Sex Around the World

Today was a satisfying day on the Delta. Rice is the principal form of food for half the world. And we saw its entire life cycle in just a half day. We started by taking a boat to a small village. We gingerly walked the edges of a rice field, admiring the beautiful green plants, row after row, as far as we could see. We also saw the vegetables grown to the paddy’s side, with three women on their haunches pulling weeks. The two young women were the niece and daughter-in-law of the older women. I was dripping with sweat…

The Mekong Delta was already hot and humid at 8:00 on a winter morning. But I’m getting ahead of myself. After driving south from Hue I checked into the Golden Sands Hotel in Hoi An, and was ushered into a suite about 35 feet from the South China Sea. I spent the next few days walking on the beach, looking at the beach, and thinking about the beach. In between these important activities I also toured ancient Hoi An. The Golden Sands Hotel is exactly the kind of resort that I don’t think should be built. But now that it’s…

Sexual Intelligence continues reporting live from 3 weeks in Vietnam. Last night I was interviewed for an hour on O2, Vietnam’s independent lifestyle TV channel. The set was pretty familiar, as was the three-camera setup, spike-haired makeup guy, and sound guy who threaded the mike cord under my shirt with a nonchalant air of entitlement. Eventually it was 3-2-1 and we were rolling tape. The interviewer had clearly been to my website, knew my books (a happy contrast to American TV!), and asked very intelligent questions. We discussed differences between U.S. and Vietnamese ideas of gender, love, and marriage; I…