Since meeting three years ago, adorable gay couple Davey and Omie have travelled together to 31 countries. It’s an even more amazing feat when you consider that they live in two different countries, Davey in London, U.K., Omie in Chicago, U.S. Almost all of their time together has been against backdrops of places they aren’t from.
We asked the transatlantic couple how they met, what they’ve learned from their adventures together and about the tougher moments lurking behind the happier ones.
You live on different continents. How did you meet?
Omie: I had just moved into a new apartment in Chicago. I had my dog. I had a full-time job. I had just been on a three-week trip. I applied for a job and they were like, “Do you know this job is in Miami?” I wasn’t sure. I was going to say no, but then I spoke to my therapist who was like, “You can go, have a free trip and enjoy two days in the Miami sun, and if you hate it, you have a free trip; and if you like it, you have a new job.” So that’s how I ended up in Miami from Saturday to Monday. That Sunday is when I met Davey on a dating app. The rest is history.
Davey: I travel a lot around the United States. I was supposed to be at a conference in Miami, but by the time I’d booked my internal flights, the conference had been cancelled. So I was in Miami for the weekend. I tried to book a flight to New York, but it was astronomically expensive. I didn’t know what to do in Miami, I was there for absolutely zero reason. We met on a dating app while I was there. A couple of months later, I was in Los Angeles on a work trip and Omar was in the area seeing his brother, and we were like, “Do you want to hang out again?” One trip led to another. From the start, it’s been a relationship built on travelling to different places together.
At what point did you realize that you were a good fit, that you were boyfriends, despite the distance?
Davey: I’m quite a spontaneous person. I actually grew up in Scotland, but I moved to Hong Kong when I was quite young—my dad got a job there. So I’ve always been quite comfortable about jumping on planes, hopping into new cultures. We had done a couple of trips and I was heading back to London. On the last day, Omar was like, “I booked a trip to London in four weeks, see you there.” I was like, “I can get on board with this.” I like decision makers. I like people who are willing to jump in to see what happens. I was ready to spend a week or two together. In the end, we spent two months together.
Omie: Talking about serendipity, my full-time job continued to be remote after COVID restrictions were lifted. I met Davey when most things were starting to open up again. I decided to go see him, to just figure out what to do with this job. I’d been single for about eight years, so for me it was important to connect with someone in a way that I hadn’t really connected with anyone in the U.S. Everyone in society makes a long-distance relationship seem like a really far-fetched idea, but for us, we had the luxury of flexibility.
Davey: We’re both quite independent with our own friendship groups and all the rest. It’s not bad to have some time where you’re doing your own thing—it makes you really miss the other person. When you have the time together, you really value it.
What was the first big trip together that helped define the relationship?
Omie: In 2022, we planned to do Spain, and then we decided to add on Morocco. I guess we didn’t really know how to look for gay destinations. I know that sounds a bit privileged, but we never thought about how it’s not legal to be gay in Morocco. We just decided that we would love to be in the sun. “Morocco is very close to Spain, we’re going to be in the south of Spain, so why don’t we go?” We had never really travelled together as a couple to a place that wasn’t gay friendly and we didn’t really understand the adjustment. Sometimes you have to go back in the closet, act as friends. You don’t hold hands. Especially in certain Muslim countries, PDA is forbidden for everyone.
Coming back and integrating into everyday life was also an adjustment. We weren’t touching, and now we’re back to touching. We both came to it together: We had a really beautiful trip, but I wish we had kissed, held hands. We understood that going to a place like this doesn’t break us. If anything, it actually makes us better. We know how to deal with it together.
Davey: My family actually spent half the year in Spain, so for me it’s a retreat and a place to run away to. But Morocco can be so chaotic, and in those situations, if you can travel with someone in that kind of chaos and still get on really well and be able to enjoy that time and lean into it, that’s a very good sign for the fundamentals for a relationship. There’s so much that you can’t control. It was a brand-new place for both of us, somewhere we were exploring for the first time together.
How did you decide to start doing social media together?
Davey: Omar has always been quite good at social media because of his work background. I’m a little bit more old school. But we decided that we wanted something like a digital photo book of the things we were enjoying together as we travelled. It’s also really hard to get good advice as a gay couple going to a lot of countries.
Omie: I do know marketing and social, but Davey is the one who suggested we should do this. At first it was like, let’s do gay couple humour. Then we shared something about Malaysia, and we got comments from people like, “You’re not going there.” We did Petra, in Jordan, and people were messaging us, asking what it was like. Also, we’re not the only interracial couple, but you don’t see a lot of gay couple accounts and travel accounts with interracial couples. It’s about giving people enough information to feel safe while travelling to these places, if they so choose to go.
What’s the favourite place you’ve been to together?
Omie: Tromsø, Norway, was amazing. I had never heard of it, but it was the most romantic winter trip we’ve ever taken. South Africa was also amazing.
Davey: I would say South Africa, too. But Montenegro was such an unexpected oasis in the Balkans. It’s not so well known outside of Europe, but it has some of the most beautiful landscapes we’ve ever spent time in. It has the duality of being utterly peaceful during the day, but at night, the beach town of Kotor turns into a party town. People just fling disco lights out the back of their windows. DJs pop up from I don’t know where. Every corner of this little medieval town turns into an outdoor nightclub. Then the next morning it’s quiet and you can hear the church bells. We’ve actually been twice, and we don’t often go back to places. It was the first country in the Balkans to legalize same-gender civil unions.
What moment do you remember most fondly?
Omie: We were in an alleyway in Morocco and there was a guy with a donkey coming in, motorcycles going the opposite way, a guy with chickens hanging from their heads—all in this very tiny street. Everyone’s just rushing into each other. We had to press up against the wall and it was like the first moment where I had experienced such chaos. I remember getting really anxious, almost on the verge of a panic attack. And the government there is not gay-friendly. Davey was really kind. He was calming and understanding. It meant a lot to me, that level of empathy.
Davey: I’ve always known that Omar really wanted to see the Northern Lights. It’s a hard thing to make happen. They come out when they want to come out, and if it’s cloudy, you’re screwed. We did a very spontaneous trip, as Omar mentioned, to Tromsø, in northern Norway in the Arctic Circle. On the last night, we went to where we might have seen the Northern Lights. It was cloudy during the day and there was a very low chance of it happening. We got to the viewpoint and the sky cleared and it was magical.
What are some of the things that have gone sideways behind the scenes?
Davey: We’ve lost a drone or two, haven’t we?
Omie: Egypt looked fabulous in our posts, but we ended up at a hotel that was pretty much a scam. That was so stressful. We had requested rooms with a beautiful view of the pyramids of Giza, and then they told us that someone had broken into the rooms the night before and smashed the windows or something. It was a total scam. We’re not princessy, but it was bad.
In Sri Lanka, we took this famous Ella Odyssey train ride. The train should have taken six hours, but it took 12. People see this beautiful clip of us hanging from the train, but man, we were ready to kill each other. I ended up getting food poisoning. I was bedridden for a few days.
Biggest surprise?
Davey: You hear quite a lot in the media about Malaysian authorities cancelling concerts, once because two guys kissed on stage. But we found Kuala Lumpur to be one of the nicest experiences we’ve had. We felt very comfortable there.
Omie: Malaysia is a beautiful country and the people there are so caring. We’d just come from Singapore, which has some challenges but is slightly more open. We were wondering if we were going to have to be on our guard.
Davey: It didn’t feel like that at all. We made some friends there and the people we met were happy we were in a relationship together.
How have you managed to visit 31 countries in just a few years?
Omie: Often we go to places where Davey has work, and we’ll make a trip out of it. Otherwise, we just look for places that we find to be interesting with what we want to do, whether it’s Petra or the Pyramids of Giza. We’ve never been driven by going to gay-friendly destinations, but it’s something we’re thinking of doing more of.
It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money to go to these places. We book ahead of time. We use points. We do cheap hotels. We’ll sometimes skip lunch. You’ll see us at McDonald’s, we’re not above it.
Davey: You have to prioritize, don’t you? You have to decide: What are the most important things to you? If you want to see the Northern Lights and it means sleeping in fairly basic accommodations and taking a bus from the airport, you do it.
This story has been edited for length and clarity.
