“She yelled so loud,” the Balinese woman tells me. “I didn’t know if I should go in and check she’s okay.”

My alarm quickly turns to amusement. She explains that since she rented out one of her rooms to a buff young Russian guy, beautiful girls sleep over almost every night. I’ve known this woman for a few years. She’s one of my Balinese landlord’s helpers. It’s been a pleasure watching Ketut grow in confidence and evolve her business savvy with foreigners. She regularly pops in to my kitchen where we work on mastering her English.

“So, this guy has a lot of female guests?” I ask wryly. “Do they all make a lot of noise?” She pauses to think about it. “They do!” she replies with widening eyes, as if on the brink of discovery. When I smile, she smiles too. “Well,” I laugh, thinking we’re on the same page, “I guess that means he’s good.” Her brows furrow. “Good at what?”

I fumble a key back into that Pandora’s box and turn it. I’m not sure I’m ready for a conversation about Sex Ed with this married lady today. Nor do I want to risk saying something insensitive. From what I’ve been told, the Balinese typically get it on to have children. Often, they don’t get married until the girl is pregnant. I don’t know anything about married sex for pleasure in their culture. I can only guess why Ketut doesn’t put together that a skilled lover can make a woman scream.

Before I moved to Bali, I used to joke with a group of heterosexual BFFs that if we want to get properly laid after we turn forty, we should move to France. The French have a saying: The best soups are made in old pots. Unlike in North America, there’s a reverence for mature women there who don’t seem to age-out of desirability. Brigitte Macron, the glamourous wife of the current French president, is twenty-five years his senior.

As a young woman in my 20s, I experienced the effort French men put into their sexual performance. The men I engaged with took their (self-proclaimed?) reputation as “the world’s greatest lovers” as seriously as they do their haute-cuisine food. More than once, I got the sense that my attentive French lover went down on me for the pride of his flag.

Back in the day, in western Europe it was easy (it still is) to learn what to expect while dating. Though, admittedly, in Italy it took me a minute to realize that an entire meal was always coming after I’d already finished the full plate of pasta. It was also surprizing that getting a little chubbier in the south led to being invited out on even more dinner dates.

In Bali, navigating the codes of mono-culture seems so quaint. We settle here from all over the world. And like the tourists planning a quick in and out, we use dating apps for hook-ups. Most expat woman I know looking for actual relationships with men, including a few ‘golden oldies’ in their eighties, have tried, or remain on, Bumble, Tinder, and Hinge. But if he’s only in town for a week, and wants to ‘hit the best spots’, maybe you pass on being a tour guide with benefits.

As a girl, my mother used to tell me, “You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince charming.” Weird Disney damsel fantasies aside, that implies that you should know what you want, and be willing to put in the effort to find it. So, you scroll through more carefully curated profiles and ask yourself if taking a chance on this one is worth your time.

Regardless of clever marketing, it’s patently impossible to assess potential chemistry, personality, a sense of humour – all of which women typically claim is important – by looking at someone’s picture. Does a candidate’s native culture influence your choice, like if you expect him to buy you dinner, would you pick the hot Scandinavian or Dutch babe? The term ‘going Dutch’ means you pay your own way. And what of sexual preference? Men the world over might get in the elevator, but not all of them will go down.

Clues, based on what we think we know, might be part of our process, but we invariably swipe right based on the information at hand. Appearance. Attraction is important, but can we really know anything of greater substance before we meet cheek to cheek? And what of cultural mores? To begin to understand what drives any given culture, we need to ask a lot of questions, or experience it.

“Ketut, I’ve got to run,” I say, ending the lesson in my kitchen. Then for the entire week, I berate myself for the missed opportunity to have a woman-to-woman talk about sex in Balinese culture, and why she didn’t recognize the sound of pleasure in those screams.

If you want to get properly laid after you turn forty, you should move to France. In Italy getting a little chubbier leads to being invited out on even more dinner dates.

There might be some synchronicity at play, because I don’t have to wait long for some insight, however partial. At my Indonesian sponsor’s office, the tension in the air is palpable. With the tone of a kind, but scolding mother, the manager is in a discussion with two of the company’s artisans. As I’ll soon learn, they’d been discovered mid coitus in one of the building’s defunct storage rooms.

This Balinese couple, both married to somebody else, confess that their affair has been going on for months. Apparently, until someone opened the wrong door, their sex was so quiet, they might never have been caught.

I berate myself for the missed opportunity to have a woman-to-woman talk about sex in Balinese culture, and why she didn’t recognize the sound of pleasure in those screams.