When one hears the term nude beach, images of perfectly cut, bustily appointed, olympic-athlete-meets-fashion-model perfection comes to mind. Unfortunately, there is an inescapable phenomenon in the world of nudistry: the likelihood of an individual deciding to bare it all is inversely proportional to the number of people who would desire to see that person naked. Of course, the one exception is where money and/or Hugh Hefner are involved, but as they are rarely present at most beaches, we will leave that for now. Instead, what you find is a large number of nude sun worshipers that venture down to the tropical beaches to tan their already leathered hides to the point of cracking. This is what you will find on Phuket Beach.
First, let’s give the beach itself some credit, it is extremely beautiful. White sand spread across a tropical landscape full of palm trees and hugging crystal clear blue water. It is what you think of when you think of tropical beach. The kind of beach that you keep on your desktop wallpaper in hopes that staring at it long enough might transport you there. In that respect, Phuket beach is definitely a winner.
Where it loses is in the crowd of nudists that lays interspersed across the beach. I should not that Phuket beach, along with all Thai beaches, is not intended to be a nudist beach. It is actually rude in Thai culture to show that much skin. (How they justify that belief with what goes on in the ping pong shoes in Bangkok is a topic for another day). However, Thailand makes a huge amount of money on tourism, so they want their tourists to be happy, and hold their tongues when some formerly-white-but-now-orange person decides to strip down.
So instead of seeing this:
What you really see is closer to this:
Welcome to Phuket. Please, for all of our sakes, please keep it on.