The Other Festival in Ipoh mines for memories

Want to watch an arts performance in the rain? This is Ascent, a show that immerses its audience into history - literally.

It was the first time that I was attending a street theatre performance while being pelted by night monsoon rain. Ah, what a glorious way to experience Ipoh old town.

Actors delivered melancholic accounts of lives in colonial times as they popped in and out of dark alcoves along Concubine Lane, where rich tin miners once kept small shophouses for their second and third wives. We, the 20 or so audience members, clad in soggy disposable raincoats, were literally soaking in the ambience.