Nudist Cruise

by Hailey McPherson

  “That doesn’t sound like your kind of movie,” he said. “You always call me immature for laughing at toilet jokes.”

  “You’ll get it when you see it,” I told him.

  Hummus looks pretty disgusting, but I have never had any that was not delicious. Liam was still not convinced that we should get some.

  “It’s a dip with olive oil,” I told him. “You can eat it with anything. It goes very well with falafel.”

  “What’s maqluba?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” I answered.

  I’m no expert in Arab food, not even close, but I know the basics. Maqluba was something I had never heard of before.

  The waiter came to our table and asked us if we were ready to order.

  “What’s maqluba?” Liam asked him.

  The waiter talked for a long time, describing how the dish is prepared and what ingredients are used. When he was finished, we could all tell from the look on Liam’s face that he still had no idea what it was.

  “It’s a ragoût,” the waiter said.

  Liam does not know French any more than he knows basic Arab food.

  “It’s hotdish,” I told him.

  Someone finally said something that Liam understood. In Minnesota, we call casserole hotdish. Ragoût is more of a stew than casserole, but the way the waiter described maqluba, it sounded more like hotdish than stew. I was translating the waiter’s French English into Minnesota English, but I was only taking an educated guess about the Arabic English.

  Not surprisingly, we were never killed or kidnapped at any time in the Arab neighborhood. Everyone was perfectly nice to us and the food was pretty good. The falafel was a little dry, but the hummus was fantastic. Liam liked how it tasted a lot more than how it looked.

  Liam would say that Bangkok was hot, humid and crowded with too many scam artists trying to rip off the tourists. That is all true, but I think we saw a very small slice of the city and its people in a very short amount of time. Something tells me that if we stayed longer, we both would have come away with a greater appreciation for the culture.

  “I’d love to come back and spend a lot more time here,” I told Liam.

  “I can live without it,” he replied.

  Bangkok was not the greatest city in the world for him, but such a large variety of international food at such low prices has to count for something. The food options from Liam’s point of view were better than Hong Kong and infinitely better than his corner of China. At least he did not hate it. He was mostly indifferent, so going back with him was always a possibility. It is the cities he hates with a passion, like Xiamen, that convincing him to return to makes for a more difficult proposition.

  The people in Bangkok were friendly and smiling everywhere we went. Even the scammers smiled all the time. Every country seems to advertise itself as the friendliest in the world. Every tourist board in Asia claims to have the most smiling people. I have never conducted a comprehensive study on who smiles the most, but when the people in Bangkok smiled, it always seemed genuine. Bangkok also had more than enough to see and do. The temples were worth the trip all by themselves.

  And any city with Krispy Kreme can’t be all bad.

  Chapter 28: Nudism 101

  We had a long list of things to do in Bangkok, both from before the cruise and everything Helena told us about while we were on the ship, but we simply never had enough time. Helena gave me some good tips, but I wish she could have come with us. She had to stay on the ship and work, but she would have been a great tour guide. I’m sure we would have seen more and wasted a lot less time with her around. She also spoke the language, so that would have been helpful. English speaking tourists can easily get by in Bangkok, but knowing the language that everyone around you speaks is never a bad thing. Helena would have been for us in Bangkok what I was for Earl and Edna in Hong Kong.

  I would have loved to stay in Bangkok longer and get to know the city more. I think it is hard enough to really know a city when you are a tourist. It is even harder when you are only there for two days. I had been living in Hong Kong for two years by the time we took the cruise and I still did not know it as well as I would have liked. I knew where everything is and how to get around and avoid getting ripped off, but I did not truly understand the people and their culture. Sometimes I thought I did, but then something would happen or someone would say something that just made my head spin.

  It would probably take just as long to get to know Bangkok. Since I don’t live there, I will have to settle for visiting. Hopefully, I will be back sometime soon. I don’t know if I can talk Liam into going back, but since it is not too far away from Hong Kong, it is a quick flight. He prefers quick flights. The more the airlines are shrinking their seats and treating their customers like cattle, the more I am starting to prefer quick flights as well.

  Before we knew it, it was time to say farewell to Bangkok and go to the airport. Our vacation was pretty much over. Most people take months, or even years, to prepare for a cruise. This one just kind of snuck up on us. It was all over as quickly as it began. Instead of thinking about it and planning every little thing for months or years, we went from not knowing about it to going on the cruise to going back home in the space of about two weeks.

  There is something about doing it this way that I liked. Usually you spend a lot more time planning a trip than actually taking it. You think about it for a long time and then it comes and goes in the blink of an eye. It is like waiting in line at Disneyland. You can stand in that line for hours with the heat and humidity crushing your soul, but the ride is over in a few minutes.

  We did not really have the feeling that it all ended too quickly since we did not wait nearly as long for it. It was more like Disneyland on a rainy day when there is no one in line and you get right on the ride. Not so much at Hong Kong Disneyland. Rainy days are almost as crowded as sunny days. Everyone who lives in Hong Kong expects it to rain at any time. But Disney parks in other countries are probably more popular during nice weather.

  Our trip still ended too quickly. Any time you have to leave your cabin with a balcony on a giant cruise ship and go back to work it is too quick. But I find it difficult to complain that a free cruise I never even knew about a few weeks beforehand came and went too fast.

  After two exceptionally short days in Bangkok, it was time to go to the airport. What was interesting was that we had never been to the airport in Bangkok before. Usually when you fly out of a place it is after you have already flown in. We came in by ship, so we did not know the first thing about the airport.

  I did not especially want to deal with the notorious taxi scams to get to the airport. We had spent our two days in Bangkok using the Skytrain, boats and mostly walking. Everybody warned us about Bangkok taxis. Even Helena told us that she never takes taxis, and she is Thai.

  Chinese taxi drivers can be just as bad, if not as infamous, but I can speak a little Chinese. That can make all the difference in the world when someone is looking to rip off the naïve foreigner. I don’t know the first word in Thai. We also had no idea how far away the airport was, how long it should take to get there or even what direction it was in. An unscrupulous driver could have taken us in circles around the city and we would have never known it.

  Fortunately, our hotel had a shuttle bus to the airport. This turned out to be very good news since the airport turned out to be very far away from the hotel. It was almost as far away as the docks where the cruise ship stopped. It took so long to get to the airport that even if we had gone with an honest taxi driver, we would have thought that he was driving us in circles.

  The airport itself was like every other airport I have ever been to in Asia. It is a giant shopping mall with a few planes parked out back. Somebody told me that in Bangkok they charge an exit fee before they let you go through passport control, but I think they stopped doing that a few years ago. Nobody charged us anything inside the airport, except for the drinks and snacks we had while we waited for
our flight.

  The price for food was about ten times higher inside the airport than it was in Bangkok itself, but that is the way airports all over the world do business. They will keep charging whatever they want as long as people keep buying it, just as the airlines will treat us like dirt as long as we take it. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

  After a quick flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong, Liam would keep going to Fuzhou and I would go back to my apartment. The next day, we would both be back at work and counting the days until our next vacation.

  Before this trip, I knew absolutely nothing about nudists. I thought they were a bunch of hippies who run around naked, smoke pot and have wild orgies in the middle of a forest somewhere. I was wrong about everything except the running around naked part, and even then they are always complaining that they don’t get to run around naked as often enough as they would like. They say that they have fewer places where they can get naked legally than they used to.

  The nudists I met all came from a wide variety of backgrounds. They all had different jobs and traveled in different social circles. They came in all ages, races, shapes and sizes. They had as many opposing political opinions as any other diverse group of people. They were as varied as you could possibly get. The only thing they all had in common was their love of getting naked outdoors.

  They were also the friendliest people you could hope to meet. I’m from Minnesota, so I know a thing or two about friendly people. I think it is in our state constitution that we have to be friendly. Nudists would love the outdoor lifestyle available in Minnesota. Anyone who loves outdoor activities should love Minnesota. Too bad outlanders think it is too cold to be naked all year.

  I never thought I would be able to fit in on a nudist cruise. I’m not at all shy when it comes to performing on stage. I don’t get stage fright or butterflies in my stomach. I am completely comfortable performing in front of an audience. Of course, I always perform fully clothed.

  Nudity is a completely different situation. When I was a little girl, I was always told to cover my body. Even at home, sleeves had to reach my elbows and leggings had to cover at least to my knees. Skirts could never be above the knee and could only be worn with full leggings underneath. I slept in full length pajamas with only my head and hands uncovered. Even when swimming, I had to wear dark tights under a one piece bathing suit and a t-shirt over it. The only nudity in my house was ten minutes in the shower under strict supervision.

  It did not take me long to realize that this was not how most people lived. But I still grew up in a culture where nudity was seen as sexual and sexuality was reserved for advertisements and loose women. Good girls are not supposed to have sex, until some men say that it is ok. Even in movies, nudity is either sex or comedy.

  The people on that cruise had the ability to see nudity in a naturally innocent way, the way most children do before we are all told that nude is lewd. As a dancer, I can relate to that. I think we are all natural born dancers, but at some point in our childhood we are told to grow up and stop moving with natural joy. Most people forget how to dance and even professional dancers have to be trained all over again.

  I’m not ready to live a nudist lifestyle and I don’t see myself joining any nudist club any time soon, but I am proud of the fact that I could put my fear aside and be part of their experience, even if only temporarily. When I first got on that ship, I could only get partially naked when no one else was around. By the last day, I was walking around fully nude surrounded by a shipload of other nude people.

  We talked and laughed, swam and played games, all completely naked. None of them noticed all the flaws I see in my body and no one laughed at anybody for being imperfect. When everybody is naked, no one cares about perfection.

  People who don’t know anything about nudism like to say that the people you see at a nude beach are the people you don’t want to see naked. Even Liam said it. What they will never get, and it took me a while to figure out, is that nudists don’t get nude to show off their imperfect bodies. They are not exhibitionists and they don’t like voyeurs. You are always welcome to join them, but they are not interested in being stared at.

  Something I figured out that the gymnophobes will never know is that the people you see nude are exactly the people you want to see naked. Instead of surgically enhanced bodies that conform to whatever this year’s definition of perfection is, they have natural, human bodies. I was on a ship with 2,000 nudists. All of them were beautiful.

  The way clothed people judge each other’s appearance is far more lewd than anything that happened on that ship. People enjoyed a cruise in Southeast Asia, did a lot of swimming and sunbathing and ate too much delicious food. There was absolutely nothing lewd about any of it. I only wish that I had gotten naked sooner.

  Being completely naked was better than liberating and empowering. It was fun.

  About the Author

  Hailey McPherson is a professional dancer and singer who lives and works in Hong Kong, China. Originally from Minnesota, USA, she moved to Hong Kong in 2011. Her first published book, Hailey’s Bali Diary, was written after a short vacation to the tropical paradise during the rainy season in 2013. Her second book, Nudist Cruise, chronicles an unexpected cruise from Shanghai to Bangkok, with stops in China and Vietnam – all on a giant cruise ship full of vacationing nudists. Weekends in China details her first three years in Hong Kong adapting to an ancient culture and unfamiliar customs.

  Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/Hailey-McPherson/e/B00BSKQYFQ/