Tash and Marthe Koster-Thomas were already avid solo travellers when they met in 2019 at a surf retreat in Bali, Indonesia, a property which had a reputation for being welcoming to femme-identifying travellers. With Tash living in the U.K. and Marthe in the Netherlands, the first year of their relationship was long distance, so it involved a lot of travel. But even now that they’re living together, their country count as a couple keeps growing: Indonesia again, Malaysia, Thailand, France, Mexico and Spain.
“We’re pretty equally outgoing. We both like adventure. We both like to explore and take a certain amount of calculated risk,” says Tash, who is a professional singer and dancer, as well as a diversity and inclusion consultant. (Since speaking to Pink Ticket, they have announced that they’ve had a baby.)
Tash has few negative travel experiences to report as either a solo cis woman or as part of a female couple visiting destinations all over the world. That’s at least partly because she and Marthe, who is an oncology nurse and yoga instructor, take a variety of precautions to make sure the risks they take are calculated. We asked them and several other avid lesbian and bi travellers for their advice on what they do to reduce risks and feel safe while travelling. We also asked which destinations pleasantly surprised them—and which disappointed them.
Choosing a destination
Tash does lots of research before picking where to go, reading comments on blogs and review sites. In cases where a country has policies that are anti-LGBTQ+, or lacks pro-LGBTQ+ policies, she’ll look closely at how the policies are enforced. In Malaysia, for example, which offers no protective laws for queer and trans people, she found that the situation on the ground didn’t quite match the legal statutes. “We met [online] a Malaysian lesbian couple who took us out for the day. They were walking around holding hands and kissing every now and then, which meant that we felt comfortable doing the same,” says Tash. “You need to know what the tolerance levels are.”
Canadian couple Stephanie Myers and Gillian Batt, who make videos about their travels for the YouTube channel OurFreedomYears, started their slow-travel adventures in Eastern Europe—a region not known for being welcoming to LGBTQ+ people—and are considering Egypt, Jordan and Oman—not countries usually considered queer-friendly. They do a lot of research online before visiting a place, including online bulletin boards. Before becoming modern nomads, they had lived six years in Singapore, a country that just last year lifted its ban on gay sex, and had learned to fly under the radar, passing as friends and roommates. “We would want to support gay rights in different countries, but we just don’t feel that passing through is our time to take a stand. We aren’t there to educate other people or push their boundaries. We were actually there to learn about their culture,” says Myers.
Jeneen Ryans, a former “military girl” who now works as a compliance inspector for a U.S. state government and makes TikToks under the name @jeneensjourneys, will travel anywhere she’s curious about—in part to report back to friends and followers about how safe it is. “I’m going to Africa by the end of the year because I need to see. I tell everybody, ‘Let me take it for the team and I can come back and tell it,” says Ryans, who presents as a masculine Black woman.
Choosing accommodations
Myers and Batt usually visit a place for a month at a time and prefer Airbnb rentals in quiet residential neighbourhoods, using maps, Google Street View, reviews, blogs and other resources to suss out the neighbourhood’s eating and transportation options. “We have decided against some neighbourhoods because Gillian felt for some reason that it didn’t look like the right place for us, that particular street or that area,” says Myers. In Istanbul, they called Airbnb to report they couldn’t stay at a place that was on an unlit street—and Airbnb found them a better place to stay.
By contrast, Ryans only stays at hotels and only in central neighbourhoods close to the attractions she wants to see. “I don’t care how cheap Airbnb is, I’ve heard some horror stories [about creepy hosts and unsafe conditions]. I try to get hotels where I can just step out, I don’t have to catch a cab, I don’t have to catch an Uber. I like things to be within walking distance or where I can hop on public transportation,” she says. “My best advice is to stay in a tourist area because you can blend in.”
Getting around
While Ryans is a big fan of public transportation as a way to avoid drivers or even tour operators who might see her as an easy target (she’s had drivers purposely try to drop her off in a bad part of town), Myers and Batt prefer cabs and, especially since COVID-19, only take public transit if they’ve read that the local system is known to be safe. Rideshare apps let them overcome language problems and allow them to make sure the driver isn’t taking a detour.
Tash, who likes to get out of cities and visit beaches and the countryside, almost always rents a scooter when travelling. “I like to be able to get around by myself and have autonomy rather than constantly relying on taxis, at least for the first few weeks of a visit,” she says. Tash also always buys a local SIM card for her cellphone, so she can chart her course and call for help if needed. She also uses her phone’s track-my-location function to let her father see where she is, just in case she runs into a problem. “I’ll let him know what I’m up to each day so he can see that that’s what’s happening.”
Nightlife
Myers and Batt don’t fret much about nightlife—they’re not so interested in cities after dark. “We’re not wandering the streets in the evening. We’re not going to bars and clubs,” says Batt.
Ryans says she’s not a big partier, either, but loves to meet locals and fellow travellers, especially other LGBTQ+ people. Of course, lesbian bars are a rare species these days, so it often means hitting the gay clubs. “I’m not a drinker so that’s a plus because I don’t have to worry about drinking too much and passing out. But I want to see how the gay nightlife is. Like, Mexico gets such a bad rap, but I love it there, and love seeing the Mexican drag queens. It’s just a ball,” she says of her experiences in Tulum, Isla Mujeres and Cancun. To stay safe, she recommends signing up for a local nightlife tour, if one is available. She’s also asked local people she met in other circumstances to go out with her or, in a pinch, will hire a local tour guide to take her out.
Tash and Marthe look for a lively gay nightlife scene before they settle on a destination. “If there is a gay bar, even if it’s just one, it kind of gives you an indication that there is a community there—and we will take advantage of it. In Chiang Mai, Thailand, we went to a massive drag show, which was amazing,” she says.
Making connections
Through their website, Tash and Marthe will often make contact with local queer women before they visit a destination. Though the couple often passes as friends, they have sometimes been spotted—usually in a positive way. “We had a beautiful experience in Mexico, where we were out for dinner, with a young family nearby. The little girl, maybe five or six, saw us kiss. She whispered something to her mom. Next thing you know, the mom and the daughter were standing next to us. I was thinking, ‘Uh oh.’ The mom said, ‘My daughter wants to ask you something. She wants to know if you’re in love.’ We said, ‘Yes, we are on our honeymoon.’ The daughter smiled a big smile and the mother congratulated us. It just showed that maybe the world is changing a little bit and it’s not such a big deal to everybody all the time.”
Myers and Batt will often connect with fellow “digital nomads,” gay and straight, to share ideas and strategies—their YouTube schtick is travelling on a budget.
Ryans finds herself meeting people in all kinds of circumstances. Women solo travellers and women in groups, both queer and straight, will invite her to join them for activities or meals when they spot her on her own. Though she avoids wearing rainbow-coloured accessories when she travels, she’s often spotted by queer folks. “In Thailand and Greece, especially, I had a lot of women coming up to me,” says Ryans.
Places that were disappointing or scary
Because her family is from the Caribbean, and she’s travelled there frequently, Tash has noticed that locals in Jamaica will take note of her and throw her shade, while giving her white partner something of a tourist pass. “I used to work on cruise ships and we’d go to Nassau, Bahamas, and I would walk around with my girlfriend at the time. If anybody was going to get any kind of response or comment from locals, it would be me because they would see me as a Black woman.” Various sources talked about how, in some countries, being seen as “white” first, and the privilege that comes with that, can make people overlook things like gender nonconformity or same-sex attraction.
Myers and Batt haven’t felt unsafe yet in their travels. Some advice, like avoiding carrying valuables and staying in busy areas frequented by other tourists, apply to anyone regardless of gender or orientation.
Ryans has made TikToks about the places she didn’t like. Top of the list: Antigua and the Dominican Republic, where she felt she was targeted by scams. In Jamaica, people seemed to accept her as a butch lesbian, but she was shocked by how openly the locals she met talked about hating gay men. “I was wondering, ‘What would you do if you didn’t like me?’ I tell people visiting there, don’t go wearing fancy jewelry, don’t go wearing Pride stuff because it may not be the whole country, but there are people there who might just not like us.”
Destinations that were pleasant surprises
As a butch Black woman, Ryans was delighted by Iceland, Portugal (people invited her to their homes for dinner) and Zürich, Switzerland—homogeneously white places where nobody batted an eye or tried to touch her hair. Singapore was also friendly and so diverse, nobody looked at her twice.
Tash, who is also Black, thought Southeast Asia—including not only Thailand and Indonesia, but Malaysia—was very welcoming.
Myers and Batt were impressed with Mexico City, which was not nearly as chaotic and daunting as they expected from a mega city, and with Turkey, which was especially cosmopolitan in places like Istanbul and the Mediterranean coast.
