Things to Do in the Nude: Bungee Jumping

Imagine the scene: a group of tourists from Hong Kong line up to try out bungee jumping. One young woman in the group shows up in a black bikini and suddenly takes it all off before she takes the leap.
Nobody complained, nobody seems to have been shocked enough to call in the police, and as the picture from Coconuts Bangkok shows, the young woman had a great time.
Yet, before last weekend, this simple event in the northern Thai town of Chiang Mai suddenly became international news, with even newspapers in Taiwan devoting ample space to it.
The reason was that somebody had posted pictures of the event online, and that somehow the police department in Chiang Mai had noticed those, and visited the premises.
The result was a fine of 1,000 baht or about 30 US dollars for the operator of the bungee jumping site. While one can understand there are laws in this respect, going to fine nude bungee jumping a week after the fact, when nobody complained about it, is totally unnecessary and a waste of resources.
The authorities in the city thought of mentioning that the event would harm its international standing as a location with a rich culture, but Chiang Mai is hardly likely to be remembered from now on as "the place where that woman jumped in the nude" rather than as a scenic must-go place in Northern Thailand.
While some reports said the Hong Kong woman was a model, named Natalie, who was out to garner fame, her actions were nothing more than an innocent fun thing to do, like skinny dipping. She showed how much more fun things can be when you do it in the nude, without the restrictions of clothing, feeling the wind and the sunshine on your bare skin.
And for those who want to try real naturism in Thailand and do things in the nude without the fear of being fined - though I think bungee jumping would not be possible - they can turn to http://thailandnaturist.com, where they can also look up naturist hotels and resorts in the Southeast Asian country.

Naked Germany at CNN

 

Congratulations, CNN!

On the whole, I don't really like a lot of the international media, but in this case, CNN - at least the website, I don't know about the TV station - has brought a balanced and serious account of naturism, in Germany.

The main reason is that the story comes from an insider: a German who like most of his compatriots grew up in a family where naturism was not an ideology but a way of life. He tells the story of what naturism is, how it originated more than a century ago as a health movement, and what you can do and not do in the nude in Germany.

Freikoerperkultur - Free Body Culture, the German term for naturism - may have most of its followers in that country, but as Germans traveled all over Europe from the 1960s on, naturism expanded. It came back from the Mediterranean shores to envelop all of Europe.

Proponents of today's Free the Nipple movement in the United States and Asia would do well to study the lessons of naturism and follow its example. The starting points of both movements are widely different, but in the end, it is all about respect for others, for one's body, and for the freedom of non-sexual social nudity.

You can and should read the CNN article at http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/06/travel/naked-germany/

The German naturist federation is at www.dfk.org.