See A Dead Body (Bucket List #15)

Cambodia/UK • Various Dates • Length of Read: 3 Minutes

“So there’s a great essay written by Sigmund Freud called ‘On Transience’, and in it, he cites a conversation that he had with the poet Rilke as they were walking along this beautiful garden. At one point, Rilke looked like he was about to tear up and Freud said, ‘What’s wrong? It’s a beautiful day. There are beautiful plants around us. This is magnificent.” To which Rilke says, “Well, I can’t get over the fact that one day all of this is going to die. All these trees, all these plants, all this life is going to decay. Everything dissolves into meaninglessness when you think about the fact that impermanence is a really real thing. Perhaps the greatest existential bummer of all is entropy.” I was really struck by this because perhaps that’s why when we’re in love we’re also kind of sad. There’s sadness to the ecstasy. Beautiful things sometimes can make us a little sad. And it’s because what they hint at is the exception, a vision of something more, a vision of a hidden door, a rabbit hole to fall through, but a temporary one. And I think, ultimately, that is kind of the tragedy. That is why love simultaneously fills us with melancholy.” – Jason Silva.

When people look through my bucket list, there are two items which tend to be commented on far more than any others: ‘#52 Fall in Love’ and ‘#15 See a Dead Body’. I think that this is because, as humans, we feel a much greater connection to ideas and events that tug at our heart-strings than we do to adrenaline based activities such as skydiving, relaxing activities such as bathing in the blue lagoon, or adventure activities such as spending the night on a desert island. These other activities are nice added extras, but love and death affect us all. Not in equal measures, but they do affect us all.

My second published book, We Ordered a Panda, which can be purchased through my online bookshop, is my comprehensive answer to the former. My way of feeling better about things is to write them down. Yes, I wish to entertain and inspire, but my writing also doubles as a form of therapy. As an atheist, I am constantly melancholic about love and death. I know that there is no afterlife. I know that I am no phoenix and that when I do eventually die there will be no rebirth from the ashes. By seeing a dead body, I felt that it would provide such a horrific and stark image of the fragility and shortness of life, that I would then be able to further comprehend and understand how I wish to better spend mine.

I have now been unfortunate enough to see multiple dead bodies, and can indeed say that this has been the case. I’m not going to go into the specifics of such incidents. Trust me, as much as you think you want to know, you don’t want to know. And even if you did want to know, I don’t want to share them with you anyway so you won’t know.

What I will say, however, is that crossing this item off my bucket list has strangely led me to be a much happier person. Knowing that I only have a limited time on this Earth, and staring death in the face, has triggered something in me to live much more in the moment; to stop worrying as much; to do even more crazy things, and to eliminate any regret from my actions. Instead of fearing death, I am embracing life.

When I was walking home drunk from the pub one night with my good friend Possum, she got out her phone and started to play Yellow by Coldplay. “This is the song that I want to be played at my funeral,” she said, almost stumbling off the pavement into oncoming traffic, “and everyone in attendance will have to turn up in yellow clothes. I want it to be a celebration of my life and not a mourning.”

How beautiful. How melancholic.

Taking a Shitty Two-Day Slow Boat down the Mekong River from Thailand into Laos

Chiang Rai Bus Terminal is more the type of parking lot that you’d expect to find in a scrap yard than at a station supposedly equipped to deal with Thailand’s national transport system. With the rain pouring down in torrents, and my Lonely Planet guidebook doubling as a hood, Twiggy and I took our bags from the hold of our coach which had just pulled in, hopscotched around the meteor crater-sized potholes, strolled out onto the depressing main street, passed a lonely looking cat café, and took cover inside a dainty corner bar. Ordering some chicken and rice, as is standard across Asia, we looked at one another and nodded in agreement. Chiang Rai was a town with absolutely zero redeeming qualities. We needed to get ourselves out of there pronto.

The food was hotter than the Devil’s Hell, and taking an accidental bite right into a rogue chilli that had made its way into my dish the taste buds in my mouth were sent overboard. I bent over the table and began flicking my tongue in and out like a lizard hunting flies in an attempt to cool myself down; sweat pouring down my forehead and catching on my brow. Twiggy found this the funniest thing in the world, and rather than helping a brother out by fetching a pot of yoghurt or a glass of milk, he instead burst into fits of hysterics. Karma soon struck, though, and in his laughter, he began to choke on the lump of sticky rice that he was chewing on, sending him into a coughing fit that turned his face an unhealthy hue of purple. As I continued to act like I was trying to lick my way through a litre tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream without a spoon, the pair of us must have looked like special needs patients to any onlookers. Onlookers such as the Aussie couple sat at the other side of the bar.

Like the owner of the bar, they also made no attempt to aid us, and instead sniggered away until we both managed to get ourselves back to normal. Well, I’ll never be normal, but back to usual let’s say. After tentatively finishing our meals, being careful to avoid any repeat incidents, we politely accepted their request to join them for a drink. No sooner had we shuffled over to their table, however, did I realise that the guy was a complete prick. Bald, tanned by the Western Australia sun, and covered in your standard sleeve tattoos that many fifty-year-old bikers tend to rock, all he wanted to do was blow his own trumpet. I read somewhere once that Marilyn Manson had undergone surgery to get his lower two ribs removed so that he could self-fellate his own penis, but though that, if I'd told the Hell’s Angel beside me this, he may have taken it as a revelation as opposed to the likely fictitious story it is. Either way, he was so crazy about straddling motorbikes that I got the impression he’d rather stick his knob inside the exhaust pipe of his Harley Davidson than his rather attractive hippie wife. She told us that they had a friend who owned a hostel in Cambodia called Lazy Gecko and that if we name-dropped them to the proprietor upon arrival he’d sort us out with some high-quality marijuana. I lied and said that we would.

The couple were also planning to escape Chiang Rai by taking a slow boat down the Mekong River from the Thai-Laos border to the colonial French settlement of Luang Prabang. It was for this purpose that we’d initially come to the tumbleweed town, as I’d been told by a few fellow travellers whilst dotting around the rest of Asia that this two-day, one night, trip was a bit of a booze cruise, and the perfect way to chew up the miles. With nothing to do in Chiang Rai, and running the risk of being stuck with the Aussie couple if we stayed an extra night, Twiggy and I booked tickets costing 1,800 Baht for the boat that departed the following morning. Unfortunately, our excitement wouldn’t last long.

“Have you got your accommodation booked for tonight?” asked a plump, camp man as we shared a tuk-tuk from the border town of Huay Xai to the pier. He was travelling with his boyfriend and the couple from Leeds had donned themselves in full travel wanker gear.

“We sleep on the boat,” I laughed, correcting him. “Booze cruise here we come.”

“No we don’t,” he said, looking confused. “It’s not the bloody QE2 we’re taking. What on Earth made you think that there would be enough room on the boat for all of us to sleep?”

“Don’t joke with me right now,” I said, starting to panic. I’d dragged Twiggy all the way from Glasgow to a corner of nowhere in Western Laos with the promise of a party boat, and now the wind was being taken right out of our sails by a dude who looked like Gru from Despicable Me wearing a Clint Eastwood poncho

“Seriously,” he said, thinking that I was the one joking. “This is no booze cruise either. Most of the people on the boat will be locals who use the river to commute back and forth between their sporadic riverside settlements. We all disembark at dusk to spend the evening in a one horse shoreline hamlet called Pak Beng.”

“I think you might be right,” I admitted in deflation as the pier came into view. A wooden raft of a boat sat docked, looking as depressed as I felt. Even Huckleberry Finn would have scoffed at how primative it was. My supposed booze cruise liner turned out to have car seats that had been seemingly ripped from the same dilapidated and haggard minivan than had shakenly escorted us to the Thai border, and a toilet that looked like it had been cleaned by a blind person suffering from chronic diarrhoea. As we boarded, an American dude from Houston, Texas, sat down across the makeshift aisle from me and immediately collapsed the seat with his fat ass. Typical. They weren’t even screwed down. I opened my book and started to read. This was going to be a long, long excursion.

As we set off, a sixty-nine-year-old woman that bore a striking resemblance to Noddy Holder from Slade came over for a chat. She had been travelling the world with her Icelandic husband called Magnus for eight whole years in full retirement, but despite having more stamps in her passport than almost anybody I’ve ever met seemed to lack any form of geographical knowledge. Whilst retelling us a frightfully long story about confronting homeless people on Big Island Hawaii when there for her eldest daughter’s wedding, Noddy informed us that Honolulu was America’s 56th State. I looked at the perm of white hair atop her head and started humming Merry Christmas Everybody. She soon left.

An Israeli girl wearing Harry Potter specs and a pair of skin tight leggings that bore a colourful pattern of the solar system on them then sat down behind us. Bored of the typical backpacker questioning of ‘how long are you travelling for?’ I asked her what she thought about humanity’s strive to colonise Mars in an attempt to become a multi-planetary species, but only got a grunt in response and a complaint about the packed lunches that we had been given.

Unperturbed, I then asked her what she thought the greatest man-made construction of all time was, but again she just shrugged and replied that she felt that nothing man-made has ever been of benefit to the life on our planet. I told her that I thought the International Space Station was a pretty neat project and that, were it not for irrigation networks and modern advancements in medicine, the likelihood of her having survived long enough through childhood and getting on a plane to the other side of the planet so as to annoy me with her wishy washy Earthly philosophies would be somewhat drastically reduced. She told me in response that I should read a book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by an Israeli author she couldn’t remember. I told her that it had been written by a gentleman going by the name of Yuval Noah Harari and that I’d finished it only a few months ago.

Changing her tune, said she that she was genuinely impressed, and expressed her delight at how excellent and beautiful the view from the river was. I told her that the only way I would consider the view to be excellent was if I’d spent the previous twenty years looking at the four concrete walls of a prison cell. She told me I was being a bit grumpy and morbid. I told her that the boat did have many similarities to a prison cell in the sense of the poor amenities and that we couldn’t leave it. She soon moved to a seat at the back.

‘Perhaps I should make a conscious effort to be a bit nicer to people,’ I thought to myself, putting my earphones in and directing my gaze down the murky and muddy Mekong. We did have another 500km to cover which would take approximately fourteen hours. How I wished that we’d just booked a flight. Now that’s a man-made invention everyone can get on board with. Here’s a toast to the Wright Brothers and Lucky Charles Lindbergh.

Dragon Hunters (Bucket List #48)

Komodo Island, Labuan Bajo, Flores, Indonesia • March 2017 • Length of Read: 8 Minutes

“Do you want to go and hunt some dragons?” I asked Fraser, taking a sip of export beer. We had met in the bar area of Bali’s New Seminyak Capsule Hostel approximately only three minutes before, but it was one of those awesome rare occasions where you instantly click with someone; a complete stranger who you feel like you’ve known your whole life.

“The Komodo dragons?” queried my fellow Scot, a smile spreading across his face. “Absolutely, I’ve wanted to see them since I was a kid.” Fraser and I had quickly figured out that we only lived about twenty minutes away from each other back home in Glasgow, but surprisingly had no mutual friends. What we did have, however, were very similar personalities and dry senses of humour. The perfect combination.

“Awesome,” I replied, excited at his enthusiasm. “It says here in my guidebook that the small islands of Komodo and Rinca off the west coast of Flores are the only places in the world where these big giant monitor lizards can be seen. Although there is no accepted reason why the dragons are only found in this small area of Indonesia, it’s thought that their ancestors came from Australia four-million years ago. About 4000 of them live in the wild.”

“Let’s get those plane tickets booked then,” he smiled. “I’m all for spontaneous adventures and this is far too cool an opportunity to turn down.”

With our flight being labelled as 'delayed' on the screens in the domestic departures lounge, we got chatting to a couple of Swiss girls waiting for the same plane to land. The blonde was a rock climber and had been scaling faces and walls all around Asia for the previous two months. As she explained the rush she got every time she dusted her hands in chalk and stepped into that first foothold, I became mesmerised. I love it when people start talking about things that they are genuinely passionate about. A cosmic energy seems to flow out of them and transfix their listeners who, regardless of whether they have any initial interest in the subject, find themselves hanging onto every word. The light in her eyes made me want to ditch my current travel plans, buy a harness and hammock, and go live out my existence in the hills and valleys of Yosemite National Park.

We also met a thirty-five-year-old freelance journalist from the States who had been solo-travelling the world for the previous four years, and boarding the flight one-hour late alongside her I picked her brain for tidbits of knowledge as to how to sustain a life-work balance when on the road. Her answer: Avoid party hostels. My response: Not too lightly.

There were only about twenty people on board the plane, and plonking my arse down in seat 1A I was given a near-perfect view of the safety demonstration. Our air hostess was a beautiful Indonesian woman with enormous fake boobies. So big, in fact, that, when she showed us how to inflate the life vest in the event of an emergency landing at sea, I thought a better option would be to just grab a hold of her artificial delights and use them as a floatation device.

As we went wheels up on the runway, however, I re-focused my attention on the staggering archipelagos and reefs whizzing by below, the country of Indonesia being comprised of over 18,000 individual islands. In what seemed like no time at all we were landing on a solitary runway amongst towering lush green mountains, and as we were taxied into the lone hanger which served as the terminal building a sign welcomed us to Flores' western seaside port town of Labuan Bajo. I’d booked our accommodation on Flores based entirely on its name, so was delighted when I found out that it also offered a free airport pick-up and welcome drink in addition to fully air-conditioned rooms with cable television. Exiting the baggage claim, however, it became immediately apparent why. I started to laugh. At the other side of the carpark, directly across the road from the airport, a sign reading

I’d booked our accommodation on Flores based entirely on its name, so was delighted when I found out that it also offered a free airport pick-up and welcome drink in addition to fully air-conditioned rooms with cable television. Exiting the baggage claim, however, it became immediately apparent as to why. I started to laugh. At the other side of the carpark, directly across the road from the airport, a sign reading Exotic Komodo Hotel shone back at us. “I think we’ll be able to just walk this one,” I laughed.

“There’s a phone call for you, Crobs,” said the receptionist as I sat down for a cup of coffee in the restaurant area.

“For me?” I said, confused. “Who on earth would be calling me at a random hotel in the back-arse-of-nowhere Indonesia? Nobody even knows that I’m here.”

“Someone called Katherine,” she shrugged, handing me the phone. I was still none the wiser.

“Hello?” I cautiously said, putting it to my ear.

“Hi Crobs,” came a slightly familiar voice from the receiver. “Katherine here, the American woman you met on the plane. I was just wondering if you’ve managed to sort out a tour tomorrow to Komodo Island. I’ve been struggling to get on one at such short notice.”

“Ah, hi Katherine,” I said, feeling rather uneasy. I had absolutely no recollection of telling her where Fraser and I had booked to stay that evening. “Unfortunately we got the last two spaces on our boat, so I don’t think I can be of any help.” It's moments like this what little white lies were invented for.

“No worries,” she said, sounding deflated. “I just thought I’d check on the off chance. Have a good time."

“Well, that was fucking creepy,” I sighed, hanging up the phone.

Our alarm clock woke us up before the sound of the cockerels the following morning, and we sleepily shuffled down to the pier where our boat was docked. I felt like a fairy tale prince about to embark on a quest to slay a fire-breathing beast, saving the helpless princess in the process and having her fall in love with me. Happily ever after. The end. As the motors of the unseaworthy vessel coughed into life like an asthmatic chain smoker and revved like a chainsaw, however, I plugged in my earbuds, turned the volume up on my iPod, and came back down to reality. My stomach started to rumble. I really should have tried to squeeze in some breakfast. We had a long journey ahead.

As we chugged out into the vast, calm, ocean, a Spanish girl burst open a packet of chocolate biscuits and began to devour them faster than Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster, feeding the occasional one to her boyfriend who had decided to lock his attention into a handheld video games console. Everyone else on the boat then had to look on in disgust as she finished the packet and started nibbling on her man’s ear; clearly still hungry. This needy petting continued until she got the attention she so craved and the pair soon started necking off right there in the middle of the tiny wooden boat. I’m all for romance, but public displays of affection like that are completely uncalled for.

“That was like watching the introduction to an amateur porno,” I laughed when, five hours later, we eventually docked up at Komodo Island. Our ten-strong group had collectively ditched the Spanish couple at the ranger’s office and gone straight to one of the food stalls near the pier for a meal of breakfast; brunch; elevenses; and lunch, rolled into one.

“Thankfully they stopped halfway through the journey when he got seasick overboard,” laughed one of the four Dutchmen we’d shared the ride across with.

“He was an idiot on that journey,” laughed his mate. “I mean how else do you expect that your body will react if you stuff a packet of chocolate biscuits down your pie hole and then transfix your eyes on the bright lights and colours of a games console whilst being rocked around in a bathtub of a boat.”

After fattening ourselves up so that we would be more juicy and attractive pray for the omnivorous dragons, in hindsight maybe not the best idea, we met the park guides who were to lead us into the heart of the island in search of these near-mythical creatures. We were not guaranteed to see any, but the chances were high.

Gathering round, they gave us a spiel about the dangers involved and what we should do in the event of an attack. This was all well and good, but I couldn’t help notice that these guides who, let’s not forget, were being paid to protect us from the deadly 3m long, 100kg, tank-like animals, were holding nothing but a large wooden stick apiece. I would have felt a lot more secure if they been carrying automatic rifles than something that looked like it had been stolen from a Venetian gondolier, especially considering that there is no cure for a Komodo dragon bite. The bacteria in their mouth is so poisonous that one bite from them will lead to septic infections that will eventually kill their victim, but not before up to two weeks of miserable pain. A Gandalf staff the sticks may have been mistaken for, but I highly doubted that a shout of ‘you shall not pass’ would do anything to deter these creatures, especially considering how they treat their family members.

Komodo dragons enjoy eating their young, and juvenile dragons, therefore, have to spend their nursery years living in the trees to avoid becoming a meal for adults; only coming down when they are big enough to protect themselves. This piece of knowledge soon had me glancing upwards as well as into the undergrowth on either side of the path we walked along. Our guide was effectively telling us that they could not only get us from ground level but also by falling down from the sky. This did little to appease my nerves as the path then opened out into a clearing and we saw them for the first time. Two giant Komodo dragons lazing about in an open area where the sun shone through a hole in the jungle canopy.

“It will be safe to go close to this pair,” said our lead guide with remarkable confidence. He did, I suppose, know what he was talking about. “The dragons will feed on large animals up to 100kg in one sitting and then retire for up to one month to digest their massive meal. These two both appear to have eaten very recently so are very unlikely to strike out.

Heeding his warnings and subsequent advice, we slowly shuffled forwards closer and closer towards the dragons, each of us in sheer awe of them. To come within near touching distance of such an evolutionarily adept killing machine sent me into complete awe. And to see them out with the confines and cages of a zoo made it all the more special. Kneeling down behind one of them, I felt like I’d actually hunted down and tamed a proper dragon. All there was next was to find and rescue the princess, wherever she may be.

Surf's Up (Bucket List #3)

Kuta Beach, Bali, Indonesia • March 2017 • Length of Read: 5 Minutes

Sitting at a solitary table on the raised decking of a quasi-Mexican Restaurant on Kuta Main Street, I glanced out along the road and scowled at the carnage unfolding before my eyes. I’ve mentioned before as to why I regard Bali’s most popular resort as one of the biggest shitholes I’ve ever had the displeasure of visiting, and the view from my dinner table that evening encapsulated this in a perfect nutshell. Middle-aged, sunburnt, Australian couples stumbled along the pavement pissed out of their faces; the relentless honking of taxi driver horns directed towards people of ‘my kind’ competed for attention with the techno music pounding from every neon-signed watering hole along the tacky strip; and I choked on the intoxicating dust kicked up by the hundreds of daredevil scooter riders whizzing past, as sweat poured down my forehead. Deafened, and feeling like I’d just chain-smoked a packet of Marlboro Gold before stepping fully clothed into a leaky shower, I attempted to enjoy the chicken fajitas placed before me.

My flight from New Zealand to Indonesia had been delayed on its layover in Sydney, and it was near 11 pm when I’d eventually managed to haggle a lift from the airport, check into my basic hotel accommodation, and wander out into the hot and sultry Friday night in search of a bite to eat that wouldn’t leave my ass planted firmly on the toilet the following morning. It was St. Patrick’s Day, but the chance of getting a cold pint of Guinness in Kuta with some traditional folk music was seemingly as slim as being offered a threesome by identical twin sisters. As I pushed the food around my plate, two young Indonesia girls were accosted by a creepy old German dude on the pavement below. “You want to go dancing?” he asked them, shaking his hips in a manner that caused them recoil in disgust. “You want to fuck off?” I muttered inaudibly under my breath.

I’d been warned by everyone from my best friends back in Scotland to the Kiwi guy I passed my delay in Kingsford-Smith Airport with that Kuta was a disgusting place, but in order to cross off bucket list item number three I was going to have to stomach the seaside resort, and its food, for a couple of nights. Bali is internationally renowned amongst the surfing community for its waves, but for a beginner like myself looking to just stand up on a board the swell around Kuta was recommended as the only safe place to dip my toes in the water. The breaks around the rest of the island would be too powerful for a novice to handle. I headed back to my accommodation praying that, come daylight, the nocturnal demons would be safely out of harm’s way.

I met another Scottish guy at the surf school reception the next morning, still dripping wet from the sunrise lesson that he’d received. Giving me a tired thumbs up when I asked him whether or not the price was worth the tuition, I booked lesson for that afternoon. A few hours later I was pulling on a wetsuit top, lubricating my knees so as to avoid friction burns, shaking the hand of my instructor, and shuffling down to the beach with a longboard under my right arm. Alex was twenty-five, the same age as me, and had been teaching people to surf since his teenage years. He had that sparkle in his eyes which is seemingly ever-present in those who have managed to turn their passion into a career. Either that, or it was because he had begun telling me about the cute Japanese girl he’d managed to pick up the previous evening. If there’s anything that can connect straight males around the world, regardless of their background and beliefs, then it’s girls; girls; girls.

After drilling me on the basics and then letting me practice getting up on the board a few times on dry land, Alex led me into the ocean. He wore a snapback and didn’t take it off even when dipping his head underwater. It was as seemingly as much a part of him as the hair on his head, superglued in place. Perhaps it was a surfer style thing, or perhaps he had started balding at an early age. It felt rude to ask. Writing this bucket list post, I’ve now been in Asia for a number of months, and have been exposed to a disproportionately large number of hair-loss treatment ads on buses, trains, and in airports. It seems that it may be a real problem among Asians. Not the largest problem affecting this area of the word, mind you, but a problem nonetheless.

Now, you’ve probably heard that the beaches of Bali are among the most beautiful in the world, or have seen photos of golden sands and tranquil deep-blue seas that make you want to quit your job, book a one-way flight, and live out the rest of your existence on this island paradise. Well, I don’t want to burst your bubble, but this is a mirage; an Instagram-filtered fairy tale. If you want paradise, go to Fiji; go to the Philippines; go to the Maldives. As I pushed by the board over the whitewash hitting the Balinese shore, plastic carrier bags and sewage tickled my ankles; the ocean bed and my feet hidden from view by the murkiness of the water. Were it not for the excitement that courses through my body when crossing off another bucket list item, I would have been repulsed. Such is the importance of that 150-line list which I created back in 2008 to my continual development as a person, however, that even the yard-sale of a crash I experienced on my first attempt to stand-up couldn’t wipe the smile from my face.

It took another few attempts after this initial fail, Alex correcting my stance and tweaking my positioning on the board each time, but I was soon up. I was standing. I was conquering the ocean. I was tasting the freedom of riding a wave for the first time. I was hooked. Some find unhealthy addiction in drug use; in gambling; in drink; or in sex. I’m fortunate enough to find its healthy cousin in adrenaline. It’s what I live for, and as I rode into the shore time and time again over the next hour-and-a-half, my muscles aching, I felt more and more alive.

I so was present to the moment in fact, that it took me a while to realise that Alex had entirely stopped giving me any of the tuition that I’d paid him for and was instead staring and drooling over the gorgeous Singaporean girl stood on the shoreline, posing there in a tiny white bikini. I felt sorry for him that he’d probably never get to experience the surf off the coasts of Hawaii or the South African cape, the wages in Indonesia making it impossible for most of the world’s fourth most inhabited country to afford any form of trip abroad. He had genuine happiness, however, and what more do any of us chase after than love and happiness? Those trapped in the Western consumer cultures that sell us the great lie of materialistic happiness could learn a lot from people like Alex.

“Table for one, please,” I said to the waiter of the Indonesian restaurant that I’d selected to eat my dinner at that evening. It’s a common phrase you find yourself saying when travelling solo. The first few times it’s uttered you feel like a loser; a bit of a loner; that the other diners might be judging and mocking you. But that soon dissipates. You start to embrace your surroundings; to notice things that you otherwise might not - like the fact that most people in the world have a base emotion of boredom. My joint’s still ached from the afternoon spent on the board, but I was still riding the high of the waves. I sat watching badminton on the small wall-mounted television whilst my food was being cooked. It’s not a sport that I particularly enjoy, but I do have one fun fact to share with you. Everyone is well aware that the New Zealand rugby team is called the All Blacks, but did you know that the country’s international badminton team is collectively referred to as the Black Cocks, taken after the shuttlecock used to play the game? I’m not making that up. Google it.

My attention span wavering, I took a glance at the couple to my right. They had been eating in silence since I’d sat down, and the tension between them appeared to be harder to cut than the overcooked beef on the girl’s plate. She was smoking hot, with slicked-back blonde hair that made her unmistakeably of Scandinavian descent. The man opposite her was batting way out of his league, being overweight with an unkempt demeanour, a scowling face, and a receding hairline that made him look like he’d spent the last ten years in a wind tunnel. I thought of mentioning to him the large market of hair loss treatments available in Asia, but thought this stepping over the line of what could be classified as a social faux pas. I left them to stew in their invigorating silence, hoping that I never had a relationship that reached that monotonous stage. I’d take a table for one any day of the week over that.

The Cheapest Michelin Star Restaurant in the World

Singapore • April 2017 • Length of Read: 5 Minutes

Nestled in the heart of Singapore’s Chinatown District are a frenzied array of hawker street stalls. A standard across the South East Asian peninsula, these street vendors serve up dirt cheap local cuisine at the blink of an eye; flash frying beef noodles in woks or mixing up large pots of hearty soups for the hordes of hungry locals. And with Singapore constantly being rated as one of the most expensive countries to live in, these hawkers also double as a lifesaver for even the most extreme flashpacker. Cheap doesn’t necessarily mean bad, however. In fact, culinary excellence knows no price tag. Among these otherwise indistinguishable stalls, each with the same plastic laminated menus; grubby garden furniture; pestering flies, and putrid smells, one sticks out like a sore thumb: Liao Fan Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle.

More easily and commonly referred to as Hawker Chan, this establishment is protected from the sun by a large blue awning; ropes that you would more expect to find in the ride queue of the nearby Universal Studios set up on the pavement to deal with the masses of visitors pouring to visit. Whilst other hawkers are housed within Chinatown’s shopping centres, car parks, or are simple mobile operations that pop-up on the sidewalk, Hawker Chan has the appearance of an actual restaurant. And even before it opens for business people can be seen loitering outside, wanting to be the first to sample the now world-famous food.

Inside, you feel like you’ve more entered a McDonalds than a Chinese street food stall. A self-service touch-screen computer allows you to place your order electronically, with card payment from international banks accepted. Enticing pictures of the compact menu help you navigate the Chinese symbols as you compile your order, awestruck at how it can still be so inexpensive: “$4.80 for a chicken and rice dish? It must be a starter-sized portion for that price. I better order two.”

A receipt is then printed and you join the second queue to wait for your number to be called. Standing there, you look around and see that the seating could also have been stolen from McDonald's. It’s almost as if they’ve franchised it and then decided to white-out the menu board, replacing Big Macs with soya sauce chicken noodle dishes; nuggets with hor fun.

From behind the service counter, protected by Perspex glass, you can watch the chefs busying about in the kitchen. Cooked cuts of meat hang from skewers on the wall and as you wait impatiently the smell wafts out to the floor. As your mouth starts salivating, it suddenly dawns on you where you are. That blue awning hanging over the entrance has large white lettering on it that can be read all the way from the main road overpass. Large white lettering that reads in block capitals, ‘The World’s First Hawker to be Awarded One Michelin Star’.

You may initially think that this is some rogue piece of guerrilla marketing that helps Hawker Chan stick out more than this pasty, ginger, travel writer wandering around in such an ethnically rich area of the country, and you wouldn’t be scoffed at for being wary. When we think of Michelin Star dining, we picture bow-tied waiters with slicked-back hair; cutlery we don’t know how to properly use; palate cleansing dishes where we are unsure what on the plate is even edible; and a bill that may trigger our bank to put an ‘unusual activity’ block on our credit card. Not here. As the second blue awning proclaims, Hawker Chan is in fact ‘The Cheapest Eatery being Awarded One Michelin Star’, receiving the accolade in 2016.

After a ten-minute wait, my number was called out. I’ve read online that people have been known to queue for up to three hours at this particular hawker, but I think that is probably bullshit. I was there at 12:30 pm on a Friday and there were only three people in front of me in the queue. Collecting my plastic tray containing a slap-dash dish of soya chicken and rice, I fetched some chopsticks from the cutlery section and popped myself down on a random seat at one of the dozen shared-tables. I’d last eaten a Michelin Star meal in Prague, and the bill had racked up to more than one-hundred Euro. For this culinary experience, I’d received change from a tenner, and that included buying a bottle of water and soft drink. Move over crisp and hearty pinot from the Napa Valley, I think I’ll have a Sprite instead.

Presentation of the meal aside, it was bloody tasty and definitely hit the large spot in my stomach that had been made from walking around the city all morning. Having eaten there now, though, part of me can’t help but suspect that it is all a bit of a guerrilla marketing stunt. The Michelin Guide promotes excellence in cuisine, and in that respect, yes, Hawker Chan does do exceptional street food.

With 51-year-old owner Chan Hong Meng having opened a second, fully air-conditioned, establishment inside a bustling shopping complex in the wake of this sharp rise to international fame, however, can Hawker Chan still actually be defined as a hawker? Hawker may be in the name, but there was nothing hawker-like about my dining experience. In all honesty, I left the restaurant feeling like I had just eaten in a Chinese version of McDonald's; rude staff members to boot. It may proudly boast a Michelin Star, but it cannot say that it’s stuck to its roots.