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Nudes among the Coconut Trees
A light commentary about a nude resort that tries to establish itself in Asia
“I spent 16 years travelling around the world before I found my little paradise here,” told me Leeann Cruz, talking about Malapacao Island, her naturist retreat in the south of the Philippines. “At first I tried to live from farming so I wouldn’t have to get into tourism.”
Farming – being in communion with the earth by growing one’s own food – is the choice of the purest ideologues. It was a struggle, and Leeann gave up, converting the farm to a backpackers’ hideaway. But Leeann eventually became alienated with backpackers, and then the crash in tourism in 2000 – when Abu Sayyaf kidnapped some tourists from Palawan – made it imperative to attract higher-spending guests to make up for the shortfall in numbers. Now, since 2003, in keeping with her personal convictions, she reinvented the resort as a centre for holistic naturism and alternative detoxification – coffee, meat, alcohol and cigarettes are banned, and her detox programme is notoriously disciplined.
Never mind detoxification, I was interested in the naturism aspect, which seemed something of a breakthrough: I had been looking for a nudist resort in Southeast Asia for four years. As a travel writer I have many contacts in the regional travel industry, but all my queries about naturist retreats elicited the same reactions – raised eyebrows, incredulous looks, vigorously shaking heads. Now here, in the remote Palawan province in the Philippines, Malapacao Island Retreat could be the breakthrough for naturism in Asia. I contacted Patrick Lucero, a local journalist who had visited the resort to write about the detox programme (omitting the nudism aspect). He told me: “It’s definitely the only nude resort in the Philippines.”
Malapacao Island, thirty minutes by boat from the nearest town of El Nido, Palawan’s prime tourist resort, is one of the 22 isles scattered offshore that are collectively called the Bacuit Archipelago. One side of the island has a squalid fishing village of 80 inhabitants, and the other side is taken up by the resort, including a private exclusive beach, and the path leading up the cliff that Leeann dubbed Stairway to Heaven. The resort consists of six bungalows and an administrative building that are set behind the beach among the palms and tropical trees. It’s an idyllic, isolated, and tranquil spot, and the rustic open-sided bungalows make you feel at one with nature. I spent a day there, accompanied by my girlfriend, prancing nude on the beach and happily splashing in the green translucent sea – after four years surreptitiously swimming nude in desolate beaches, or at night, the chance to do so openly was like rediscovering freedom.
But how was Leeann coping in a country, and a region, where the natives swim with their clothes on? She was in the midst of a provincial conservative community for whom the naturist philosophy is something completely alien and incomprehensible, and a naked body is something that only has legitimacy in the marital bedroom. Leeann couldn’t advertise openly; I had sniffed it out when I saw a brochure that had a tiny picture of a women sitting nude on a beach taken from the back. That thumbnail picture, to a nudist, had a whiff of an insinuation.
“When I first came here, everyone thought I was crazy to confront the fishermen using dynamite and cyanide fishing techniques,” Leeann told me. “Now I have been here for 20 years and this is my home, and people come to my island to spend some time with a lady who’s off the wall.”
Behind her irreverent self-boasting manner there is cold calculation: as a foreigner she could get away with things the locals wouldn’t even think of, and her reputation for unruliness meant that this latest impertinence was in keeping with her character. Ultimately, however, a nude resort was possible in Malapacao Island only because it is out of sight on privately owned grounds that are out of bounds to non-guests in any case.
And how do the Filipino staff, most of whom are young women who hail from the fishing village half an hour’s walk across the island, feel about the ethic of the resort? My girlfriend, an educated Filipina, mixed among them to find out, and their view seems to be that naturism is a logical and peculiar extension of Leeann’s eccentricity. One of them told my girlfriend: “When you arrived today, and I saw Leeann greeting you naked on the beach, I thought, ‘Here we go again.’” Leeann was their economic lifeline – she employed a staff of twenty, and some fishermen also benefited from boat charters by guests – so the staff had learned to live with nudists.
The situation was slightly different at El Nido, the small town on the mainland, where Leeann was expanding her business by building a guesthouse, a restaurant, and an Internet café. The expatriates in town, some of whom ran the best restaurants, shirked away from a conversation about the resort, and I found only one person, the owner of Marber’s Restaurant, an impetuous gossiper, who spoke out. She told me: “That woman did offer me once to become her agent in El Nido, but I refused as I don’t want to be associated with that place.” This was telling as the glorious beach, dramatic cliffs, and pristine coral reefs of Malapacao Island – and the uninhabited desolate isles one could strike out to from Malapacao Island – were definitely saleable, and the fact that no one in El Nido wanted to be a sales representative was proof of passive resistance.
In El Nido I also stumbled on a young English woman who had visited the resort as a volunteer in return for a discounted programme. She told me wryly: “It’s a great place, but I don’t think the detoxification programme is for me – perhaps I am too young and don’t have any toxins in my body that need cleaning.” She was in her early twenties, she had pulled out earlier than planned, and she was talking about the resort evasively.
Part of the problem could be Leeann’s tough health regime – no alcohol, meat or fish, coffee, and cigarettes – and we heard stories in El Nido of people who, after some days, decided to quit. Lucero, the local journalist, told me: “The food is great, but a meat-eater needs meat – I was fantasising about burgers during my stay.”
However, Leeann points out that naturists who visit when no one is doing the programme could indulge in any of the things that are normally barred. But I wondered if the concept would endure – whether the passive opposition to naturism, as well as the ascetic health conditions, would eventually force a repositioning of resort again. Leeann had always ventured against the odds, first by confronting the fishermen, then by attempting a farm on stony and infertile terrain, and now by setting up a naturist sanctuary in a region where naturism is considered subversive. At 54 and single, it is admirable that she remains unwavering in her beliefs, and in her latest experiment – probably the only naturist resort in Southeast Asia – she has raised the stakes. But it’s too early to say whether it is a breakthrough for naturism in the region.
(C) Victor Paul Borg 
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