I Want My Nude TV

What happened to television? Nudity used to be banned from TV, reserved for quick bits and pieces of movies, short news reports or even worse.
But it looks like naturist ideas are finally seeping to the forefront of TV programming in several countries all at once.
The latest example comes from the Netherlands, where channel RTL5 has launched a nude dating show. Two people - or more - are put on an island, where they take their clothes - all of them - off before they meet. Adam seeking Eve, or in Dutch and in the style prevalent in wanted ads, Adam zkt. Eva (http://www.rtl.nl/adam-zkt-eva/#!/314961/).
While I haven't watched the full show, I know it has been popular. More than 800,000 people in a country of about 17 million saw the first episode. Of course, it's a sensational element to see people naked on an island, meeting together for the first time. While the show is about dating, on the whole I still believe that it will form an important breakthrough for non-sexual nudity on television.
One important element is that the nudity is total and full-frontal. The Dutch TV station is not covering up the bodies of the participants.
That is the major difference with shows that you might say paved the way over in the United States: TLC's Buying Naked about naturists looking to buy homes at resorts in Pasco County, Florida, placed all kinds of props, some of them normal, some of them too ludicrous, just in front of its naturists' supposedly 'naughty' bits, while a natural approach would have been better (http://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/buying-naked);
Discovery's Naked and Afraid puts a man and a woman naked on an island just like the Dutch show, but the emphasis lies on adventure and on working one's way out of a difficult situation, fighting nasty animals, disease and helplessness (http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/naked-and-afraid). Once again, the nudity is reduced, not by props, but by the 'mosaics' known to every Asian TV viewer. When naked people appear on TV in countries like Taiwan, no matter whether it's a news item about skinny-dipping or a wardrobe malfunction, it will always be blurred and obscured.
Considering those elements, Adam seeking Eve is a breakthrough. I just hope they do naturism a service by portraying how 'normal' being naked is and how people can respect each other and lead their daily lives without being obsessed by the nakedness.
The message of all those shows should be that being naked is the most common thing in the world.

I am a Thailand Naturist

Little did I know in December 2011, when I chose the Naturist Association of Thailand as my Real Naturist of the Year 2011, that the organization would take such a flight and that I would join it.
According to its website http://thailandnaturist.com, it now has more than 1,400 members, not just in Thailand, but worldwide. And from now on, that also includes me.
No, I do not live in Thailand, but only four hours flying away, and that's why I joined.
Most Asian countries ban public nudity in all its forms, including the non-sexual social nudity of naturism, which is so popular in other parts of the world, with free nude beaches, resorts, hotels and campings. None of those exist in the Asian country I live in, so my only naturist periods so far have been at home or during short visits to Europe, where I managed to fit in a day at a beach, if the weather happened to cooperate.
Thanks to the NAT, that should now change, because not only is it an organization, it also has succeeded in letting naturist resorts get off the ground in Thailand.
I haven't visited any of them yet, but I have been taking a look at their websites.
There is the Oriental Village in North Thailand's Chiang Mai (www.orientalvillage-chiangmai.com) which looks like paradise, in the middle of rice fields, with a sunny pool and beautiful villas. Speaking on a personal note, its location might be the downside for me. Being remote from the town, it would be difficult to find outside restaurants, while the fact that it also caters to non-naturists might be positive for my non-naturist wife, but not for me.
On the opposite side of the scale, there is the Chan Resort (www.chanresort.com) in busy Pattaya. No problems finding restaurants, shops and nightlife there, I'm sure. The only drawback - and it's a small one - is that it feels a bit locked in. Since there are no naturist beaches, it's not possible to walk along in the sand to the edge of the sea, there's only the swimming pool, which you can see in the picture above.
What sounds great is that the Chan Resort is also the site of an annual international naturist conference, this year on June 4-11. I have not decided yet whether to go. The only such event I attended before, was the International Naturist Federation congress in 2004 at the Croatian resort of Valalta. My biggest disappointment there was that because there was a rule that you had to wear clothes inside the buildings, the whole naturist congress was ... textile! I do hope and expect that will not be the case at the Chan Resort.
The third resort that caught my attention was the Sala Villas (www.salavillas.com), also in Pattaya close to the Chan Resort, which does not have real pictures on its site yet. It has the same advantages as the other Pattaya place, though one practical drawback is that for some reason it does not accept credit cards. In contrast to the Oriental Village, it is very strict about being nude inside the resort, which is good for me, bad for my non-naturist wife.
Having made those remarks, I must praise all of those resorts for doing a great job in launching naturism in one of Asia's most beautiful countries.
With a lessening of political tension on the horizon, I am hopeful that I might soon be able to stay at one of them. The Chan Resort might be my first choice, during the conference or not, but I want to give the others a try too.
Thailand was already a frequent destination for my travels around 2006, and the NAT is likely to put it back near the top from 2014 on.