Nudist Cruise

by Hailey McPherson

  “There are a lot of things in Hong Kong you can only see at night,” I told them. “But unfortunately, we’ll be sailing away by then.”

  I took them to the Tian Tan Buddha at Ngong Ping – Tina’s giant mountain Buddha. Most people never even think about it when they talk about Hong Kong, but it is an important part of Chinese/Hong Kong culture. Earl and Edna loved the cable car ride up the mountain and taking pictures of the giant Buddha. There are also views of Hong Kong that most people never think about when they picture the postcards. People think of it as this massive steel and glass city, so they are always surprised to see forests and nature trails.

  “This wasn’t on our list,” Edna told me. “But I’m glad we came here.”

  “This is probably a great place for a freehike,” Earl decided.

  By “freehike”, he meant hiking while naked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But that would be very illegal here.”

  I could tell that Earl and Edna really wanted to enjoy the unexpected nature of Hong Kong without any clothes. Hong Kong, for all the bright lights and shiny things that tourists love, is simply not a great place for nudists.

  “We should just wait until we’re back on the ship,” Edna suggested.

  I like nature as much as the next person, but taking a hike naked would drive me crazy. The mosquitoes alone would kill me.

  We were pretty close to Disneyland, but we did not have much time left and they were more interested in seeing old China and British colonialism than Mickey Mouse.

  “Do Americans even go there?” Edna asked me.

  “Sometimes,” I told them. “But it’s mostly Chinese and Japanese tourists.”

  “The Japanese go everywhere,” Earl announced.

  “They should build one in Japan,” Edna said.

  “There’s already a Tokyo Disneyland,” I told them. “It opened twenty years before Hong Kong’s.”

  “Is it like this one?” Edna asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never been there. My employee discount can get me into any Disney park in the world, except Tokyo.”

  I had already told them that Hong Kong Disneyland was the smallest. Since they live in Iowa, they are better off going to the much larger Disney World in Florida.

  I thought about taking them to the nude beach on Lantau. They would have loved it. Getting naked in Hong Kong would be something they could tell their friends about for years, but I don’t really know where it is and we were relying on the MTR, which does not go anywhere near that beach.

  We took the Airport Express to Lantau because it is the fastest way to get there and we only had so much time. It is also more comfortable than the regular MTR trains and I wanted them to get a little variety. The Airport Express does not go to Ngong Ping, but it is pretty easy to get from the airport to the cable car. You only have to pay one way when you go back into the city from the airport on the same day, so I saved them some money on our trip back to Central. That always seems to impress me more than anyone else.

  We went back to Central because they wanted to get some modern shopping in and we did not have much time left. I would have taken them back to the Kowloon side of the harbor, but by this point it was jam packed with dragon boat race fans. The Airport Express goes straight to IFC, so we went there.

  If you want a modern shopping mall, you could do a lot worse than IFC. Earl and Edna spent plenty of money there, but it is all the same junk you can get from any other modern shopping mall. There is nothing especially Hong Kong about it. What IFC has head and shoulders above most malls is an incredible rooftop view. It is the same height as the Peak Tower and you get unobstructed views of the harbor, on a clear day.

  We went up to the roof with some Godiva chocolate and bottles of wine they were bringing back to America and watched some dragon boat races.

  “This has been a great day,” Earl said to me as he opened a bottle of wine. “We can’t thank you enough.”

  “You should save that,” I said.

  “We have more than enough,” Edna said. “Believe me.”

  It was a pretty good day. I live in Hong Kong, so I see it all the time, but sometimes it is nice to see everything with first time visitors. It is a great way to appreciate the city a little when you are starting to take it for granted. Some of the things Chinese people do in public can wear thin after a while, but Hong Kong really deserves its reputation as a world class city. There is probably something for everybody.

  While I was looking out over the harbor and eating chocolate and drinking wine with my new friends, I thought it was interesting that I had to take a vacation outside of Hong Kong to appreciate the city even more.

  Back on the ship, Earl and Edna invited me to dinner, but I had not seen Liam all day and I knew that he would want to spend some time alone together. We agreed to meet up again the next day.

  Before the ship was scheduled to sail away from Hong Kong, most of the passengers were on the decks. People always like to watch the ship sail out of port, but this time there were also a bunch of dragon boat races in the harbor. The ship was a great place to watch the races, but I have seen them plenty of times before and I had just been watching them from the roof of the IFC, so I went to my cabin to take a break.

  Liam was still working, so I had some time to myself. After spending the day walking around Hong Kong, it was nice to have a little peace and quiet. I was in the middle of a Jane Austen novel, so I sat back on the bed and got lost in Highbury.

  After a while, it occurred to me that the ship was still at the pier. It was getting dark, but we were still docked. According to a few people I talked to, there was some kind of problem with the Hong Kong officials. They were not letting the ship leave for some reason.

  “There are worse places to be stuck than on this ship,” I told one of the random passengers I talked to during all the confusion.

  “If we leave late, we’ll be behind schedule the rest of the trip,” he said.

  I did not particularly care about the schedule. The next day was another day at sea. After that was Ho Chi Minh, which I still did not know if I even had a visa to get into. After that was our final stop in Bangkok. Since Liam and I were staying in Bangkok, we had no planes to catch or timetables to keep, so it would not matter to us if we got in late. For a lot of the other passengers, though, it could make all the difference in the world.

  We applied online for visas to Vietnam before we left, but because we did it so late, we never got a chance to see if we were approved or not. I suppose I could have checked my e-mail while we were in Hong Kong, but that never happened. So I would not know if I could even go into Ho Chi Minh until we got there and the immigration officer said yes or no. Liam was going to stay on the ship since he was working that day and would not have enough time to go anywhere.

  I went up to the top deck of the ship to watch the tail end of the Hong Kong sunset. That turned out to be a pretty good move since not long after that the Symphony of Lights started. We were supposed to be out of Hong Kong already, but since we were still docked, we had a great seat for the show.

  I have seen it a bunch of times, but mostly from the culture center. I had never seen it from a giant cruise ship. The other passengers were a lot more excited about it than I was. It is worth seeing at least once, especially on New Year’s Eve, but there is no reason to see it every day.

  I wanted to tell Earl and Edna about our unique views of the Symphony of Lights since it was on their list, but I did not know where they were. They were somewhere on the ship, but I did not have any way to contact them. I did not even know their cabin number.

  The sun was long gone by the time the ship left the pier, so there was no sunset to watch while the city got smaller and smaller. Instead, I watched the bright lights fade into the distance as we sailed through some of the outlying islands and into the Pacific Ocean. It was definitely a different way to leave Hong Kong. Every other time, I have flown out on a plane. I would like to see what it
looks like to watch Hong Kong float away in the daytime, but I think it might be better at night since you go from a city with billions of lights to nothing but the moonlight over the ocean.

  I never did find out why we left so late.

  Chapter 15: Naked Experiment

  As soon as we were in international waters, all the naked people came out of the woodwork. Forced to wear clothes most of the day in Hong Kong, they were more than ready to get naked at sea.

  I was getting used to it by now. The first time I saw a deck full of naked people, I was shocked. Now it just seemed like a normal thing. When the ship is sailing, people are naked.

  It was like seeing people in big heavy coats in Hong Kong in winter. Hong Kong is never cold by Minnesota standards – not even close – but to the locals it is freezing in winter even when the temperature is only seventy degrees. It seemed strange to me at first to see so many people dressed so warmly when it was not even close to cold, but now I don’t even notice. It is cold to them, so they wear warm clothes. It is not cold to me, so I mostly dress the same all year.

  The nudists on the ship did not have to worry about the cold. It was nighttime, so there was no sun for the sun worshippers, but it is never anything close to cold in Hong Kong in summer, whether day or night. The temperature would dip a few degrees while the ship was moving, but it remained warm all night.

  We ate a lot in Hong Kong, so I had a late dinner on the ship. After dinner, I went to Liam’s evening show. I made sure that he did not get me up on stage this time. I was on vacation, I was not there to work. I especially was not there to work for free. Nobody was paying me, unless you include the free cruise and the fact that I had not paid for much of anything at this point. Even so, asking me to get up on stage and perform is like asking an accountant to do your taxes for free. After Liam’s show, I went to the exercise pools.

  In addition to the main adult swimming pool with four large hot tubs, children’s swimming pool and wading pool with a small hot tub, there were a few individual exercise pools with jet currents so you could swim laps while staying in place. The main swimming pool and hot tubs were out under the open sky. The exercise pools were not entirely indoors, but they were covered in an alcove out of the way, probably to keep the noise of the jet currents away from the rest of the pool deck.

  When I went to the exercise pools, there was a couple swimming in one of the small pools. Each exercise pool was designed for one person at a time, but the couple was not doing anything you should not do in public, and they seemed to be having fun, even if their swimming style was not the most efficient. And, of course, they were completely naked.

  I came to the exercise pools wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Yet again, I was the most overdressed person around the pool deck. Naked people were everywhere. Many of them said hello or waved to me like we knew each other, but absolutely none of them ever tried to make me feel overdressed.

  I had a bikini on under my clothes, so no one was impressed when I stripped off my shorts and t-shirt, but I let out a little scream that got some attention when I jumped into the water. It was a lot colder than I expected. The pools were not heated because the jet current moved the water around enough to warm it up, but when the jets were not on, the water got cold. As soon as I turned it on, I was ok, but it took me a minute to adjust.

  There were different settings so you could swim with different levels of difficulty. After I tried them all, I was sufficiently tired. I got a pretty good workout just trying to find the right setting. So I put it on the lowest setting and just floated around for a while. No one else was waiting to use it and there were a few other pools available, so I did not see any reason not to take my time.

  When the naked couple in the other pool left, there was no one else around. I had all of the exercise pools to myself. Everyone else was out at the main swimming pool or in the hot tubs. This was actually a perfect night for a hot tub. The weather was wonderful and the stars were out over the ocean. I would have gone into one of the hot tubs myself if they were not full of naked couples. I’m sure nobody was doing anything they should not have been doing, but I could just imagine relaxing in one of the hot tubs and glancing over at some guy whose hands never left the water. That is exactly the kind of monkey business Liam would try.

  “This is a nudist cruise, you know,” I said to myself. “There’s no one else around. You’ve got the place all to yourself.”

  I was trying to talk myself into getting a little more comfortable in the exercise pool, or a little less comfortable in my case.

  I have skinny dipped a couple of times and I can see why nudists prefer to swim naked. We had a private swimming pool on our trip to Bali and once I swam naked in it, I never went back to wearing a bathing suit. It just feels so much better and so natural to swim naked. The big difference is that the Bali villa pool was very private and this one was open to everyone on the giant ship.

  Eventually I worked up the nerve to take off my bikini top. It is funny to me now how nervous I was about it all. There was absolutely no one within visual range and I was mostly underwater anyway. Even if someone was standing next to the pools, they would not have been able to see anything. With the jet currents on, I could barely even see myself if I looked down. They might be able to tell that I was topless, but they would not be able to see any details. More importantly, no one would have cared.

  What I was still just learning was that when you are around nudists, no one is straining to try and sneak a peek. They are surrounded by naked people all the time. The slight chance that they might get to see some part of one of my nipples underwater is not going to impress them.

  After a while, no one came to the exercise pools, so I took off my bottoms. Even though I was more naked, I felt less exposed. You would have to stick your head underwater to see anything, and only wearing the bottoms made it more obvious when I was topless since the red bikini did not match my skin color at all. With just the bottoms on, you might be able to see a red blur on my bottom half but no red blur on my top half. Without anything on, there was no way to tell if I was naked or just wearing a color that did not stand out underwater.

  I kept my bikini very close to the edge of my little pool where I could grab it in a hurry if necessary. I could just imagine some frat boy taking it and running away, and I would have to walk out naked. But I was not in a teen movie, so that was never going to happen.

  When I had about all the exercise I could stand, I turned off the jets and just sat in the pool for a minute. If someone had come up to the pool now they would have seen a lot more of me without all that swirling water. I put on my top first. For some reason, it seemed more naughty to be bottomless than it was to be topless. I understand why, of course, but in a pool it is more noticeable when you are topless. I was about to put on my bottoms when I had second thoughts.

  “You could just leave them off,” I told myself. “You can walk all the way back to the cabin without them.”

  “You can even take off your top and just go totally naked,” I heard Liam say in my head.

  He was not there, but I know the way he thinks. He would be the first to try and talk me into it.

  “That’s not going to happen,” I would have said to Liam. “There are a million people between here and there.”

  “So?” is what Liam would have said to me.

  “So,” I said to imaginary Liam. “They would all see me.”

  “And then what?” imaginary Liam argued. “What happens if these people see you naked? How does it hurt you? You don’t work with them. You don’t see them every day. You don’t even know them.”

  Imaginary Liam made some pretty good points. This was not like the dream where you are naked in high school. The worst thing about that would be that you are surrounded by all of your classmates – people you know and see every day. The other passengers on the cruise ship were people I will never see again. Most of them live thousands of miles away. I might stay in contact with Earl and Edna online
, but I doubt that we will ever see each other after the cruise, and I did not even know if they were on the pool deck. They could have been anywhere on that ship.

  I got out of the pool completely bottomless for all the world to see, except that the world was not watching me. Nobody was. I wrapped a towel around my waist just the same. I was not about to take off my bikini top no matter what Liam said in my head. If I did that, I would have to wrap the towel around my entire body and then it would look like I just got out of the shower. With the towel around my waist, I could have easily had bottoms on. I was the only one who knew that I did not.

  I put my bottoms in my bag along with my shorts and t-shirt and cautiously walked away from the exercise pools and closer to all of the people out on the pool deck. No one stared at me. No one looked under my towel with x-ray vision. I got a few invitations to join a few groups, but that was because they were just genuinely friendly people and not because they all intuitively knew that I was bare assed under my towel. I politely said no to everyone because I was in a hurry to get back to my cabin before the captain made an announcement to the entire ship that I was walking around bottomless. I knew it was only a matter of time.

  I was nervous walking to the cabin, and it was a reasonably long walk involving two decks and an elevator. I would have taken the stairs, but then people with binoculars or zoom lenses could have looked up my towel and seen Hailey’s comet. Anyone could have pulled my towel off anywhere along the way and I would have been exposed, but again, this was not a frat party. None of these people were ever going to do that.

  I made it all the way to my cabin without anyone discovering my secret. Once I was inside, I realized how ridiculous I was being. No one cared what I was or was not wearing. I was also a little proud of myself for being brave enough to walk all the way back with nothing but a towel covering my lower half. Liam would have loved it. Of course, he would have tried to take the towel off long before I made it to the cabin. His life is a frat party.