"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 Canadian told an AFP correspondent 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 on Friday. "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 travelled to 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.
Survival not easy
Mogadishu is one of the world's most dangerous capitals, a place where no foreigner can survive very long without heavy protection, but Bown said he had hoped to see Somalia's beaches and landscapes.
"I knew that Somalia plunged into civil strife nearly the day I started travelling but it was still on my list of places on the globe I should tour," he said at the heavily-guarded hotel where he stayed two days.
"I did not know the part of the country the government controls was so incredibly small," he said.
Somalia used to attract some visitors before it plunged into chaos following the 1991 ouster of former president Mohamed Siad Barre.
Mogadishu's Italian architecture and tree-lined avenues were renowned but the city is now a field of ruins where life is cheap.
"Somalia is the last and most dangerous country on my list and once I'm here in Mogadishu, I feel I made it," he said, explaining that he'd already travelled to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bown flew out on Friday and has already posted on his Facebook page pictures of himself in Mogadishu holding an assault rifle or a rocket-propelled grenade under the heading "The first tourist in Mogadishu".
http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/Somali-tourist-puzzles-officials-20101210