15 minutes from where we live. No frills, no long lines, hassle free. 

What’s in your suitcase?
Timo boardshorts and two pairs of sunglasses – Oakleys for running and Oliver Peoples for chilling. I have a habit of buying vintage T-shirts from the Red Building in Chatuchak and cutting off the sleeves to create some air flow. That’s my summer thing and it drives my kids crazy.

What will you be reading?
The memoire Liberation Through Hearing by Richard Russell, the founder of XL Recordings. I like contemporary music history. This same guy was behind The Prodigy, The XX, Dizzee Rascal and Adele. How crazy is that?

Any essentials?
Rekordbox. It’s an integrated DJ software that I have on my phone. The app is connected to my sets and I have it with me all the time. I’m still DJing after 30 years and I’m very particular about how I organise my music. I colour-code each song by energy level. 

What’s on your summer playlist?
I have a bad habit of trying to DJ for my family in the car. I queue songs that I want to introduce my kids to based on what they are listening to. They have gotten into Japanese rock through watching anime, so I’m going to play something with the same range, such as Muse. I fall in love with new music all the time. I listened to Kelsey Lu recently after reading an interview with them in a magazine.

What are you drinking?
Natural orange wine during the day because it cleans the palate. At night, if I’m out, I love white spirits. Gin, tequila or vodka with soda. Clean and light, day or night. 

Top tip for keeping cool?
Understand the wind. Learn how it flows in each season and how it changes. I am a surfer and, no matter where I am, I figure out the wind direction.

Every August large parts of continental Europe switch off. Shops shutter and people spend extended time with friends and family. Entire countries essentially have a well-earned break.

This comes as no surprise and yet, as this mass vacation rolls around every year, I react in much the same way. I rage and huff and call out this particular arrangement as absurd, unworkable and totally unjust.

However, it is difficult not to admire a society that collectively decides a large part of summer deserves protecting. Furthermore, it raises an obvious question: why haven’t the UK, US and other nations got a grip on this August situation? How haven’t we, on our productive patches, come to some sort of group consensus on how to handle the month? Could we not simply agree that it would be better if we all took the month off? 

Economically, I haven’t thought this through. I assume that there would initially be some sort of economic chaos. Industries combusting and such in the first few years. But, eventually, recovery? Lessons learned for the next summer? A slightly more honest relationship with work perhaps? 

But forget all that: just imagine the fun to be had if an entire month was dedicated to downtime. Oh, the places we’d go. Surely this would be a good thing? Some offices – usually the sort with little work being done in – have launched “Summer Fridays”, where workers are granted an early finish somewhere around 15.00 or earlier if they’re lucky. “Days Off for Weeks on End” has more of a ring to it, though.

Over the channel, France backs its summers with law as well as custom. Since 2017, the droit à la déconnexion has required French companies above a certain size to negotiate formal policies on out-of-hours contact. The legislation essentially says, “Your time outside of work is not the company’s property – relax.”

But none of this is really about law or policy anyway – it’s about trust. It’s about whether a country trusts its own citizens to behave accordingly, to not take the piss. France and Italy decided that rest is vital, something to be protected. The UK and the US still treat rest as something that’s a bit embarrassing.  

For all our admiration of European culture, neighbourhood squares, cafés and long lunches, we rarely consider the elements that make those relaxed things possible. They begin with a shared acceptance that there is more to a successful society than perpetual availability.
Of course, not every business could close, nor should they. But perhaps the rest of us could become a little more comfortable with the idea that the world won’t stop simply because we spend August out of the office.

If the door does open again to a better relationship with Europe, I’d like the UK to take more from it than a trade deal. Can we come to some sort of August Agreement?

Emily Bryce-Perkins is a London-based writer and Monocle contributor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
 
Further reading:
– History repeats itself, why not holidays? The case for taking a trip down memory lane

– Nine boats to buoy your summer months as temperatures hit the high Cs

– Embark on a grand tour of European retail with Monocle this summer

The curtains at the Shanghai Grand Opera House will finally rise on 17 October. A decade in the making, the new world-class cultural destination in the Chinese metropolis will kick things off with a packed season featuring 82 performances across 47 productions. 

Designed by Oslo-founded architecture practice Snøhetta in close collaboration with the East China Architectural Design and Research Institute, the sprawling 146,786 sq m complex will be more than a performing-arts venue. The team has imagined it as an all-day public space that offers unbeatable views of the city and Huangpu river. “We’ve always believed that buildings should be bigger than themselves,” says Richard Wood, Snøhetta’s managing director for Asia. “The Shanghai Grand Opera House is almost like a civic square – one that we hope will be owned and loved by the people.”

The centrepiece is a helical roof that echoes the form of a bamboo fan. Inspired by its unfolding movement, the roof expands in one continuous gesture down a radiating staircase, eventually leading into an underground metro station. “The roof not only links the performance hall to the exterior but also connects the ground to the sky and the building to the park and water,” says Snøhetta’s studio director for China, Cheng Gong.

Contrasting the simplicity of the sweeping roof is a stack of sculptural red volumes at the entrance, alluding to the drama that will ensue on stage. Besides three state-of-the-art performance halls of varying sizes, Snøhetta has made room for a full production facility. “At other theatres, production is done off-site but here everything – from the set design to the costumes and props – can be produced in the same building in one seamless flow,” says Gong. 

While back-of-house spaces are traditionally sealed off from the public, Snøhetta has intentionally uncovered parts of the production facility to the street, giving passers-by a glimpse of how the show comes together. “There’s been a global shift in cultural architecture where buildings [have opened up] to the people, and we like to think that we have played an active role in shaping that,” says Wood. “There’s a generosity in how we’ve designed the Shanghai Grand Opera House.” As construction enters its final phase, Wood is keen to see if Snøhetta’s vision will take shape as planned. “When I meet a married couple in 10 years’ time and they tell me that they met on the upper roof, that would be the highest success,” he says.

Three more upcoming cultural openings in Asia

Decentral, Bangkok
April 2027

Established by Thai real-estate conglomerate Central Group, Decentral Bangkok is a forthcoming non-profit art centre situated across a former denim factory, an office building and a traditional Thai-style house in the buzzing Watthana district. Taking an adaptive-reuse approach, Hong Kong-based practice Beau Architects has conceived a tropical garden to connect the spaces into one creative compound complete with shops and a café. Decorating the walls will be commissioned works by Thai contemporary artists. Decentral’s second outpost in Chiang Mai is also in the works. 

Róng Museum of Art, Shenzhen
June 2027

Shenzhen, known as China’s Silicon Valley, is making serious moves on the culture front. Following closely behind the Zaha Hadid Architects-designed Shenzhen Science & Technology Museum is the Róng Museum of Art, a private institution funded by Tencent co-founder, Pony Ma. No expense has been spared: the sprawling 4,500 sq m building is designed by acclaimed architecture firm Büro Ole Scheeren while the museum’s founding director Pi Li, previously the head of art at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Contemporary, is assembling a blockbuster opening exhibition focused on the visual culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Róng Museum of Art is part of an ambitious mixed-use property development, Houhai Hybrid Campus, which includes Upper House’s new Shenzhen outpost. 

Kontempo Center for Contemporary Art, Manila 
No date set yet

The Ayala Foundation, the non-profit arm of Filipino conglomerate Ayala Corporation, is behind one of the Philippines’ highly anticipated cultural projects: Kontempo Center for Contemporary Art. LA-based Thai architect Kulapat Yantrasast – known for designing Dib Bangkok – has hatched a building within the 2.5-hectare site that blurs the boundaries between inside and out, while Reuben Keehan, Queensland Art Gallery’s former curator of contemporary Asian art, has taken on the role of artistic director. Instead of building a large permanent collection, the museum will reportedly focus on “exhibitions, commissions, research and public programming”. 

“What are you seeing in this place?” It was a fair question from my Australian family, who I had dragged to Gibellina Nuova, a small town in the centre of Sicily. It was a baking hot summer day and we were staring at the empty sistema delle piazze – built to the design of architects Franco Purini and Laura Thermes in 1990. Constructed from scratch between 1970 and 1990, the conurbation was intended to house some 100,000 people displaced by an earthquake that devastated the Belice Valley area.

Despite its relative newness, the town appeared lifeless when we rolled through. But so are most places at 14.00 at this time of year in Sicily. Still, it was hard to imagine it ever being described as vibrant – maybe if the local football team won the league, you could picture a procession around the piazze. The issue, from my rudimentary initial assessment, is its scale. The town has a population of about 4,000 but was created with the infrastructure and dimensions of one packed with 20,000 people. Slow initial construction and a subsequent lack of jobs meant that its vast plazas, enormous civic buildings and wide streets never filled up.

So, why visit? For a start, the buildings, despite their scale, are remarkable works of art. The mayor at the time of the earthquake, Ludovico Corrao, commissioned a murderers’ row of post-modern Italian architectural talent. The result is a bizarre mix of buildings defined by surreal and classical architectural details, with highlights including the orb-like Chiesa Madre church by Ludovico Quaroni and Luisa Anversa from 1985, a curving glass-and-metal theatre by Pietro Consagra (1976) and a pharmacy that looks like a rudimentary house tacked onto boxy concrete blockwork (again, by Purini and Thermes, 1980). Despite the wide, carbon-copy, car-friendly avenues complete with a mix of parking spaces and pedestrian boulevards, the residential side features villas with varied façades. There are Art Nouveau-inspired townhouses that look as though they were plucked from Brussels and Streamline Moderne structures that would be right at home in Los Angeles, all sitting side-by-side.

The result is an architectural mix that is significantly different from most towns on the island. About 50 to 60 per cent of all structures on Sicily were built before 1970, with urban environments either defined by centuries-old stone masonry or simple postwar concrete-block buildings. In contrast, there is no one shared style, no single hand guiding Gibellina Nuova – there was a mayor, a community and a host of architects convinced that ambitious expression matters more than consensus. It makes the architecture here a uniquely varied time capsule – one that reflects the aspirations of a Sicilian community able to express itself en masse. While it might not be a town that works in a conventional sense, what I see is a celebration of the sheer variety of human taste. That alone makes it worth a visit.

Postmodern perfection:
Read the full report on Gibellina Nuova’s development over the years here

In 1875 poet Julia Goddard wrote of the “golden summertime” – which was a place, in her telling, as much as a stretch of months, where “birds sing cheerily” and “listening breezes” share lovers’ secrets. For many parents, though, the phrase will trigger traumatic flashbacks of last year’s “Golden” summer, when kids across the globe insisted on playing the K-Pop Demon Hunters song of that name on loop for most of their waking hours. “We’re goin’ up, up, up, it’s our moment… Gonna be, gonna be golden…” It’s a repetitive lyric. Now, imagine hearing the whole thing 20 times in a row.

Children love repetition for good reason. Their growing brains are sensitive to patterns; in their earliest years, this is thought to help them acquire language through a process called “statistical learning”. When they’re a little older, they continue to try to decipher the world around them by identifying recurring sounds, sights, themes and ideas.

My son is nine now but he still takes a lot of comfort in doing the same thing over and over again. As soon as it’s summer, he starts pleading with us to be taken to the English coastal town of Whitstable, where we used to go every July or August until two years ago. Our trips would follow a set plan, which Kurt would strictly enforce. We’d get up early and run up a hill near the hotel where we always stayed, from which we could see sheep grazing in the distance. Then we’d return to eat breakfast when my partner was out of the shower and take a cab ride to the harbour, where we’d pick up some cockles, oysters and crab claws at the West Whelks shack. We’d eat on a specific part of the beach and amble westward to another stretch, prized because of its easy access to both a café and some public loos hidden beside a tennis court. The same itinerary, year after year. And it was perfect.

Like my son, I sometimes crave routine and long for this kind of repetition, especially when it comes to holiday escapes. It’s only natural, I suppose, no matter how old we are. When I was his age, it was a family ritual to spend summers on the island of Mitarai, near Hiroshima, where all of our uncles, aunts and cousins would gather for sashimi feasts and fireworks. The centuries-old house, once the site of my ancestors’ soy-sauce factory, was a constant in my childhood spent moving from one London rental house to another.

We all fantasise about the thrill of new experiences but some habits can be equally rewarding. Familiarity reduces mental fatigue, freeing us from the sort of instant decisions that we spend our working lives having to make, and there’s plenty of joy to be found in revisiting old haunts that are part of our personal history. It can teach us something too. “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered,” wrote Nelson Mandela in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. And he was right. Maybe it’s not too late for me to book another trip to Whitstable this year – or even one to Mitarai, where I could revive an older family tradition.

Yo Zushi is Monocle’s chief sub editor. At time of press for Monocle’s summer newspaper, ‘Med, Mountains & More’, he had yet to sort out his family’s travel plans.

The road southeast from Aleppo bears the scars of Syria’s long civil war: bombed-out buildings, empty villages and a slow stream of cars passing checkpoints run by young men with rifles. But at some point on the descent towards the coast, the mood changes, the heat softens and the hills become greener, as the Mediterranean begins to announce itself. Military patrols are replaced by roadside stalls selling inflatable rubber rings and garish Lilos.

Latakia, Syria’s main port, was a political power base for Bashar al-Assad and his Alawite followers. Today its streets remain strewn with rubble but there’s also a corniche where women in sleeveless tops and summer dresses amble with their children as they head towards the sea. This is a place that’s very much in transition. Monocle passes a mansion, now occupied by the current government’s soldiers, with an Assad-era Hawk of Quraish emblem hanging on its gate. The money in people’s pockets still bears the image of the leader who fled to Russia in late 2024.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was appointed president in January 2025, having moved with startling speed from insurgency to state power. His government is now trying to project an image of order, institutional discipline and pragmatism. Syrians and foreign observers alike are watching for signs that this new authority can accommodate a country as diverse, exhausted and suspicious as this one. But on our visit, Monocle doesn’t find a city in fear; rather, it’s a city in swimwear. By the sea, locals gather around plastic tables smoking, ordering rounds of drinks and – in a sense – daring the rest of the country to catch up with them. Women wear bikinis, Lebanese pop singers perform until the early hours and young Syrians drink alcohol in bars, in full view of a police station.

The official answer for how this all works lies in a very Syrian compromise. In June 2025 the tourism ministry issued rules requiring women to wear burkinis or other modest swimwear at public beaches and pools. Western-style ones, however, are permitted at private resorts and luxury hotels. In Latakia, the rules visibly differ from one beach to the next, even when they’re side by side. At the public beach, families arrive with plastic tubs of food, bags of bread and flasks of tea. Women huddle in groups underneath umbrellas, many of them covered in loose clothing and headscarves, while men wade into the sea in below-the-knee shorts.

“It’s very beautiful,” one woman tells Monocle, drawing deeply on her shisha. “It’s mainly Arabs who come here, not really Europeans. We hope that tourism keeps growing, especially from outside.” Around her is a home-cooked feast for a wedding party; the sand is strewn with rubbish bags, as children weave between deckchairs. This is one side of Latakia: affordable, conservative, sociable and good humoured. Right next to this, on the aspirationally named Côte d’Azur Road, is another. We arrive on Hola beach club’s opening day to a soundtrack of Arabic club hits and the din of a pool party. More than 300 people have turned up for the first day. It’s polished but not precious – an “affordable fancy beach club”, as its owner, Manaf Kaddour, puts it while showing us around the spa, shops, beauty salon, gym and rooftop nightclub.

“Since the liberation of Syria, many local and international investors have been planning to enter the Syrian tourism market,” says Kaddour. “The faster you enter, the greater the results.” What surprises him most is not demand but the lack of obstruction to his Westernised plans. The old bureaucracy has not disappeared, he says, and banking still needs reform, but there are “no more worries about bribes or internal interference in your business. Latakia is a virgin market.”

The entrance fee for private beach clubs of this kind is about €4 for children and €9 for adults, many of whom travel here from Damascus, Aleppo and Idlib. Abdul Wahed Daboul – the general manager of Afamia Hotel Resort, formerly part of the Rotana group – feels that he’s in the right place at the right time. “Latakia is completely different to the rest of Syria,” he tells Monocle. “Here, people are free and open-minded. This is where they come to enjoy the beach, have a drink and not worry.” On his desk is a picture of him with Al-Sharaa.

Not worrying is easier said than done, though, and Latakia isn’t entirely carefree. The tourism police, created by the new government, is part of an ongoing negotiation. Though they’re not an ominous presence on our visit, officers in deep-blue uniforms patrol beaches and tourist sites. Their role is slightly unclear: they’re not a morality police and are meant to offer security for people and businesses. According to its chief, Osama Marandi, the force in Latakia numbers 225 officers, including 50 women. “Welcome to the new Syria,” he says, with practised warmth.

Female officer Rama Ghanem was once a schoolteacher but jumped at the chance to join the tourism police to help her country and home city grow. “Old Syria was beautiful but now it’s changing for the better. There used to be no rule; now there is. This is our Syria, the people’s Syria. Before it was not.”

The laws are mostly clear. As well as new regulations promoting modesty and banning alcohol on public beaches, there are restrictions on groups of men in some areas – an attempt to keep beaches family-friendly and reduce harassment. “We don’t have a problem with bikinis,” says the tourism police chief. Ghanem quickly clarifies. “They’re allowed and we welcome it, as does the government – just not in public spaces,” she says. Though some things remain in flux, the direction of travel is encouraging, says Ghanem. “People from Aleppo and Idlib wouldn’t come here because of the previous regime,” she says. “Now they can visit all of the historic places. This is freedom.”

Caretaker Ilyas Karkhour guides us through the Virgin Mary Armenian Church, an 820-year-old stone sanctuary tucked into a side street in the city centre. Latakia’s centre is full of cultural treasures. There are churches beside mosques; shopkeepers who slip between Arabic and Armenian; Alawites, Sunnis and Christians living side by side. Back on the beach, the question of cosmopolitanism comes up again. “The mix of cultures and religions has been the essence of Syria from the beginning,” says Caroline Chrakiam, as we disturb her from her siesta on Blue Beach. “For now, we are waiting and seeing.”

“Wait and see” might as well be the coast’s unofficial slogan. Chrakiam says that there’s hope and freedom but warns against confusing either with certainty. A friend on the sunlounger next to her who has returned to Latakia from the UAE says that the Gulf was “our safe haven during the conflict – our shield”. But here, her family still worries when she goes to the beach and remembers the curfews and anxiety of a few short years ago. “There is still a little bit of fear,” says another Latakian called Kanz, who chooses not to share his surname. “We need time to fully trust these new guys and for them to fully accept who we are.”

On America Street, a predominantly Christian area, the bars begin to fill after the sun sets. At Abu Ghassan Pub, there’s football on. High tables are tightly packed and loud conversations compete with the match commentary. At one point, the bar goes dark: a power cut. Nobody flinches. Karim Morcos, a Latakia resident, shrugs and says that temporary shutdowns are less frequent than they were before, when the electricity sometimes stayed off for hours.

As we leave the hubbub of the pub, we spot a red cap on a shelf. The slogan reads: “Make Syria Great Again”. It’s a joke, of course, but perhaps also a little prayer.

Tourism in Syria

During Donald Trump’s Gulf visit in 2025, the US announced its decision to lift sanctions on Syria. This helped to open up a path to recovery and attracting capital. Last year, Syria signed tourism investment contracts worth about €1.3bn, for projects including hotels, resorts, entertainment and the rehabilitation of historic areas. Many in Lakatia hope that this will mean the arrival of Gulf-backed hotels, renovated resorts, better roads, cleaner beaches and new visitors arriving who can see Syria less as a warzone than a summer destination.

Latakia: Key information

Credit cards generally aren’t accepted so carry cash (both US dollars and Syrian pounds). Tourist visas can be bought on arrival (€130 for UK and European passport holders, €175 for Americans and about €40 for most other countries, such as Turkey and the Gulf states). Aleppo International Airport is the closest hub to Latakia; taxis take two-and-a-half hours and should cost no more than €90. Blue Beach resort has the best stretch of sand but gets busy at weekends. Afamia Hotel Resort’s accommodation is safe, clean and comfortable but perhaps not to the five-star standard that its promotional literature suggests. Visit Souq al-Safan and hidden gems such as X Public House and Radio Latakia. The corniche is bustling and is home to busy markets throughout the week. Latakians head to the beach on Fridays, meaning that most places are shut throughout the day. Away from the seafront, historical Ottoman sites include Ugarit, an ancient archaeological site dating back to 6,000 BCE. There’s also Qalaat Sahyun, a Unesco-listed medieval fortress, and The National Museum.

---

---