Picture a guy from the US who has decided
it’s time to spread his wings and get out of the town he’s pretty much never left. He heads to some distant land he knows absolutely
nothing about, and from the moment he gets there, he’s somehow incredibly popular. No sooner than he’s learned how to order
a bottle of beer in the local language, he’s hooked up with someone. But as some of you well-traveled viewers might
know, what happens in the bedroom in the United States might not happen everywhere. This guy soon finds himself completely out
of his depth and wondering what he’s gotten himself into. Make sure you don’t make the same mistake,
by watching this to find out some of the most confounding sexual practices you’ve ever
heard in your life. Let’s start in Indonesia where there’s
a pilgrimage people take to a place called Mount Kemukus, aka, Sex Mountain. Every year folks from all across Indonesia
head to this part of Central Java for…you guessed it, sex… But it’s more than just that. It’s sex with a complete stranger. As the story goes, a long time ago a prince
eloped from his town with a woman and tried to have a fun time there. They didn’t quite finish the job, and were
chased away by soldiers and later killed. A kind of ritual has since emerged, which
involves going there and meeting a stranger. Only, this time, they have to do what the
Prince and his lover couldn’t and finish the job. And that’s not all, they must continue to
meet up and do so seven more times throughout the year. If they end up fulfilling the quota then they’ll
be blessed with good fortune. Which we’re sure is the only reason that
men and women flock there, married or not, to hook up with a stranger. If you’re thinking, no way that’s a real
thing, think again. In 2014 the governor of the province of Central
Java laid down restrictions on what happens there. He banned the practice, saying it was not
moral and there was a risk of contracting various diseases. He also said it made Indonesia look bad in
the eyes of other countries. We’ll let you decide if he was right about
that last part. Still, Indonesian news reports in 2017 said
the stalls and huts erected for the deed had reopened and people were getting it on for
good luck once again. You see, the business had been booming there
before it was all closed down. Many, many people enjoyed the freedom of the
ritual, and in turn, that provided lots of business for locals at sex mountain. When the ritual was banned, they lost their
means of making money. The entry fee alone was around 50 cents, which
doesn’t sound like much, but on good nights there were around 8,000 pilgrims. In the past when huts and stalls weren’t
around, the people just did it behind trees, so you could call the enterprising locals
a good thing for everyone. They even opened karaoke stalls to perhaps
get people in the mood. You might wonder if the fortune actually does
shine down on the pilgrims after their year of hooking up is over. Well, one woman who’d partaken told Australian
news, “Praise be to God, after coming here, even though I have a few debts, my business
is making a bit of a profit.” Next up is a nomadic tribe in West Africa
called the Wodaabe. They don’t have a written language themselves,
but this word has been translated as “people of the taboo.” What’s taboo in many parts of the world
is having more than one marriage partner, which is known as polygamy. This tribe doesn’t mind at all though, and
in fact, they embrace it. Every year there is something called the “Gerewol
festival” and during the big party that happens the guys get dressed up to the nines
to show their beauty. In fact, this tribe might just think it has
the most beautiful men in the world. These people are also what you might call
especially liberated, having no qualms about the very natural things that often makes westerners
blush. The men, with painted faces and feathers on
their heads, dance and look wonderful for the onlooking women in the tribe. It’s said they take a kind of drink that
helps them to dance for hours on end and also provides a hypnotic effect. It’s like a very colorful beauty contest,
because then the women will choose the most attractive men. If the women are partnered with someone already,
no problem, they can put themselves forward as someone who wants to steal another man
as a new husband. If they don’t want to go all out and steal
a guy, they can just elect to sleep with him. If the guy walks past her, she just needs
to brush him on the shoulder, and they will be together. It totally doesn’t matter about the previous
partner. The guys don’t get much say in the matter
though. There are some rules, however. Usually, when a woman is old enough an arranged
marriage will take place. Once she becomes pregnant, she goes to live
with her mom and can’t see the husband. After some time, she can go back to him, but
she might just decide during the festival to sleep with another guy or steal one. One tribesman told National Geographic, “We
go to the Gerewol for pleasure. I get a woman then fine, it's a bonus.” When a guy is incredibly hot, he’s called,
“kayeejo naawdo”, “hurting man” because he’s so gorgeous it hurts to look at him. Just to set things straight, you have the
word “polygamy”, which means marriage between more than two people. Then you have “polygyny”, which is when
a man has more than one wife, and there’s “polyandry’ when a woman has more than
one husband. It’s not all that common, but it happens
in various parts of the world. It’s somewhat different from having a mistress,
though. In Thailand, a man may often take what the
Thais call a “mia noy” which literally means small wife, often called a second wife
by westerners. It’s not actually legal in Thai law, but
you have a documented marriage and you also have an undocumented marriage in which a wedding
ceremony still happens but nothing is officially signed. In the past when women had fewer opportunities
this was widespread, but not so much now. In 2021, a video went viral in Thailand that
featured a man secretly marrying another wife. The guy in question, a cop, got the shock
of his life when his real wife’s mother-in-law walked into the ceremony and gave him a hard
smack across his head. The attending monks were less than impressed,
but despite the chaos, the ceremony went ahead. His real wife, who later showed news cameras
their marriage certificate, was understandably angry seeing as they’d been together 15
years and had two kids. Believe it or not, in the past Thai women's
magazines would say tolerating such a thing was the mark of a good wife. Maybe a small wife might be too much, but
many Thai women have turned a blind eye to a man for having what you might call a bit
on the side, what Thais call a “gik.” To understand this, you have to understand
what some Thais now think of as outdated traditional values. These old values held that there was something
called “kulasatri”, which meant an ideal women. She was demur, quiet, and certainly wasn’t
outwardly sexual. She wasn’t even meant to have sexual thoughts. Meanwhile, male masculinity was defined by
something called “chaai chatri”. Under this, men were supposed to have irrepressible,
uncontrollable sexual desires that could never be limited to their one spouse. It’s doesn’t seem fair to most of us,
and wouldn’t be seen as fair by most modern Thais either, but it still happens...quite
a lot. This is evident in a Durex pole that had Thais
top of the infidelity ratings, and before you ask, this has nothing to do with Thailand’s
notorious red light districts, which only actually make up a few streets in the entire
country. It’s actually these old cultural values
that pervade most of the nation and lead to a culture of infidelity. Not to say women will tolerate cheating these
days, or at least the majority of women won’t. That’s perhaps reflected in the fact that
Thailand is arguably the leader in penis reattachment surgery. This has led to the international media asking
why Thailand had an “epidemic of penile amputations.” There’s even an old saying men sometimes
say to other men about which goes, “I better get home or the ducks will have something
to eat.” The men are often hypocrites, too, given that
many men have a zero tolerance when their ideal woman cheats. It can often, and does regularly, lead to
him killing her. You might wonder why the second-wives marry
the guy. It’s often down to financial security or
just the security of keeping him. The first wife might not want to break up
with the guy, either because women divorcing men is frowned upon in traditional settings,
or because she has limited opportunities in life to take care of the family he will leave
behind. The woman whose mother whacked the cheating
husband was well aware he had a “gik” but she turned a blind eye to it. She told reporters, “I initially did not
think that my husband would wed. Before the wedding, he was still staying at
home with me and told me he would be going out to work a night shift at his station.” In some cultures, having more than one spouse
is not just accepted, it’s normal. Academic studies for instance have shown that
in parts of India, China, and Nepal a woman might have more than one husband. One such paper published in 2019 was titled,
“Marital Satisfaction and Well Being Among Fraternal Polyandrous and Monogamous Tribal
People of Kinnaur.” Fraternal polyandry is when one woman is married
to two or more brothers and Kinnaur is a district in northern India. The paper concluded this after spending time
with some of these families: “The result based on qualitative research revealed that
that polyandrous couple's physical health, economical and psychological well-being is
better and they feel positive towards life.” But why is that? The paper said those families felt secure
together and they had financial security. It said a woman in those tribes with only
one husband felt less financially secure than a woman who had married two or more brothers. The brothers also said they felt more secure. The Toda tribe of South India have also practiced
these kinds of marriages, but that may have now stopped. Still, it was explained that when a child
is born to one of the brothers, he would hand the wife a bow and arrow and become the father
of the child. If another child was born to another brother,
he would do the same. It certain regions of India, Nepal, and Tibet,
various practices of polygamy happened throughout history, although it’s not common now. In a northern part of India called Jaunsar-Bawar,
in some places a woman would marry the eldest son and then she immediately became the wife
of all his younger brothers. It got tricky, though, since the brothers
could have more than one wife if their older brother was much older and the age difference
was vast between his brothers and the wife. In that case, a brother could find his own
new wife. If all the brothers stayed together with the
one wife, none of them had any kind of exclusive right to her. All brothers were seen as equal, and the kids
looked on them as one father. In some countries, in the recent past, such
as in parts of Tibet, the eldest brother would be seen as the main husband. A study published in 2008 said among the villages
of Xigaze and Qamdo in Tibet it was found that 20 to 50 percent of families were made
up of a wife and two husbands. In some more remote areas, the researchers
said 90 percent of the families were polyandric. To understand why, just imagine how difficult
life is in some of those unforgiving mountainous areas. Weird to us maybe, but arguably an act of
survival for others. Laws in Tibet have long since made it illegal,
but the marriage will sometimes be documented between the wife and just the eldest brother. In most countries, a man’s member is kept
locked firmly behind closed doors where it’s barely noticeable unless he’s wearing his
favorite pair of tight speedos. In some of the more remote parts of New Guinea
though, that’s not always the case. There the penis can have its own clothing
accessory. This is called a Koteka, which looks something
like a gourd and covers the penis while being strapped to the waist. It can be long and thin or short and wide
and can point in any direction that the wearer chooses. Obviously, when a man is working, a smaller
Koteka would be preferable. If they are worn as a way of attracting a
female though is still up for debate. They might only be worn as a way of covering
up as well as a way of looking good. Still, you have to wonder if some women favor
a bigger Koteka. The Sambia people of Papua New Guinea are
heavily focused on what you might refer to as the warrior culture. When the boys are very young, usually around
the age of seven, they are taken away from their mothers. In some ways, this is to toughen them up and
there are some comparisons to the training known as “Paides” in ancient Sparta. But with the Sambia, it’s because the boys
need to be detached from what is believed to be the contaminated blood of the mother. It’s said that in each woman there is something
called “tingu”, which has the power to manipulate men. When the boy gets a little older he might
be around younger women, who also have tingu in their blood. Since her tingu gets stronger during her menstrual
period, during that time a woman is kept away from males completely. Ok, so if women have this sorcery that they
can use to manipulate men, how do couples ever get together? Well, when the boys are old enough, they are
taught how to safely have sex without being trapped by a woman’s tingu. One way is to kind of disassociate himself
from her and not get too heated in the act of sex. He should also try to prevent her from enjoying
herself too much, lest she make him become sick and he possibly die. Once copulation is over, he goes through a
blood-letting ceremony which is supposed to decontaminate him of her tingu. This happens until she gets pregnant, and
then after she has the child he can become a fully-fledged warrior. In the 1990s people who visited these very
remote tribes said times were apparently changing though. Supposedly something called “luv marriage”
was occurring from time to time, and those marriages didn’t include all the fear and
ceremony we’ve just described. In a 2006 book, the writer called this shift
nothing less than “revolutionary.” While many of take kissing for granted, the
romantic, full-on, juices shared, lips-bitten kind of affair is utterly disgusting to people
in some cultures. Researchers at the University of Nevada explained
that when the Mehinaku of Brazil were asked about kissing the general reply was that it
was gross, with one asking why you would want to share your dinner with someone. Fair point, and let’s be honest, no one
wants to see anyone devouring each other’s tonsils on the subway. In another paper, researchers found in some
other cultures that there was also no kissing at all. The Aka pygmies didn’t do it, and when questioned
about sex they said it was basically to make a child and nothing more. One person referred to sex as a “night’s
work”. According to the website, This is Africa,
the Tonga tribe in Mozambique think much the same way, saying kissing is unhygienic and
when they see westerners do it they just think about someone eating dirt. And the last but certainly not least strange
romanic custom comes from Iran. There they have something known as “Sigheh”
which means a man and a woman can have a temporary marriage, explore each other’s bodies, and
if after some amount of time they decide they’re not right for one another they can annul the
marriage with ease. You might ask why someone would do this, and
doesn’t it sound like a lot of short marriages in the US? Well, for one thing, this marriage might only
last for an hour, or perhaps a day, or maybe even a few days, which even in the US would
be very unusual. You see, in Iran just getting it on with someone
you aren’t married to is considered sinful and also illegal. That’s one reason why men meet women online
and then head to the city, get a temporary marriage, book a hotel room, do what they
have to do, and then get divorced. As human rights advocates have pointed out,
since not being a virgin before marriage is also considered sinful, this can have negative
effects on women in the long run. It’s also been called a way of having “legal
prostitution.” The Iranian Cyber Police have said that some
websites will even help with a match and then do all the paperwork for the marriage. They can even book someone a hotel. It’s like Tinder, Airbnb, and a priest all
in the same app. Sigheh is supposed to provide a way for a
woman to keep her chastity since she is technically married when she has sex, but she still become
stigmatized after. This is what one young Iranian man had to
say about the practice: “If I temporarily marry a young woman for
three years and then divorce her, would anyone be willing to marry her? It would be impossible that any man would
want to have a family with this woman.'” Still, some Iranian women have happily made
use of the law. One woman told the New York Times about her
relationship, “We went out a lot together, and I didn't want to get into trouble. We wanted to have documents so that if we
were stopped on the street we could prove we weren't doing anything illegal.” She and her husband renewed their marriage
after six months, and then they did it again. We don’t know how things ended, though. A British-Canadian woman in 2015 talked to
The Guardian about her dating experience in Iran, saying she was hounded by police and
others while out with a man, asking how they knew each other and what they were up to. She said, “In public, I had to face the
opposite direction and pretend to read.” She got a temporary marriage and said it actually
allowed her and her lover to live a normal life. “It was like a bubble; we were in love and
no one bothered us. It was beautiful,” she said. A month later and she was on a plane out of
there… But there’s a happy ending. It took some time, but he eventually moved
to the UK and they were remarried in London, this time for longer than a day. Now you need to watch, “Taboos Around the
World.” Or learn to impress with, “Scientifically
Proven Best Ways To Kiss.”
