Eleanor Hawkins and tourists in trouble: Sex on the beach, Mohammed the teddy-bear and Saudi home-brew

The case of British tourist Eleanor Hawkins and her fellow climbers stripping on the peak of Mt Kinabalu is just the latest case of tourist offending the sensibilities of their foreign hosts -- some of which have had dire consequences for those involved.

IBTimes UK looks at some of the best and the worst tourist transgressions.

1. Cambodia: Angkor hot

The recent case in Malaysia is not the first time tourists have got in trouble for stripping off at a sacred historical site. In February, American sisters Lindsey and Leslie Adams were deported from Cambodia after taking naked pictures of each other at Angkor Wat temple.

The sisters, 22 and 20, were given a six-month prison sentence and banned from Cambodia for four years, as well as being fined $250 for public exposure and making pornography after taking the pictures outside the ancient temple.

It was the second time in just two weeks that tourists had been arrested for getting naked at Angkor Wat. Three French tourists were deported for taking nude pictures inside another temple at the site, which is visited by tens of thousands of tourists every year.

2. Dubai: Sex, drugs and an Emirati jail

Michelle Palmer and Vince Acors made headlines in 2008 after being found guilty of having sex on the beach in Dubai. The pair were jailed for three months, fined £160 and deported from the emirate after being arrested on Dubai's Jumeirah Beach for allegedly having sex on a sun lounger. The pair claimed they had "just [been] kissing and hugging".

A year earlier, Radio One DJ Grooverider was arrested at Dubai airport with £10 worth of cannabis in his shoe and sentenced to four years in jail. He was later pardoned by Dubai's Sheikh Mohammed after 10 months.

3. Thailand: Rage against the king

Lots of foreign tourists have fallen foul of Thailand's strict lese majeste laws, forgetting that while Bangkok may be the party capital of Asia the country has very clear boundaries when it comes to insulting the country's king.

In 2012 a US citizen was jailed for two-and-a-half years after publishing sections of a banned biography of Thailand's King Bhumibol. Joe Gordon had posted his comments online while in the US but was arrested when he visited Thailand. He was later pardoned by the king.

Five years earlier a Swiss national, Oliver Jufer was jailed after spray-painting five pictures of the king after flying into a rage when a bar in Chiang Mai would not serve him beer. All bars in the city had been closed out of respect for the king's 79<sup>th birthday.

4. Rowdy Saudi (Arabia)

Earlier this year an Australian grandfather, Peter Mutty, was jailed and flogged after being caught with two cartons of home-brewed larger and two cases of homemade wine in his car in the oil rich eastern province of Al Khobar.

The 57-year-old engineer had been working in Saudi Arabia, where alcohol is completely forbidden but home-brewing is a popular past-time for thousands of western expatriates who work in compounds in the country. Mutty is now free but has been told he can't leave the country.

5. Sudan: He's not the Prophet, he's a very naughty toy

British school-teacher Gillian Gibbons was arrested in Sudan in 2007 after she allowed her pupils to name a teddy-bear Mohammed in Sudan. The teacher, who was from Liverpool, had allowed the children to name the bear and said they chose Mohammed, a popular name throughout the Middle East and the Muslim wider world.

She was reported to the authorities by parents at the school and reports said that mobs began to gather outside when the story got out. The authorities believed that by naming a bear Mohammed, Gibbons had denigrated the Prophet Mohammed and insulted Islam. She was eventually sentenced to 15 days in prison and then deported.

6. Peru: Humming-dinger

Environmental charity Greenpeace had to apologise to the people of Peru after activists broke into a prohibited area of the Nazca lines laid out a message in yellow cloth reading: 'Time for Change! The Future is Renewable' in a message to leaders gathered in Lima for UN climate talks in the Peruvian capital.

The government said it would try to prevent the activists leaving and would file charges of attacking archaeological monuments, a crime punishable by up to six years in prison. The stunt was performed over the vast etching of a hummingbird, one of the most prominent shapes that make up the mysterious and ancient pictures that can only be seen from the air.

"This has been done without any respect for our laws. It was done in the middle of the night. They went ahead and stepped on our hummingbird, and looking at the pictures we can see there's very severe damage," Peru's vice-minister for culture Luis Jaime Castillo told the Guardian. "Nobody can go on these lines without permission – not even the president of Peru!"

7. China: Wen behaving badly

It is not only Western tourists that get in trouble in Thailand. In February, Thai police revealed that they were hunting for a tourist who was filmed kicking sacred bells inside a temple in Chiang Mai. Meanwhile, in Egypt. a tourist posted pictures on a Chinese web forum showing her defacing a 3,500-year-old Egyptian statue in Luxor.

Such incidents in 2013 prompted the Chinese government to issue guidelines for its citizens travelling overseas, which became an instant internet hit for its often weird and wonderful guidelines as well as the cartoon characters that illustrated the advice.