BANGKOK — Naked foreign tourists publicly cavorting at some of Southeast Asia’s most historic and sacred sites are sparking anger among regional governments, which are concerned that exhibitionism at exotic destinations may be developing into a fad that could create headaches for the critical travel and tourism industry.
Ill will has come from both sides: Officials have made at least 11 arrests this year for public indecency and exhibitionism, and one Canadian jailed on charges related to nakedness responded with a satiric, expletive-filled YouTube video mocking the death threats he received, insulting Malaysia’s tourism minister and openly sneering at indigenous spiritual beliefs.
The upsurge in antics by “bare-backpackers” in Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia is raising eyebrows among conservatives and even fellow tourists. The British Foreign Office is taking the controversy so seriously that it is considering changes to its official travel advice for Britons vacationing in Malaysia, newspapers reported Thursday.
“The travel advice team are going to discuss with the Malaysian Desk how best they think the travel advice should be updated in light of this incident,” the ministry said in a statement. “They may include [a reference to] it as a warning so that it doesn’t happen again.”
The multiple episodes of public nudity also are sparking debates about xenophobia, freedom of expression, secularism versus religion, respect for other cultures and uncouth foreigners disgracing themselves.
The clash escalated when the indigenous Kadazan-Dusun people claimed that a group of exhibitionist Western tourists so offended local animist spirits that they triggered a magnitude 5.9 earthquake that killed 18 climbers June 5 on Malaysia’s Mount Kinabalu, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The story took another bizarre turn this week when Emil Kaminski, the 33-year-old Canadian who was reportedly part of the offending group and has stoked local ire with a mocking series of tweets and YouTube posts, suddenly claimed that he had tricked the international media — that he wasn’t in a notorious photo of the undressing Westerners and that he hadn’t been arrested, as he claimed in an earlier Twitter posting.
While authorities were trying to unscramble events, Mr. Kaminski’s videos and tweets added fuel to an incendiary incident reverberating across the region and as far as away as Britain. In his first video, Mr. Kaminski also attacked Malaysia’s tourism minister for Sabah state, Masidi Manjun, over charges that the Westerners caused the earthquake through their disrespectful behavior.
“That Masidi Manjun guy to say something that f—-ing stupid, you really need to have lobotomized yourself on a piece of heavy machinery,” Mr. Kaminski said.
Mr. Manjun told reporters in response, “I never said that they actually caused the earthquake, but their actions were against the people of the largest tribe in Sabah,” the Malaysian state at the north end of Borneo where the mountain is located. “The mountain is a revered and sacred site.”
Death threats
Supporters called Mr. Kaminski’s 12-minute video hilarious. Opponents said it was proof that he does not respect foreign countries or local cultures and that he should be executed.
In a calm, mocking tone — similar in format to Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and John Oliver — Mr. Kaminski displayed and read aloud on his “Monkeetime TV Show” Facebook site some of the “thousands” of death threats he claimed to have received. The video has been viewed more than 350,000 times.
Wearing a yellow T-shirt reading “Monkeetime Backpackers Behaving Badly,” he is no stranger to cross-cultural mayhem.
The Canadian has blasted Hinduism, Christianity and other religions. In January, he tweeted, “We are free to burn the Koran or any other book as much as we are free to read any book. F—- you for disagreeing.”
Whatever the truth of Mr. Kaminski’s dueling stories, it is clear that Malaysian police this week arrested and detained four foreigners on charges of public indecency for posing naked in photos atop Mount Kinabalu on May 30.
The arrests also reportedly included Eleanor Hawkins, 24, from England; a 23-year-old Dutch man, Dylan Snel; and Canadians Lindsey Peterson, 23, and his sister Danielle, 22. Police were reportedly still searching for their five companions in the video. The case of Ms. Hawkins, a former “head girl” at one of Britain oldest Christian boarding schools, has received massive coverage in the British press.
“She is obviously quite scared and upset,” Ms. Hawkins’ father said in a statement to Britain’s Telegraph newspaper.
“She knows what she did was stupid and disrespectful and is very sorry for the offence that she has caused the Malaysian people. She has never been in any sort of trouble before.”
All five were charged with indecent exposure, which carries a maximum punishment of three months of imprisonment plus a fine.
Other countries in the region also have been grappling with the phenomenon of tourists violating local standards of decency, often in the most public of places.
In Thailand, a 17-year-old Chinese woman from Hong Kong stripped naked and bungee jumped near the northern city of Chiang Mai on May 6. Her video went viral online after she departed Thailand, and the local bungee operator had to pay a small fine.
Cambodian officials kicked out 11 tourists this year who exposed themselves in separate incidents amid the sprawling ruins of Angkor Wat’s Hindu temples and elsewhere.
They include a 22-year-old woman from Finland and a 30-year-old man from Italy who were arrested and expelled in January for motorcycling while completely nude in Cambodia’s Kandal province on a road toward Vietnam, police said. A Scottish woman with them also was expelled.
At the Angkor Wat complex, another UNESCO World Heritage site in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province, “exposure of sexual organs” was the reason cited for deporting three French men in January. In February, American sisters Lindsey and Leslie Adams of Arizona were fined $310 and expelled after displaying their breasts at the Angkor Wat complex’s Preah Khan temple.
Angkor Wat and its nearby temples and shrines were constructed from the ninth to the 15th centuries and include countless stone depictions of topless “apsara” — female cloud and water spirits — adorning stone walls.
Two men from Argentina and Italy, along with a woman from the Netherlands, were fined about $225 each and deported in May for photographing their buttocks at Angkor Wat.
A YouTube video posted this year from New Zealand and Cambodia, described simply as a “naked rocket launcher,” showed a naked, blond man shooting a rocket launcher. He was assisted by local men in camouflage while other foreigners watched.
The tourist nudity fad has spawned a Facebook page, Naked At Monuments, and the quest for online notoriety may be influencing local enthusiasts, officials say.
Thai police arrested two young Thai men Thursday on charges of posing nude in front of public landmarks in Chiang Mai province, and posting the pictures online.
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