Scran And The Fat Man - Part Three

*it rained incessantly for our last three days in France, so none of these pictures are ours

We’re sitting in a spartan room in a faceless dive on the outskirts of Paris, picking at a €3 box of cold meat, handing a bottle of l’Orangina backwards and forwards. There isn’t a single thing in this room that does need to be – hell, there isn’t even a reception downstairs, just a vending machine that spits out room cards for €35. It is an unashamed shit hole.

Thus Laffmo on holiday.

Twenty-four hours earlier we were chasing each other around a six-room apartment-style suite in a chateaux in the Loire Valley. That was free; this is not, and so we’re living like bums. Les bummes.

The chateaux had been fine, and the two-star food pretty decent too – rabbit served three ways with a selection of veg it would like have eaten before taking the wrong turn at Albuquerque, was especially excellent.

That seems like quite a long time ago now, but to be honest it’s nice to have the opportunity to eat a little lighter for the first time in almost a week. The following morning we also skip breakfast and as we begin a slow, frustrating drive into the capital it feels like we’re a little hungry again.

I don’t like Paris. At least, I didn’t in 1998, the only other time I’ve been here. It rained then too; one of my school friends got robbed on the Montmartre; we got chased by older boys in the Parc Des Princes; the Louvre was on strike; lookie-lookie men frightened us at the Eiffel Tower. We managed to get a beer in Le McDo, but that was about the only highlight.

I’ve never been back, so this is a chance for Paris to win me over – the city’s very future almost certainly depends on it.

The fact that a range of its finest restaurants have volunteered to spread their legs for us means its probably in with a better shout this time round. We’re also staying in the only five-star hotel on theChamps-Elysees, although I’d love to know who they paid off to get that rating – honestly, the Marriott is barely better than a Japanese business hotel and three times as expensive. Also, as though to highlight just how insecure they are about their rating, they charge for dozens of extras – as soon as a so-called five-star hotel starts demanding payment for wi-fi, you should be on alert.

Anyway, it’s true that its location is world class, so let’s focus on that.

By the time we’ve dumped our rental car (which thanks to the traffic no longer reads full and costs me another €40) and checked in, there’s barely time for a coffee before we have to make our first appointment.

As we sit down in the darkness of Pierre Gagnaire’s flagshiprestaurant, I don't mind admitting to a childish nervousness. By almost anyone’s standards, this is one of the best restaurants in the world and we’re here on a freebie. In order to meet the dress code, I raided a couple of charity shops at home, buying a £2.50 second-hand shirt to accompany a pair of faded old golf trousers and some smartish boots. Meanwhile, some of the other diners are wearing diamonds bigger than the first minuscule offerings from the kitchen. 

These tiny morsels are followed by crab, leeks and pomegranate; goats cheese with salmon roe; golden turnip and beetroot; nettle and fennel purée; and haddock on white bean. Unbelievably, this is only the amuse-bouche: five mini dishes, each as perfect as a baby's toes.

The meal progresses through another half dozen dishes, each mind-blowing in its own way. The highlight is perhaps the salpicon of scallops cooked in a Jerusalem artichokes infusion with a hint of mustard, and a segment of Rubinette apple flavoured with maniguette. It's a firework display of flavour and no exaggeration to say that it's perhaps the single most satisfying dish I've ever eaten. Not that all the courses are so showy: the main, poached guinea fowl with winter legumes and a sage sauce, is essentially meat and two veg.

Two hours later, it's all done and by the time we step out into the cold air, we've got several thousand calories in our bellies and enormous smiles on our faces. It's almost boring to say so, but the restaurant the Guide rated highest was indeed the best one we found all week, anywhere in France.

But that’s just lunch. We waddle back to the hotel room for an hour but can’t get comfortable, so decide to take a very, very long walk to Benoit, the only Michelin-starred bistro in all of Paris. Our meandering amble takes us past many of Paris’ architectural highlights, and, to our surprise, past a gallery out of which a Paco Rabanne's hideous show is being kicked.

This is Paris Fashion Week – that we knew – but we seem to have stumbled across it by complete accident. A series of gangly phantoms totter out into the dusk of evening, looking haunted until the cameras start clicking, at which point they spring to life. They’re not attractive, these marionettes, but they are definitely striking. My favourite is an Eastern European (you can tell by her broad face and sunken eyes) blonde who swaggers out with a fag and a glass of champagne, not giving a haute couture fuck what people say or how she appears on camera.

*not her.

For many of the others, though, it can be quite hard to look at them: the logistics of their 4-foot legs, just a couple of inches in diameter, planted onto high heels seem impossible, especially when they then have to walk over cobbles, wet with the afternoon drizzle. I keep waiting for them to come tumbling down and shatter, like fallen icicles.

We move on and after almost five hours of walking, we’re at Benoit and still not hungry. But it’d be so rude not to at least give it a go, so it’s once more unto the breach. It’s not the best meal, nor the most impressive setting (that went to Le Meurice, another three-star restaurant that we managed to squeeze in before jumping on the Eurostar back home the following day), but Benoit is our favourite restaurant. Why? Well because the waiters are human, you can hear shouting from the kitchen and the soup is prepared inside the dining area, allowing its smell to waft across the room. In other words: this is a real restaurant, not the pompous, rigid exercise that is the trademark of so many other Michelin-starred restaurants. However, because Alain Ducasse backs this place, all of it comes with a guarantee of quality.  

As I start to force profiteroles into my mouth, I want to muse on whether or not the Michelin Guide really is important, whether it gives chefs something to aim for, or whether it’s become too biased and infinitely too big for its boots. I want to ponder those and many other things, but I can’t stop thinking about the models from earlier. For all their money and adoration, they’ll never ever get to have a greedy week like we’ve just had, those poor, strange bastards.

Scran And The Fat Man - Part Two

There are many variations, but the message is the same: “Youse surrendered; youse are shitebags.” If Britain had been in the same position geographically, would we have done the same? Who knows: better just to sharpen the stick of history and poke the French with it year after year.

One major benefit of them raising the white flag, though, was that the Nazis didn't find it necessary to bomb so much of France to oblivion. I mean, London is a great city, but it's not pretty – not like, Rome, or Edinburgh, or Bordeaux, all of which escaped the majority of the Fuhrer's fury. 

It feels slightly embarrassing to have not known that Bordeaux was so bonnie, that so much of it remains satisfyingly stone-clad and ancient. But it is, and in the spring sun, it's a goddamn pleasure to chase an eccentric guide through its narrow streets to learn about it's long, fraught history.

But scran is why we're here, specifically to eat at the Grand Hotel's Michelin-starred Pressoir D'Argent, right in the centre of the city. It's a proper five-star location, with five-star service and rooms. We've always preferred smaller, more-personal hotels, but so far as a grand city centre property goes, this place is helluva classy. It's restaurant is well worth it's star, too.

It's tempting to compare the announcement of a new edition of the Michelin Guide in France to the Oscars, except the Oscars are a good deal more predictable, and a lot less punitive. Brad Pitt sits at the Academy Awards every year, looking pretty and winning fuck all. Still, year on year, he gets richer and more famous. The same does not happen to Michelin-starred chefs. Winning a star can add on a good chunk to the business: but losing one does not have an equal or opposite reaction – it's devastating. If you get up to the third star – their maximum – you're in a group of just 105 eateries around the world, shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Nazi-death-professor-lookalike Heston Blumenthal.

Even though they are tied to its automotive origins, the Guide's definitions of its stars are so matter-of-fact as to seem breathtakingly arrogant. The hallowed third star means nothing more than: “Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.” It does not claim to be a life changing event, nor does it say that meals will likely cost over £200 a head with wine. It's just worth getting out the house for – like your weekly shopping.

Meanwhile, two stars – held by the likes of Noma the official best restaurant in the world – isn't even worth that effort. Michelin's verdict is just that it has “excellent cuisine, worth a detour,” - like McDonalds.

Finally, a single star, the kind of thing a chef works his whole life for, means simply: “An excellent restaurant in its class.” It doesn't sound like much at all, but one star is all they have here at Pressoir D'Argent.

And yet the meal they lay on for us is comfortably one of the most unforgettable we've ever eaten. The starter, two fat scallops and a buttery foie gras swimming in a bowl of chestnut, black truffle and hazelnut froth, is a juicy joy. The wine that's been paired with it is a light Bordeaux which cleanses residual fat from every mouthful, allowing the flavours to dance across our tongues anew.

This before the main: a hearty portion of beautifully-cooked Atlantic Sole, served with an oyster bearnaise, the chef's speciality. Now a different wine arrives, fleshing out the taste, somehow adding to the overall experience. This is wine-pairing at its best – as Wee Mo points out: it's like the food is the outline, the wine the colouring in.

Then the dessert: marinated red pepper served with raspberry ice cream. It sounds like the sort of thing a child would come up with while playing chef, but it works. The raspberries takes like raspberries, the peppers taste like peppers, the snozberries taste like snozberries... All this and just one star – for a second I seriously doubt that Michelin know what they're talking about.

The next morning we head to La Rochelle, another absolute gem of a city, and another I knew nothing about. We're both tired en route – it turns out that eating 4,000 calories and drinking five glasses of wine at 10.30pm isn't a great recipe for good night's sleep. I know, I know... These diamond rings are making all this typing hard too. It's an obscene complaint – to eat so well and to moan – but we wake up the next day with a kind of food hangover, nauseated by the prospect of breakfast. But by the time we get to La Rochelle and have toured around its ancient streets (some of the buildings are up to 1,000 years old; 400 gargoyles look down from the haggard buildings) we're at least a little peckish again.

Tonight we're eating at Coutanceau, a two-star restaurant located on the edge of La Rochelle's old harbour. Primarily a seafood restaurant, the saveur (flavour) menu – which at €55 offers tremendous value – features wonderfully fresh poached oysters as a starter, before a generous portion of brill, served with green celery risotto and crunchy red cabbage. Dessert is a sumptuous chocolate fondant with a pistachio heart. It's all solid, if a little unspectacular – it's a lot less Willy Wonka than the night before.

Still, the restaurant is very busy, even in March, before the season has really got started. As we waddle out between the tables, I stop to talk to Nicolas Brossard, the restaurant's director, half-suspecting he won't care about what the Guide has to say either.

“Oh it's absolutely important,” he says quickly. “Perhaps 50 percent of the people here come for the stars and if we lost one, we might have to close. It's that serious. We are the only two-star restaurant in the region – with them you can set a certain price and people will travel just to eat here.”

This, quite honestly, is more what I had expected from those working in the French fine dining industry. Does the annual release of the red guide bring nerves? “I can't sleep for two nights before,” nods Brossard before I've even finished asking the question. “And because we never know when the inspector has been, you don't know if maybe something has gone wrong that night – if maybe we ran out of a fish. So it's very...”

Stressful?

“Yes. Stressful.”

Scran And The Fat Man - Part One

First of all you need to know some facts: I'm 28 29 years old, jobless and swimming in debt. The only trade for which I have ever shown any aptitude is dying as sure as that of the dodo hunter. Every time I lower my expectations of what job I can realistically hope to find, I am met with yet more disappointment. I have no home; I do have a fiancée. Overall, if you look at things in the wrong light, you could say I am lost in a great desert of shit.

And yet.

And yet, on the other hand, I have a ludicrous lifestyle that if I were anyone but me, I'd envy. It's a lifestyle that has taken me to every continent on Earth in the last three years, swaggering around in a fashion that would normally be the reserve of millionaires. At a conservative estimate, I'd say that since November 2008, if you totalled up everything - every flight, meal, drink, hotel room, cruise etc and so on - I'd guess I've had about £150,000 of freebies. In the words of Withnail: "Free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can't."

I don't mind saying that as a broke scheme rat, it's one of my major motivations for travelling. Learning about new cultures, seeing and doing the unimaginable – all that shit is fine, but the fact that I so very rarely have to put my hand in my pocket makes it all the more satisfying.

But it's not all free on this current trip to France: nope this time I'm genuinely having to spend quite a lot of money to, if not make money, then just about finish all square. 

So why do it?

Well, despite eating in some truly outstanding restaurants over the last few years, Wee Mo and I have never eaten in a Michelin-starred restaurant. This is mostly down to one of the great myths that surrounds the Michelin Guide: people often think, erroneously, that it is a global arbitrator. It's not – not anything like it in fact. The Michelin Guide has taken its stars to just 14 countries around the world, plus most of the major cities around Europe and a handful in the States.

It makes a bit of a mockery of their fine dining coverage: yes they inspect thousands of restaurants a year, but, for example D.O.M in Sao Paulo is frequently heralded as the finest restaurant in all of South America, but the Guide has never been there so, Michelin terms, it's on a par with my local chippy. Worse, the Guide isn't even in major cities with very obvious fine dining scenes: cities like Melbourne, Shanghai, Singapore, Cape Town and, to a greatly reduced extent, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

The reasons why they haven't expanded is too dull to go into in detail here but I once interviewed the Director of the guides who said the criteria are: the presence of at least one three-star (their highest rating) restaurant; the competition of existing guides; and the likelihood of selling more tyres.

Because there's another thing you might not know: the fat fucking idiot tyre man, Bibendum, is absolutely the same person who judges (some of) the world's fine food. There's no shame if you didn't know that: for a very long time, I pronounced the tyre brand “mitch-e-linn”, as though I was talking to a spanner-wielding grease monkey; meanwhile, when talking about posh food, I'd refer to “meesh-lun”, in a hideous, nasal way designed to bum a French Maitre D.

But it's all one and the same thing: Andre and Eduoard Michelin released the first guide in 1900 to encourage people to get out and about on France's roads. The logic was that if people saw more of a reason to buy a car, they'd need more tyres – Michelin tyres. The ploy worked, and by the 1930s it wasn't just a guide to France, but a judgement on the nation's dining scene. As the tyre business was now well established, Michelin could afford for the inspectors to travel to restaurants and pay for their meals, judging anonymously (the rest of the review industry was, at one time or another, populated by chancing c***s like me).

So that's why people give a shit: because, in theory at least, Michelin are unimpeachable, and they really, really know what they're talking about (I'll explain that later).

Photo: Wee Mo

Photo: Wee Mo

It's not unreasonable, then, to expect that a French chef with a star, must be a happy man – especially when he owns his own restaurant in the heart of Basque country and he's so handsome it's hard to match his gaze.

So, whoo-fucking-hoo? I say to Cedric Bechade, the handsome bastard in question.

The chef looks at me, frowns and shrugs with deep Gallic disdain: “They give me a star, they don't give me a star, the people still come,” he says in heavily accented English. “I don't cook for them, I cook for my customers. Some chefs think: 'Guide, Guide, Guide'; I think: 'customers, customers, customers.'”

Just for a second, everything I think I understand about Michelin as an institution wavers. To me, shrugging off the Guide's decree is the culinary equivalent of listening to Einstein's theory of relativity and saying: “Well everyone's entitled to their opinion.”

How much is typical French arrogance and how much it's genuine apathy is hard to tell, but I get the impression that, with only one star, then maybe it's more of the latter. And the food? Well it's fine. Totally unspectacular, but still an interesting mix of French and Spanish influences. We know immediately that we've had a lot better else where. But this is only lunch, and there's no wine to pair with it: a Michelin inspector would come at dinner and order the sprawling taster menu (one of their inspecting rules is that they must order the maximum number of courses available.) It's really not that expensive either: lunch is around €30.

We quickly leave after our brief chat and drive through the glorious Basque countryside to the seaside town of Biarritz. Ordinarily with a trip like this, I'd contact a tourist board do most of the work for me, but the French tourist board were genuinely less helpful than their Kazakh equivalents – and that was a portakabin maintained by a goat. So for a month before flying, I found myself stuck in front of a computer badgering restaurants and hotels to, y'know, get the free stuff out. In every instance, I went for the best that money could buy.

Photo: Wee Mo

The first hotel is fit for an emperor – literally: the Hotel Du Palais was built by Napoleon III as a summer house for his beach-loving wife Eugenie in the mid 19^th century. For the past 130 years or so it's been a hotel. And if you like nursing homes then boy! this the place for you. Unnecessarily, they give us a junior suite which represents truly woeful value at €800 a night. The sea view – the room hangs over the beach – is impossible to beat, but the room itself is gloomy, and despite its high ceiling, strangely stuffy. I'm not suggesting for a second that it would be better if it was Ikea'd, but something about it definitely put me in mind of adult nappies, senile screaming and prolapsed colons. And freebie or not, no one wants that.

Photo: Wee Mo

Next time: Bordeaux and La Rochelle

I Didn't Do A Holiday

No, for the last few months, I've mostly been doing things concerning this.
However, the blog will return next week with tales from a trip to France which was half work, half holiday and all ridiculous.

We're Doing Another Holiday (definitely)

So our unlikely year has become even more unlikely (actually it's now much longer than a year) as we have won/been selected/fluked the top prize to work for three months as Travel Volunteers in Japan. 
We'll be visiting all 47 prefectures in the country and writing about it every day. You won't find much about it here, though. Nope, now I'm contractually-obliged to put all of my musings here: http://travelvolunteer.net/ 
Expect less swearing and more positivity. Will still be updating this site occasionally, though, including a post about a recent press trip to Scotland. Look out for that next week.
In the mean time, I strongly advise you to read this, which was written by a friend, is brilliant, and is a big part of the reason I applied for this Japan gig in the first place. Just don't expect me to be so eloquent in the coming months.

We're Doing Another Holiday (maybe)

Yeah, so, this then. Mon us! Mon Japan!

Thus Spake Lafferty

While backpacking, I learned that: 

1. Anyone who starts a sentence with the words “Hello my friend...” is absolutely not your friend.
2. Making sweeping generalisations about nationalities is a stupid, dangerous and inaccurate business.
3. Contrary to popular belief, the English are not the most obnoxious species of traveller.
4. Israelis are.
5. In fact, the English only claim a bronze medal at best: the silver goes to the ever-reliable French, who are every bit as pompous in, say, Vietnam, as they are in Paris.
6. In accordance with popular belief, most Canadians really are quite nice, if a little stupid.
7. The vast majority of Americans you meet on the road are smart, engaging and enthusiastic. The really special ones stay at home, hating people, shooting things and voting Republican.
8. You will never see an Asian in South America with a backpack on his back. They wear them on the front, like a precious child.
9. Anywhere in the world the Irish are great company, but then I knew that already.
10. People who moan that life in the UK couldn't be worse have absolutely no fucking clue what they're talking about.
    

    

    Photo: Wee Mo

11. It is very hard to get used to putting arse-paper in the bin, especially as a man. After 14 months, it still strikes me as weird.
12. In large parts of the United States, the tap water tastes like mould.
13. If you don't carry a gun in San Salvador, you're in the minority.
14. There are few things in the world more wonderful than the British supermarket, especially at Christmas time.
15. Britain has meddled in the affairs of almost every country on the planet. Sometimes it advanced a nation by centuries; sometimes it was a shameless invasion, but I will never again think that the UK is nothing more than a daft wee country that's shit at the Olympics. The modern world – for all it's ugly faults – wouldn't be same if we hadn't been so ambitious, organised and cruel.
16. There are few pleasures on Earth that outweigh listening to a Frenchman grumble that the English language has spread all over the globe. Tell it to Napoleon, Dickface – tell it to Wellington!
17. The passion of British football fans is to the passion of South American football fans as Stephen Hawking's boxing skills are to those of Manny Pacquiao.
18. The fame of the Scottish Highlands, when compared to mountain ranges around the world, is also a total mystery.
19. There are a long list of cities that you've never heard of that have more people in them than all of Scotland. Many of them are in China.
20. Lucky 88 Chinese takeaways are not so named because, as I thought previously, they are all coincidentally located at number 88 on their respective streets. No, it's means more than that.
    

    

    Photo: Wee Mo

21. Walkers shortbread is available globally, as is Scottish whiskey. Alas, the tattie scone hasn't quite spread its wings so far. Yet.
22. Roaring alcoholism has.
23. Air conditioning is likely humankind's greatest invention.
24. There are few more disheartening sounds in nature than the pneumatic screech of a mosquito in your ear at 3am.
25. No one outside of Britain and America makes good music, and the former considerably out-performs the latter, and always has. If you need evidence of this, listen to an 80's compilation CD, several of which can be heard on Chilean buses.
26. Si absolutamente necesario, puedo hablar une poco Español.
27. People are fundamentally good, especially once they accept the fact they can't sell you anything.
28. An hour on a bus is not a long time; in fact only when a journey stretches past a solid day will I now regard it as “long.”
29. Travelling long distance on a bus in Argentina is far, far more comfortable that travelling with a budget airline in Europe. The buses include food, wine, movies, and a piss-pot, AND usually feel a lot less like they'll kill you.
30. Backpacking is essentially like being at a very, very long festival: unexpected things happen all the time; disgusting things also happen regularly; it is almost completely unforgettable, save for the bad bits; you'll probably run out of money; and it's best to accept the fact that you will fucking stink for most of it.
    

    

    Photo: Wee Mo

31. People in the countries of South East Asia are not part of a homogeneous, like-minded whole: the Vietnamese are as different to Thais as the French are to Germans.
32. Not every country is worth visiting. Exhibit A: Brunei. Exhibit B: Paraguay. Exhibit C: Honduras.
33. In the UK, crisps advertise having “20% less sodium and fat”; in America, “chips” advertise having “20% more chips.”
34. Argentina, Peru, Chile, Colombia, every country in Central America, Malaysia and Singapore all have vastly superior bus networks than America.
35. If I owned a hostel or restaurant, I would strive for the Lonely Planet's recommendation. I would also massage HostelBookers and HostelWorld reviews to ensure I was top dog and that my rivals always had something unsavoury as their most recent comment.
36. A visit to any major Asian city will bring with it the virtual guarantee of seeing vermin. In Vietnam rats can also be found on the menu.
37. I'll say it again: the condition of idiocy is not restricted by colour, age, creed, sex or anything else.
38. Q. What happens when you cross the good looks of Spain with those of Italy?
    A. Argentina.
39. Anyone seeking their fame and fortune should head to Patagonia and become a perfidious purveyor of peanut butter. £12 a jar, I shit you not. Alternatively, sell Marmite in Asia - £11 a go.
40. There are many things I would now deem essential to a round-the-world trip. An underwater camera is one; a laptop is another. Oh and Skype, too.
    

    

    Photo: Wee Mo

41. Being afraid is a terrible thing. The sooner you can overcome it in places like Buenos Aires, the sooner you will have a better time. However, in places like San Salvador, it can be quite healthy.
42. "The only thing stronger than this moonshine is Mother Nature, motherfucker."
43. A visit to Antarctica or the Galapagos is like a trip into human-free pre-history.
44. Travelling for a year does not require membership to a secret society, nor any kind of exclusive club. Anyone can do it, you just need money and dedication. It's worth it, too.
45. Our jobs are more interesting than approximately 88% of people we meet.
46. There is almost certainly no one guarding Israel – every bastard is in South America, cluttering up the joint, pushing, shoving, shouting Hebrew, laughing at any concept of manners, and generally annoying people. No one likes to be excluded from a group; Israelis exclude everyone, ergo no one likes Israelis. I cannot believe it is because they are born bastards, nor that it's something inherent to Judaism. Instead I think it's because they're literally trained to be c***s in the world's most despicable army. After three years of being told what to do, they are unleashed on the world, and spend a year letting their ids take over. The rest of the global backpacking community has to deal with the fallout, all the while tiptoeing around any conversations that point out that, y'know, if any country needed a PR boost, it'd be theirs.
47. Being seen as the big man matters in Asia. This can range from refusing to back down in an argument, to literally sitting on a cushion to make themselves “bigger” than everyone else at the table.
48. There are too many dogs in the world and not enough swallows (assuming that swallows eat all biting insects).
49. Whoever is behind marketing the English Premiership as a global brand has done a ridiculously good job and is doubtless exceedingly rich. In every corner of the planet there is someone who will happily watch Blackburn vs Stoke. Amazing.
50. When it comes to telling someone your nationality, Scottish>European>British>English.
    

    
51. The moment you tell most foreigners that you are Scottish, they will reference Braveheart, whiskey and/or kilts. Pre-1995 they must have had 33% less to say. That would have been nice.
52. Humankind is utterly and irreversibly fucked, because no matter how little money people have Sexy Time is always free.
53. Visiting religious sites around the world is a great way to spend time, even if all they do is underline the certain non-existence of any god from this era or any other. So many monuments, so few results.
54. It becomes surprisingly easy to turn down a child beggar surprisingly quickly.
55. Having blonde hair and blue eyes, in many parts of the world, is tantamount to walking around with a sign saying “I have more money than you, please harass me.”
56. As you travel picking up bits of the world's history, you learn that religion has certainly scarred humanity more than it has healed. So many persecutions, inquisitions, wars... Then you realise that you could learn the same thing by picking up today's newspaper, let alone looking at history. Then you begin to feel very glum indeed.
57. It's worth going to Argentina for the steak alone.
58. It's worth going to Argentina for the Iguazu Falls alone.
59. It's worth going to Argentina for the Fitz Roy range alone.
60. It's worth going to Argentina.
    

    
61. Of the many spurious things that have been said about seeing the world, probably the most accurate is: “There is no better form of education than travel.”
62. There are sights in the world too large and beautiful for my brain to fully comprehend e.g. The Perito Moreno glacier, the Iguazu Falls, Yosemite National Park, and all of Antarctica.
63. There are few clichés more accurate than a smug diver saying: “It's a different world down there.”
64. There's probably quite a strong argument that says the world today would be better off if America had done its time as a British colony, rather than going and winning the War of Independence.
65. No nation on Earth makes films so resolutely focussed on misery as Britain.
66. Contemporary American drama is so good that even in a windowless, sweaty hell-hole in, say, Cambodia, watching it can transport me to a very different place.
67. There are few more heart-warming sights than watching an elderly couple dance the tango to the music of a hastily assembled busking band, simply because they have a spare five minutes and are still in love.
68. In their more generous moments, some parents say that breeding is the best thing they've ever done. Time will tell, but I'm guessing most of them haven't been travelling.
69. Westerners hate to know where their dinner comes from and go to great lengths to make sure it looks like unrecognisable food and not the source animal. Everyone else is quite happy to buy this or that with the head still on, its death mask frozen in anguish, then feed its feet to their kids.
70. If you go into any internet café abroad, 80% of people are looking at Facebook. Part of me wants to believe that it's because Facebook a wonderful communication tool, a way for people to maintain relationships as they further their minds and nourish their souls.
    But most of me accepts that it's because every narcissistic bastard simply wants to scream: “Wooo! Raarrr! Look at me! I Done A Holiday!”
    

    

    Photo: Wee Mo

71. Not all bananas taste like banana.
72. Bob Marley can be heard on every continent, even Antarctica. And I do not like Bob Marley.
73. If you want to get steaming, high and chase tail, there's not much point in going backpacking – blow the money in Ibiza et al instead. You're less likely to get a doing, and you won't feel so guilty about shitting away your money on beer, drugs and fanny.
74. There are many poorer counties on Earth, but few as clatty as Bolivia, the lofty toilet of South America. Annoyingly, there aren't many more naturally beautiful either.
75. This is largely down to the fact that the colonial-era Spanish cared little for digging sewers. On the other hand the French and British did – that's why you can go somewhere as shockingly poor as Cambodia today and flush away your jobbies, paper and all, with glee.
76. A pandemic/climatic catastrophe/zombie apocalypse that reduced the world's population by 30% - 50% would not, overall, be a bad thing.
77. There are places where ordering McDonalds really is the healthier option.
78. It takes approximately seven minutes to learn how to ride a motorbike.
79. In Central America, it's worth hastily pointing out that you're not American, even if you are. After 50 years of death squads here, puppet governments there, and now a vast ocean of gluttonous pensioners, it's no surprise that they're not exactly popular.
80. English is a larger, more complicated language than Spanish. Its endless combinations, accents and variations must be a bastard to learn. But in the refining of it – the artistry, the flexibility – it becomes more beautiful.
    

    
81. Reading in a hammock is one of the world's great pleasures, and one of its great sedatives.
82. Mexican food is better than Tex Mex, and it's important to know the difference.
83. I can now list surfing and snorkelling among my hobbies and interests.
84. If the rest of the world implemented MOTs like the UK, approximately 70% of the planet's cars would be taken off of the road.
85. In Laos, the Toyota Hilux is the corrupt government official's vehicle of choice.
86. The people in America gave me absolutely no surprises in nearly seven weeks in their country. The countryside, though, made a mockery of my expectations
87. Nurseries in America are loud enough to cause industrial deafness. If anyone else has an explanation as to why so many of them talk so fucking loudly, please write in.
88. For their respective populations, there are a quite ridiculous number of Dutch and Swiss on the road.
89. Being a backpacker doesn't make everyone more interesting, in fact it can often make them considerably more inane.
90. No five star hotel is ever worth the money. I say this having stayed at Hiltons, Sherratons, Le Meridians, Six Senses, Raffles, Four Seasons, Ritzs, Langhams, Shangri-Las, Crowne Palazas, boutique independents and half a dozen others I can't recall. Thank fuck I've never actually paid for one.
    

    

    Photo: Wee Mo

91. The British royal family still matter terribly. I know this having watched a group of 20 gruff-looking men huddled round a TV watching King Billy's wedding in Bogota.
92. A Staffordshire terrier can spend the night in the luggage hold of a coach and come out not wanting to eat faces, it can even be relaxed, almost.
93. Cockfighting is troubling to watch, but as normal as horse racing in dozens of countries around the world – and much more normal than racing dogs.
94. The Mayans and Incans weren't merry tree hugging innocents, but brutal, systematic killers who wiped out all their competitors before they were dealt the same hand by the Spanish.
95. That said, they had a fine eye for architecture and location.
96. There really isn't any bed in the world better than your own.
97. Like bread and cheese, most beer outside of Europe is crap.
98. I prefer cold weather to hot. But warm, once in a while, is very nice.
99. Travelling for a long time is bad for almost every relationship you have; except, if you're lucky, the one you have with yourself.
100. “And there may be ten thousand roads over the land, but they shall never confuse me, for my heart's blood will ever return to its beautiful source.”
101. In the end, travelling alters your brain permanently. It changes your perception of the world – it is a period of endless learning. It requires work, patience and dedication, even after you've saved hard to afford it. Some things depress you, but more amaze you. It gives you new eyes to look back on your old life with too. As you remember them, your loved ones by turns appear fantastic and fickle. It becomes understandable that some people never readjust to their old life, something you probably thought ridiculous before.
     But then you spend months, years, exposed to things that at home would make the news. You frequently see things that are beyond explanation, enormous, staggering things; things that you've never seen before – not even on TV; things that you really had to be there for.
     But – lucky you – you were.
     

     

     Photo: Wee Mo