Albania
Telegraph Travel’s Caroline Shearing enjoyed a memorable trip to Albania last year. "The hot air buzzed with bee-eaters as we passed a woman leading a reluctant goat," she wrote. "This was followed by the surreal sight of an open‑mouthed fish wobbling towards us as a man riding a bicycle struggled to keep a one-armed hold on his large, slippery companion. The smooth, grey ribbon of road that had transported us to the Albanian border had now become a potted track, and there was a sense of not just having crossed a geographical divide, but of stepping back in time."
Here are 12 other destinations that are stuck in a time warp...
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Romania
In the Carpathian villages of Romania, horses and carts and scythe-wielding farmers are still the norm. George Butler, a London-based artist, visited last year. His real brief was to document the architecture, but he got distracted. "I was, as always, blown away by the people, and what they were doing and how they were doing it," he said. "The second time I went, the buildings become the context for the things that were going on: scything by hand, collecting water from the well, milking cows and goats - all the daily village life."
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Belarus
As Mark Rowe explained back in 2008, following a trip for Telegraph Travel, there is still something reassuringly Soviet about Belarus, including the surviving statues of Lenin. "As you enter Minsk you'll spot a tired housing estate decked with striking murals of happy families and workers striking fraternal poses," he said. "Atop the apartments a slogan proclaims: 'Let our native Belarus flourish'."
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Transnistria
In the pro-Russian breakaway state in Moldova, statues of Lenin still stand in town squares and communist slogans plaster the walls. There's even a "Che Guevara High School of Political Leadership". For more on the region, Rory MacLean and the photographer Nick Danziger wrote a book on it: Back in the USSR: Heroic Adventures in Transnistria.
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Frinton-on-Sea
There are several places in Britain where the pace of change seems to be glacial, among them Frinton-on-Sea in Essex - the lawns and teacups capital of Britain. It's frightfully respectable and managed for years to stick to the rules of its 19th-century founding charter, which explicitly outlawed pubs in order to avoid attracting the wrong sort of resident. The first - and still only - drinking spot was finally given the go-ahead in 2000. There's also only one fish and chip shop, so as not to attract the type of riff-raff that goes to Clacton, down the road. "This is a quiet seaside town," explains its website.
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Mount Athos, Greece
This mountain and peninsula in northern Greece is home to more than 2,000 monks living the ascetic life in one of 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries. Outside are allowed to visit, with special permission - so long as they aren't female (as has been the case for more than 1,000 years). -- If that doesn't take your fancy, then simply venture into the heart of most Greek islands and you'll find idyllic spots, where old boys still play backgammon over cold glasses of ouzo in the village café and monks Try Lefkada, in the Ionian - where there are the sleepy villages of the Sfakiotes region, and the gorgeous former capital of Karya.
The 19 best Greek islands
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Cuba
The situation is quickly changing, with investment and tourism on the rise following an easing of relations with the US, but parts of Cuba - Trinidad, for example - are still wonderfully sleepy. And, of course, there are all those 1950s cars.
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Nanjie, China
Nanjie in central China continues to use the Maoist egalitarian model - making it something of a tourist attraction. "At 06:15 every morning, the air is suddenly full of songs of praise for China's mighty former leader, Mao Zedong," a BBC report in 2013 explained. "The anthems blare forth up and down the empty streets, from loudspeakers on every lamp post. Basic pay is low… but commune members also get rent-free apartments, with utilities and basic foodstuffs provided, plus education." There are major doubts about how successful its economic policy is, however. In 2008, newspapers in Hong Kong and Guangzhou unravelled a tale of Enron-style woe, with the village's triumphs reportedly built on £120 million of secret loans from the Agricultural Bank of China.
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Central Asia
With their spanking new capitals built on oil money, the likes of Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are far from throwbacks - except, that is, when it comes to employing the cult of personality as an important tool of the state. In Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, leader from 1985 to 2006, was particularly fond of himself. Posters of him were erected across the country; schools required to use his own book, the Ruhnama, as a teaching resource; and there was even a creation myth surrounding him. Despite sweeping the regime of Niyazov under the carpet, the current Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow uses similar methods. In Azerbaijan images of Heydar Aliyev - leader from 1993 until 2003 - were stuck on walls in every town during his reign, and monuments and museums dedicated to him can be found in most cities now he's checked out. His successor, democratically appointed son Ilham Aliyev (a former Politburo member) also favours his own visage. And in Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev (pictured) is the man. There are a couple of statues and a museum dedicated to him, containing awards bestowed upon him by foreign governments (including Britain's). There is also a set of golf balls given to him by Bill Clinton.
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Madeira
"Madeira seems to think it's still 1974," reckons Telegraph Travel's Chris Leadbeater. It certainly is a bucolic place, attracting a mature clientele with its dramatic scenery and botanical wonders. For a truly old-fashioned experience, take afternoon tea on the veranda at Reid's - it celebrates its 125th anniversary next year and was long a favourite among British visitors (Sir Winston Churchill among them) - a section of the dining room was, until not too long ago, reserved by an unspoken rule for peers of the realm.
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Route 66
In the Forties and Fifties, Route 66 was sometimes dubbed "America's Main Street", passing through many small towns in the Midwest and Southwest. Although the original trunk road was decommissioned in 1984, Historic Route 66 preserves much of the old atmosphere. There are kitsch hotels and restaurants galore, as well as numerous oversized roadside "attractions", such as the world's biggest rocking chair, a few miles west of Cuba, Missouri.
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Bulgaria
As Robert Nurden found when he bought a house there, Bulgaria is a timeless country where life is lived at a slower pace. "They don't use the word organic here because everything is organic," he wrote for Telegraph Travel in 2013. "Potatoes taste like double cream, the peppers are mouth-watering, the walnuts succulent. The countryside is perhaps as western Europe's used to be, 100 or more years ago."
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