I saw more types of sweets than savoury dishes. It’s an intimidating constellation. Here are a few of my favourites and where to find the best of each.

Sahlab

A deceptively simple blend of milk, sugar, corn starch and rose water, it’s thick, warm, and more comforting than your mama’s hot cocoa on a winter night. When cooled, it congeals like gelatin and can be spooned as a dessert. Get creative with toppings: cinnamon, crushed nuts, shredded coconut, etc.

Best one: El-Mina, Lebanon
This seaside suburb of Tripoli has a little shop that specializes in warm liquid treats. Go to the Christian souk and ask around for it.

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Kneffeh

The edible equivalent of an oily four-hand massage given by two Arab beauties with roses in their hair. Fresh cheese is baked under semolina cake and the whole thing is drowned in sugar syrup. Served on a plate or to go in a sesame flatbread, it should be classified as a dangerous substance. Thankfully, it isn’t.

Best one: Jenin, West Bank
There’s an unassuming sweet shop called Shalhoub in the central shopping area of Jenin. Unlike regular knaffeh, they bake it in vermicelli pastry. The cheese is fresh  and gooey and the outside crispy.

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Halawet al-Jibn

It’s not a cannelloni, it’s akawi cheese and semolina flour pressed into sheets and rolled with ashta cream. Although bland on its own, it resembles a lighter cheesecake once you douse it with sugar syrup.

Best one: Tripoli, Lebanon
The Hallab family of Tripoli is famous for sweets. Lore says that after a nasty fight, the three Hallab brothers split up the family business, each running their own sweet empire. They are all fantastic, especially their cream-based sweets like halawet al-jibn.

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Halva/halawa

Whether in the Hebrew or Arabic domains, this dense, crumbly sesame paste is delicious on its own, topped with nuts or as a sweet dip with pita bread. For my money, the Israelis do it best.

Best one: West Jerusalem, Israel
I don’t like endorsing rude pricks, but one seller in Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market makes perfect halva with a scary flavour variety:  coffee, passion fruit, pomegranate, and nuts are just a few. Must spend a minimum of 40 shekels. Look for his stall near the wine shops. And brace for hostile service.

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Arabic ice cream

On the first spoonful you notice that the ice cream of the Arab world is different. It’s gooier and gummier, almost like a taffy. A key ingredient is Arabic gum, a resin form the mastic tree (not to be confused with gum arabic, with is derived from the acacia tree). Try the Arabic flavour, which tastes of nuts, rosewater, and sesame.

Best one: Ramallah, West Bank
There are many reasons to visit the Palestinian capital. The ice cream is just another. Try Baladna on Main St.

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Kataif

It looks like a turnover, but it’s sweet and creamy. A crumpet-like pancake is filled with ashta cream, fried, and doused in syrup. Crispy on the outside, cool and buttery inside.

Best one: Damascus, Syria
Jasmatiyeh Street, which I dubbed the Las Vegas of sweets, has a line of shops offering fresh kataif. Try any of them.

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Namoura

You can spot this simple semolina cake in any sweet shop by the almond placed atop each cut square. That’s the traditional way. Some shops, however, add their own poetry by tinkering with the density and toppings.

Best one: Aleppo, Syria
The Aleppan version of namoura is the closest you’ll come to dark matter. You could power a hyperspace engine on it. It’s impossibly chunky, gooey, and layered with pistachios and cashews.

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If Las Vegas dealt in baklavas instead of money, it would look like Jasmatiyah Street in Damascus.

Everything is big and flashy. Nut-filled pastries are stack higher than people. Rolls of pistachios in vermicelli dough thicker than a forearm beckon stares of disbelief.

In one of many shops, bakers in ethnic headdress prepare halawat with ashta cream. A giant LCD screen above him plays a making-of-sweets promotional reel.

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Across the street, another store competes with human numbers. Counters with trays filled with evert kind of dessert spill onto the sidewalk, each manned my large, bearded, jolly men. They each offer passersby a free sample. It’s all delicious.

And in the middle of it all is one shop that stands quietly with the dignity of its name. “That’s Daoud Brothers,” our host told us. “They make the best sweets in Syria.” The interior decor alone should earn it UNESCO World Heritage status.

Dieters and diabetics: you have been warned.

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The inside of Daoud Brothers sweet shop on Jasmatiyah Street.

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A perfect day trip from Byblos (or even Beirut) is Batroun, a town offering a millennial Phoenician sea seawall, Lebanon’s best lemonade, and a roaring nightlife.

It’s perfect for a day trip because it’s compact: three hours are plenty to digest it. The highlight is the seaside old town with an impressive 18th-century stone church above the fishing marina and a nicely restored residential quarter.

Here you can wander among stone homes with loaded citrus trees. Plaques painted in cursive point the way to the tourist attractions, like minor churches, the restaurant-lined corniche, and the remains of a 2000-year old stone wall that held back the sea.

Today this wall is just a few metres long and holds nothing. In front of it is a rock bed pitted by centuries of tides.

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Batroun is famous for two things: its lemonade and its nightlife. You’ll find lemonade stands in just about every corner, but the most popular one – according to its maker – is at Le Garage, a snack bar and pool hall just beside the St. George Orthodox Church. It truly is a rarity of flavour, perfectly blending sour and sweet.

The couple who makes it, in the photo below, keep the recipe secret but say the lemons come from the south of Lebanon.

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Batroun’s main commercial street is lined with nightclubs, known to Lebanese in distant cities. We didn’t sample them, so it’s up to the visitor to confirm or debunk their fame.

To get to Batorun:
Take any microbus on the Lebanese coastal highway. Ask for Batroun. You’ll be dropped off at the entrance to the town. Walk 10 minutes towards the sea and you’ll find everything easily.

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Note: this post shares advice that is best enjoyed if starting life all over again. Belief in reincarnation is advised.

There’s no shortage of travel blogs that dispense tips on avoiding food poisoning in India. Few are any good. Most advise you to stick to tourist-oriented restaurants, avoid dairy products, and stay away from street food.

Now what’s the fun in that?

The advice below will let you enjoy all flavours of India without having to limit yourself.

Infancy and childhood

Get born into a family that isn’t germophobic
Be exposed to germs from the very beginning, as humans have since the dawn of time. Breastfeed.

Play in the dirt
Put random things in your mouth, bite other children, get licked by dogs.

Don’t take antibiotics for every little infection
Let your immune system learn to fight on its own.

Adolescence and adult life

Eat things off the floor
Make it a 10-second rule.

Eat everything
Get exposed to every flavour, spice, and raw foods that contain bacteria that don’t necessarily lead to poisoning.

Kiss lots of people
It’s a natural immune booster. Also, share cups and utensils.

Don’t disinfect the hamstring curls machine before using it
Your germs are not holier than the germs of other gym members. In fact, they can spot for each other!

Once travelling

Visit as many developing countries as you can
And eat their food. Get exposed to an international selection of antigens.

Brush your teeth with tap water
Ingest tiny, manageable amounts of potentially tainted water. Just enough for your body to identify it and learn to fight it. Put a few drops of tap water in your bottled water.

Start cautiously, progress boldly
Play it safe at first. Eat only at very clean restaurants or those catered to tourists. Give your stomach some days to adapt to the new spices. Gradually frequent spots favoured by locals. Take a chance on one or two grimy joints.

If no illness occurs, go for street food

Congratulations, you are now Delhi Belly-proof.

Cooking class in Kumily, India: lots of food, little satisfaction.

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As a general rule, cooking courses for tourists follow the following recipe:

1. Take cook of dubious skill and place him before a group of earnest culinary travellers.

2. Teach them three to five local dishes. Omit any history, context, or philosophy of food.

3. Serve it cold.

4. Charge them a 200% markup on ingredients and time.

5. Profit for a mediocre restaurant.

And so the earnest students return home able to robotically recreate three to five dishes. There’s little theory of how to pick and treat ingredients, or how to make variations and substitutions. No time is given to explain the basics of a local cuisine to understand how different dishes are related.

It’s lousy value for your money. So I stopped going to them. Instead, I go to restaurants that I like and ask the chef to teach me.

It’s the same as a tourist cooking course: you’ll simply learn how to cook the dishes you ask for. The chef won’t necessarily be a good teacher. You’ll have to learn by watching and asking questions.

But it will come at a much better price and you’re guaranteed to like the result.

This is especially doable in developing countries, where rules are wonderfully lax and people are always willing to make exceptions, especially when money is involved.

I’ve done this in Colombia, Brazil, Cambodia, and India. The cooks were flattered to be asked to share their recipes; it’s a huge compliment on their abilities.

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Instead of wasting money on a tourist cooking class, I suggest the alternative recipe:

1. Find a restaurant or food stall with good food. The less fancy the premises the better your chances of getting in the kitchen.

2. If possible, go during the low season. Restaurants will be hurting for customers and will be more willing to accommodate you. Also come when it’s not busy. The hours between lunch and dinner are ideal.

3. Tell the waiter how much you loved the food. Say you’d like to learn from the chef. Ask to speak to the manager. Going directly to the chef might upset the boss.

4. Compliment the manager on providing such a memorable experience. He may not know a cinnamon stick from cat turd, but you want him to like you. Ask if it’s possible to learn a dish or two from the chef.

5. If he consents, repeat step 4 on the chef.

6. Be clear on what you want: name the dishes you want to learn and how to prepare the ingredients. Don’t expect him to have a curriculum for you.

7. Discuss money. Offer to pay the menu price of the dishes. If they demand more, negotiate a reasonable rate.

8. Ask lots of questions. The chef will just do what he does every day. Have him explain every step you don’t understand. If the chef uses prepared stock ingredients like sauces, ask him to teach you those later.

9. Get out of the way. A restaurant kitchen will (almost) always be buzzing with frenzied activity. Let the staff members do their jobs.

10. Thank the chef, the manager, and the staff for their time. Tip them.

11. Repeat steps 1-10 at another restaurant. Do this enough, and you’ll see patterns between different dishes, giving you a solid understanding of the local cuisine and how to add your own poetry to it at home.

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Not one among the dozens of beach-facing restaurants in Varkala have beer and cocktails in their menus.

But ask a waiter for alcohol and he’ll produce a tattered home-printed sheet from his pocket listing Tom Collins, mojitos, Cosmopolitans, all the classic mixes. Order a beer and an ice-cold Kingfisher bottle will appear in seconds.

The restaurants aren’t allowed to sell alcohol. But like anywhere else, in Varkala, the rules are negotiable if the price is right.

According to multiple sources in the local hospitality industry, restaurants pay the police to leave them alone. This is quite standard and should surprise no one familiar with the ways of the third world.

But it gets interesting when this is used for revenge politics among establishments.

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The strip of cliff-top restaurants and shops in Varkala.

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Varkala, in the southwestern state of Kerala, is a beach resort town relatively new on the tourist map. A simpler, cheaper alternative to overdeveloped Kovalam, it lures hippie types who sport dreadlocks and wear Indian clothes by choice, not just out of respect.

The beach is actually just a small patch of sand, smaller than a soccer field, tucked between two red rocky cliffs. Most of the life is at the top of those cliffs. Five years ago there were barely five hotels; today you can choose from an unbroken necklace of cheap guesthouses, posh bungalows, cafes and restaurants, all offering Ayurvedic therapies.

The town seems to have been built and run by Nepalese and Kashmiris, who, to my surprise, excel in the tourism business. They work as managers, waiters, and souvenir sellers, closing shop and going home for the desolate monsoon season in June.

Local Indians do mostly menial tasks like repairing roofs and patching sidewalks.

I have been spending my evenings at a restaurant called Hill Top Indian Spice, the only place that openly advertises Indian food (the rest cater to homesick Germans and Britons with “continental” menus).

It’s delicious. The chef, a Nepalese man in his fifties, has been cooking at resort towns for 22 years all over India. The red curry sauce he makes on a stuffed tomato dish is so exquisite I demanded cooking lessons.

The restaurant opened in August of this year and was an instant success, the owner tells me. To the surprise of many, people who come to India want to eat Indian food.

For a month, Hill Top was packed while its continental neighbours struggled to fill a few tables. It’s clear Varkala grew faster than demand. There’s an overcapacity of eateries and lodging. So the politics began.

Hill Top hadn’t paid off the cops. Their neighbours tattled. And the restaurant was shut down for two months.

It’s back in business, and slowly filling up again. This time, with their baksheesh installments in good standing.

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Faithful perform ancestor worship at Varkala’s beach. The town is a place of Hindu pilgrimage, thanks to a millennial temple.

What a farce. Singaporeans take their pleasure very seriously. Venture past the tourist trail of Chinatown, the malls of Orchard Rd. and the overpriced cafés of Sentosa Island and you’ll a city contending for a spot among the great capitals of fun.

If you’re there, don’t miss these delights:

Seafood at East Coast Park

The food stalls at East Coast Park specialize in the fruits of the ocean. You’ll find dozens of hawkers serving up local specialties like chilli stingray, pepper crab, and prawns, along with Singapore classics like satay and fried oysters.

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

Singapore’s Chinatown doesn’t really deserve the name. It’s too clean, too orderly, too colour-coordinated to be a Chinatown. But it’s centrepiece, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, is a treat. The main floor, the worship hall, is intensely ornate, while the upper floors offer exhibits on Buddhism.

The namesake display, the Buddha’s tooth relic, is enclosed in a sealed shrine. Holiness drips from the walls.

Cable-skiing at the lake

Actually, before your seafood session, work up an appetite cable-skiing at the lake on East Coast Park. It’s like water skiing with robots instead of boats. You’re pulled by a rope attached to a cable system that rotates continuously around the lake, passing over jumps and ramps.

It costs $32 SGD for one hour and is loads of fun.

Asian Civilizations Museum

The Southeast Asian backpacker trail takes you through several countries of contrasting cultures. This museum does a fine job of putting it all together, giving your trip a historical and cultural context.

Pulau Ubin

A short bumboat ride from the mainland is Pulau Ubin, a little island that reminds Singaporeans what nature looks like. Spared from the bulldozers of condo developers, it’s a leafy getaway where the sound of crickets and cicadas take over from engines and horns.

Visitors can rent bikes to explore the island, eat some decent seafood, and see the Chek Jawa wetland a mini-ecosystem of anemone, algae and crabs that shows itself at low tide.

Five-star street food

A national dish of Singapore is the Hainanese chicken rice, and few serve it up better than Five Star Chicken Rice on East Coast Rd. near Kantong Village. Locals and expats swarm the sidewalk tables and order portion after portion of the slow-cooked bird.

But the area is a big eating hub with lots of other quality cheap eats. Try the laksa at 328 Katong Laksa a few blocks away.

Free luxuries

At the time of writing, the Marina Bay Sands, a mammoth shopping-casino complex was still under construction, but some shops open for business. Some of them offer generous free samples of luxury foods.

Like Yummi House. They specialize in high-end honeys from around the world. One pot costs $120 SGD. But they will gladly dissolve a big spoonful in hot water, chill it with ice, and give it to you for nothing. It’s exquisite.

Next door is a tea shop with tea sets priced in the thousands. Again, enjoy some samples on the house.

Big desserts

In the Chinese neighbourhood of Bugis you’ll find Ah Chew Desserts, a landmark with locals. (Notice a big focus on food? Get used to it in Singapore) They serve delicious sweets like grass jelly, bean curd, and several flavours of shaved ice with fruit.

It’s at 1 Liang Seah Street #01-11

The most fondled Buddha in Singapore is in Bugis.

Cosplay café

This one is more for the blokes, but girls can have some fun as well. In Chinatown, there’s a cosplay café where girls dressed as characters of Japanese male fantasy dote on you through the night. Clients can have their food hand-spooned to them by these girls, for a frugal $1 a bite.

The A87 Café and Bar is at 108 Tajong Pagar Rd.

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No-one ever goes hungry in Singapore. No-one’s ever given the chance.

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Act 1, Scene 1

They call it street food because you can vaguely see the street from your table. Lau Pa Sat is the main “hawker centre” in Singapore’s financial core, an old market converted into a food court with close to 50 stalls spanning Asian cuisine.

Each stall is neatly enclosed with glass and a luminous sign showing pictures of their fare. Desmond, a local lawyer we befriended, negotiated the clutter of tables and humans with ease despite his wheelchair.

“The first order of business is to find a table,” he counseled.

A tall order. The place was mad with the lunchtime rush. But I spotted an empty table among the throngs. How civilized, I thought. They place a wet napkin pack at each place of an empty table.

When I quickly took a seat, a severe Chinese man shook his finger while barking something in Singlish. I knew it was Singlish because Wikipedia told me they sometimes add urgency to sentences with “lah” or “mah”.

“That table isn’t free,” Desmond said. It’s Singapore custom, we learned, to reserve a seat with napkins while you shop for grub.

Act 1, Scene 2

“So what’s the local specialty,” I asked Desmond while eyeing some red lacquered ducks hanging seductively from hooks at a nearby stall. I could almost taste the Chinese five spices.

Lawyers are good at reading body language, and Desmond promptly ordered one. He wheeled himself to a neighbouring stall and ordered two more dishes: fried oysters and char kway teow. Then he dropped by a fritter stand and bought three battered and fried bananas.

Singaporeans are in a hurry. Always an appointment to catch, people to see. Unlike their Southeast Asian neighbours, you rarely see a Singaporean just sitting around. As such, they don’t have much time to eat, which is why they generously lubricate their food to reduce chewing times.

We felt like we had made out with greasy frying pans, but it was all very tasty. The duck, especially, was stupendous. There was food left on the plates. Two bananas uneaten.

“Shall we get something else,” Desmond asked. We politely laughed at his little joke. His face turned puzzled.

Singaporeans don’t joke. Not about food.

Act 2, Scene 1

Late nights mean late breakfasts, so we usually hit the streets around noon with bellies full. But when we hooked up with a gentle Singaporean boy we hosted in Montreal via Counchsurfing, he was hungry for lunch.

“There’s a place here famous for carrot cakes,” Daniel said after we met at a hawker centre in Little India. “Want some?”

“Get some for yourself and we’ll have a taste,” I replied.

He vanished for five minutes and returned with two plates. One had a stir-fried mess of white starchy cubes, grated carrots, and spring onions. The other was the same thing, but blackened by soya sauce.

Those are carrot cakes.

“When I was younger, I liked the black one more,” he said. “Today I prefer the white.”

Indeed, the white one was more savoury, loaded with garlic and spices. The black brother was notably sweet. Both were fantastically greasy.

He excused himself again and returned with rojak, a fruit and vegetable salad topped with peanut sauce.

We left two-thirds of each plate untouched. Any more would require an emergency stomach pump or bulimia. “Should we get something else,” Daniel asked.

Okay, they like to mess with tourists, we thought. It’s the national prank. You gotta have some outlet among all this order, all this cleanliness, all these rules.

Daniel got up, and again, after five minutes, returned with two bowls. One was filled with a black jelly-like noodle with ice cubes. The other a white, airy cream. Grass jelly and bean curd.

Both desserts were left 80 percent intact.

Act 2, Scene 2

The cash register at Ah Chew Desserts randomly selects a customer for a chance to win a second treat. I was chosen after paying for my almond paste with sesame rice balls and Daniel’s mango with sago pellets.

The owner told me to insert a rubber ball into a glass case filled with pegs. Quantum physics and gravity would then bounce the ball around until it fell into one of eight slots on the bottom. My ball fell into “Grass jelly with fruits”.

The owner then stamped the back of my receipt: valid for a free dessert up to 30 days from date of first purchase. Awesome. I could come back tomorrow.

Five minutes into my tasty almond paste – more of a cold soup, really – a waitress brings a bowl heaping with grass jelly and cubed pineapples, strawberries, and watermelon. She demands my stamped ticket.

“What,” she asked incredulously when I told her I didn’t want it right now. “You’re only having one?”

A hawker stall in Singapore. Every seller is given a letter grade on cleanliness.

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Act 3

Il Lido is a restaurant at the Sentosa Golf Club, a rich man’s playground at an islet south of Singapore’s mainland. We went as guests of local lawyers and entrepreneurs we befriended.

Desmond, a consummate lover of fine wines, suggested we all order the tasting menu, as he had brought four wines to pair with each course.

It started with a slice of pan-seared tuna, then two grilled scallops with crispy prosciutto, followed by tagliatelle with tomato lobster sauce, beef tenderloin steaks, and finished with lava cake and ice cream. Capuccinos and dessert wine for the cap.

In Singapore, any discussion, no matter how arcane, will inevitably turn to eating. Everyone’s an expert. No one is ambivalent. Consensus: the food was average and portions too small.

The backpackers were bursting at the seams, but abstained. We didn’t want to appear weak.

The bill came. There was little arguing over who pays. One person volunteers, and the rest vow to send their shares over internet banking.

One of the guests looked at me and said, “Do you want some real food now? We’re going for dinner. There’s some good beef noodles there.”

Politely declined. The next day, we heard the three who went ordered five dishes.

Epilogue

Declining food in Singapore is is as effective as asking a computer to hurry up. Insisting is just as foolish.

It’s a city that is a country and has no countryside, no ancient mythologies, no history as a nation older than 190 years. Food, brought by its three main ethnic groups at a variety, cost and quality unrivaled anywhere else, is what unifies them.

Food is how Singaporeans express affection. It is how they honour guests. It is what they know best.

It’s the foreigner’s task to channel his bewilderment – and upset stomach – into flattery.

And if he wants to be stinking rich, figure out how these people never get fat and make a pill out of it.

We asked a local to show us how to chew betel nut, enjoyed and spat out by people everywhere in Papua New Guinea. The experience was little more intense than we expected.

The Highlands of PNG is the farming heartland of the country, where produce is grown and flown to the coastal zones.

Here’s a quick look at how Highlanders grow and prepare their food.