When Mike Spencer Bown disembarked from his flight in Mogadishu last week and described himself as a tourist, Somali immigration officials thought the Canadian man was either mad or a spy.

“They tried four times to put me back on the plane to get rid of me but I shouted and played tricks until the plane left without me,” the 41-year-old told said in Mogadishu on his hotel’s roof terrace.

Somali officials then tried to hand him over to the African Union military force in Mogadishu, refusing to believe that he was in the city for pleasure.

“We have never seen people like this man,” Omar Mohamed, an immigration official, said. “He said he was a tourist, we couldn’t believe him. But later on we found he was serious.”

“That makes him the first person to come to Mogadishu only for tourism but unfortunately this is not the right time,” he added.

The world traveller claims to have visited 160 countries since he sold his business in Indonesia years ago and he had yet to tick Somalia – which has been devastated by a brutal civil conflict for almost 20 years – off his list.