Meal times here in Asia are always rather interesting for me as I wrestle with my inability to remember anything about food. I know I like Tom Yam soup and Laksa, but much of the time I can never remember the name of anything I eat, let alone what it tastes like.

Of course, I’m not dining in fine restaurants while sipping expensive wines. Most of the time I’m eating with locals in ‘Hawker Centres’ where there is always a wide variety of Asian foods being cooked in impossibly hot open kitchens. Hawker Centres are cheap, un-air-conditioned, and busy places where the food is good but the presentation is of little importance.

I’m still trying to work out what exactly it is that someone might find particularly appetising when they see a row of chicken heads attached to nothing more than the birds backbone. To me this is just gruesome, but maybe that’s just another cultural difference.