I found myself caught between two pairs of boobs and a hard place recently.
What made it hard for me, lying between them on a French beach, was that one pair belonged to the grandmother and the other to the granddaughter.
I thought, how bizarre, not one brassiere between them. No generation gap here, just family togetherness.
I didn't know where to look. But the little peeks I managed at their peaks made me green with envy.
The grandmother, at 76, had a fine pair – still firm and pert. If my grandmother's had looked so good at that age, I would have no worries. The granddaughter's had a definite family resemblance.
Really, I am no prude. But I've never found myself in such a family situation before.
French women are special. I've been reading that they don't get fat, even though they eat cream and cheese till the cows come home and they drink wine like water.
They say it's their diet. They prefer quality to quantity. They eat lightly but several times throughout the day. Personally, I think it's because they smoke so much. All that nervous energy burns calories.
I've also been reading that unlike women in other developed nations, French women are still breeding. France has the highest fertility rate in Europe. It seems French women know how to combine femininity with modernity.
I love it that French women are so comfortable with their bodies. They don't care if they are big, small, fat or skinny, they let it all hang out.
I saw more boobs and other lower bits at a nudist beach. Please don't think I go seeking them out. In France, you can't avoid them. There's one around every corner. A bit like baguettes really.
It convinced me that the human body, especially after a certain age, ought to be covered up. But I like it that the men and women – they were all elderly on this beach – looked so comfortable walking up and down the beach, picking up seashells and bits.
I looked hard for someone who looked like that gorgeous hunk who made Diane Lane forget her marital vows and became "Unfaithful" and who then got his head bashed in by Richard Gere. Olivier Martinez, I think, but no such luck.
Maybe I was just in the right place at the wrong time.
What made an impression on me was how similar-looking men and women look like, unclothed, after a certain age. I watched a documentary once about marriage and it said that if couples can make it past 60, they are bound to stay together for life because that's when women and men become most alike. Men lose their male hormones, women lose their female hormones and, voila, they achieve true sex equality in the winter of their years.
Something to look forward to for all of us, I suppose.
Anyway, I brought this subject up not to talk about boobs and sex but to share the point that it really is very hard for us travellers to know how to behave in the countries we visit.
The saying is, when in Rome, do as the Romans …
So what should I have done on that beach in France, caught between the generation peaks? Rightly, I should have joined in. But I didn't because once a friend got me a T-shirt that said, "I went topless today and nobody noticed."
Some things are best kept hidden, no matter the local traditions.
Note: This article appeared in Silkwinds, SilkAir's inflight magazine, September/October issue, where Yeoh Siew Hoon pens a regular column called "Smile High"
The SHY Report
A regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry by one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, Yeoh Siew Hoon.
Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her company's mission is "Content, Communication, Connection". She is a writer, speaker, facilitator, trainer and events producer. She is also an author, having published "Around Asia In 1 Hr: Tales of Condoms, Chillies & Curries". Her motto is ‘free to do, and be'. Contacts: Tel: 65-63424934, Mobile: 65-96801460Check out Siew Hoon's new website, www.shy-connection.com, which features a newly-launched e-zine with a difference. 
