KUALA LUMPUR, June 12 — Purchasing a ticket to a foreign country is an automatic signal that you accept its local laws and customs, a British travel correspondent said after four foreign tourists were arrested for allegedly stripping atop Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, angering locals who claimed the act was a direct cause of last week's earthquake.
British daily The Independent’s travel correspondent Simon Calder added that if travellers were unwilling to follow the local laws, they should not visit the country in the first place.
“When you buy a ticket abroad — whether to visit a Unesco-recognised location such as Mount Kinabalu, or to join a pub-crawl through Magaluf in Mallorca — you signal your acceptance of local laws and attitudes.
“Their nation, their rules,” he said in a commentary carried today by the UK paper.
He added that the 10 tourists who are wanted for stripping naked on Mount Kinabalu could have easily searched online about Malaysian customs and avoided getting in trouble with local authorities.
Their failure to do so, Calder said, has now resulted in four of them facing obscenity charges, including British national Eleanor Hawkins, 24.
“Tap ‘FCO Malaysia’ into a smartphone, and within seconds you learn from the Foreign Office travel advice that “Malaysia is a multicultural but mainly Islamic country’,” he wrote, adding that the site clearly states visitors should respect local traditions and customs at all times.
“Ms Hawkins’ lawyer would be unwise to argue that, among some travellers, stripping off for the camera at World Heritage Sites such as Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat is de rigueur,” he added.
Caldwell also said that while other Southeast Asian countries have laws that travellers may be “amused” by like Singapore’s ban on chewing gum or the Thai’s taboo on showing the soles of their feet to others, tourists should still follow the local law.
“Don’t rely on touristic immunity,” he said.
According to a police report by Sabah Parks staff, 10 tourists were alleged to have stripped and posed naked for photos on Mount Kinabalu’s peak on May 30 and reportedly rebuffed their local guide who tried to stop them, telling him to “go to hell”.
Four tourists — Canadian siblings Lindsey Petersen, 23 and Danielle Petersen, 22; Briton Eleanor Hawkins, 24; and Dutch national Dylan Snel, 23 — were arrested and are now held under a four-day remand order while waiting to see if they will be charged for indecent behaviour.
The other six are believed to have left the country.
The four are being investigated under Section 294(a) of the Penal code for public indecency, an offence which is punishable by a maximum three months’ jail term or fine or both.
However, there is talk of dually charging the four in native court for the same offence, which will also be punishable by jail term or “sogit”, a native term for a “cooling down” compensation that can be paid in the form of livestock, or money.
The magnitude 5.9 earthquake last Friday, the strongest recorded in Malaysia, claimed the lives of 18 climbers on Mount Kinabalu.
