It's a foggy morning in the near-perfect village situated by the sea in central Vietnam known as Hoi An. I am standing in a rice paddy and my New Balance sneakers are covered in brown clay from the saturated ground. Staring off into the distance, I notice Todd shooting b-roll.

My socks are wet, but I don't notice because of the view - it is one of complete calm, with green growth, grey water and paddies stretching out for what seems like miles in each direction ...an open playing field of agriculture at its most base. In my view, there are three women in conical hats slowly pulling at the stalks with the country's most prevalent foodstuff at their ends - it is a delicate process, compounded to almost an art as the women's hands move with uncanny deftness, repeating the same process that most likely has been done by them for many years.

In the center of an adjacent paddy there is a water buffalo pulling a plow with a farmer on its back. The beast is looking downright joyous, dragging its heavy load behind it, taking time to lower its snout into the gray water below and then splashing to the left and right while plodding down a line of rice grass. I am nearly mesmerized by this, as the massive animal reaches the end of a line of green, it turns completely around and begins the process on another endless string of rice plants.

I am surrounded by tradition - The tradition of the rice pickers in the field, the tradition of the farmer riding his plow and the tradition of the buffalo doing its daily walk. This is all common ground for them ...I feel almost as if I am invading their space.

I turn to Todd, who has his face buried in the sunshade of the viewfinder, most likely in a shooter's paradise of amazing footage to be had all around him. I ask, "Did you get that water buffalo?"

He looks up from his viewfinder, "Yes ...a few different sizes. You see anything else that we should get out here?"

I do a 360-degree scan of the area, and my eyes set on another, yet another water buffalo moving slowly up the narrow shelf of clay. Todd and I chose to wander out, on to shoot the paddies. The strip we are standing on is about 3 feet wide and stands nearly a foot above the flooded plane where the rice is planted.

After a quick calculation, it becomes very clear that either Todd or I, or the approaching water buffalo, is going to have to get off this shelf and into the half submerged paddies for this to work out. And she is not looking like she will be getting out of our way - I feel like I am playing chicken with a massive, grayish-black, horned, and motivated beast ...but in super slow motion.

I then notice the two calves behind her.

Now this is interesting. A mom and two calves, walking towards Todd and I, with nowhere to go but through or around us. It is basic knowledge that in the wild (or elsewhere) it is never a good idea to upset a mother when her offspring are nearby - it is just bad business, and even the most docile and cute animals tend to get nasty when you mess with the kids. Naturally that rule is compounded when the mother in question has horns spanning nearly 6 feet, and the neck muscles are capable of tossing my 190-pound frame into the air like a wet tissue wearing a backpack.

I tell Todd, "Well, here is another one of them heading right for us. And she's got her kids with her."

Todd, looks up, looks at me and then starts filming our approaching guests. She is not paying any attention to us, and walks up the narrow stretch of land toward our position. Twenty-five feet ...20 ...15 ...10 ... and then, the mother heads off the clay shelf into the paddies to our left, and the calves branch off to paddies on our right.

Now Todd and I are standing right between a mother and her children.

Yikes.

At that moment she notices us - and her body language shifts immediately from the trundling mass of a docile farm animal to a different sort altogether. She stands upright and completely still, looks directly at me and starts breathing in a not-so-friendly fashion. It sounds like half-stifled coughs, but with a lung capacity of, well, a buffalo, behind the brays. Her eyes do not look kind, to say the least.

I hear Todd say, "I don't think she likes you.

"I get that feeling too."

I pull my camera out of my pocket and start firing off some still photos, "Hey Todd, just so you know, I am documenting this in case we both get gored by a water buffalo. Hopefully they will find the camera."

I realize that this is not a funny comment and put the camera away. She is still breathing like a goddamn freight train and staring me right in the eye.

"Not sure what the protocol is for handling this sort of thing. Stand still and hope for the best, huh?"

And as the last word falls out of my mouth, she forgets about me and starts giddily splashing away to rejoin her calves. Just like that.

I remember to breathe in ...and ask Todd, "Did you get that?"

Todd nods his head.

JA

1. INTERIOR MOHAMMED'S EATERY, COLOMBO, SRI LANKA - DAY

One of the many eating houses in the Pettah, Colombo's main marketplace, provides the backdrop for mine and Tony's first Sri Lankan meal, a hearty breakfast of String Hoppers (steamed rice noodles); paripoo, or red lentils stewed in coconut milk; pol sambol, a spicy condiment of fresh shredded coconut laced with lime juice, salt and chili powder; chili fish curry, potato curry and sour fish curry. We have just slogged our way through the crowded and chaotic central fish market around the corner, and I, having prudently bypassed the lavish breakfast buffet at the stately Galle Face Hotel, our home away from home this week, have worked up a healthy appetite that neither the oppressive heat nor the condensed-milk tea we're sipping can kill.

Roll Cameras

In an instant the table is covered with a colorful, edible tapestry-the yellow-tinged potato curry, shaded with turmeric, contrasting against fiery red fish gravy and orange coconut sambol, black sour fish and white rice noodle nests. I waste no time, quickly using up all real estate on my plate, but when I peek at Tony's, it's looking pretty zen. As a fan of the show, my mind's eye flashes back to an episode like Montreal, where Bourdain was practically mainlining foie gras as the mischievous chef sent him a flurry of rich main courses, which Tony scooped down his pie-hole like a trooper. Was this the same Tony Bourdain, Mouth Almighty, The Walking Stomach, King of Street Food? Or did they cheat on TV, and just make it look like he eats a lot? That's certainly not what the producers told me when I signed on. Worse yet: What if he doesn't like the food? I considered it an honor and a pleasure to introduce a serious eater like Tony to the cuisine of my homeland, and if he just didn't dig it, I would have felt really bad. These thoughts were the subtext as we spoke casually about the meal for the cameras. Afterwards I asked him:

SKIZ

Tony, so how you feeling, man? Everything cool?

TONY

Yeah, man. But I've had this thing since before we left New York.

Some kind of bug or something.

SKIZ

Oh, no. For real?

TONY

Of course, it didn't help that the lady in the next seat was coughing all over me all the way from Kuwait City. But yeah, I can't seem to keep anything down.

It suddenly dawned on me that even a job as perfect as his-to travel the world and sample her exotic delights-had its own pitfalls. What if you were hot and jetlagged and afflicted with a serious head cold that impeded your olfactory senses? What if you were so sick you couldn't even keep any food down? What if you just didn't feel like eating and had to plow through three or four heavy meals in a day? Things to think about when you eat for a living. Nevertheless, this was a food and travel show, and with only six days of shooting, the show must go on.

Thankfully, it did, without a hitch. After Tony's stomach settled down, and we plied him with a few alcoholic beverages for good measure, the man I knew from the TV screen returned in fine form. Not only that, but he genuinely enjoyed each successive meal more than the one before it. In fact, I noticed that the whole crew-Producer Tom, Segment Producer Jared, and Jerry and Todd, the cameramen -- all loaded up on the Sri Lankan specialties every morning at the breakfast buffet, not to mention scarfing down all the food that Tony and I ate on camera, as well. And these guys can take the heat from all the chili-laden dishes, which I've never seen gringos handle so well. Of course, Tony gets extra points for making it through those first few meals, which probably went straight through him.

For more about the "No Reservations" Sri Lanka trip, check out my own blog at Riceandcurry.wordpress.com.