Is it Safe for Us to Travel the World as an LGBT Couple?

Just in case you haven’t noticed, we’re a same-sex couple (of course, you’ve noticed 😉). We got married in Toronto back in 2008 and we’ve always felt really grateful to live in a country that accepts us for who we are. But we realize that not every place is as open and accepting. As travelers who love exploring the world, this creates quite a dilemma for us. Do we stick to LGBT-friendly destinations (and end up touring Western Europe again and again)? Or do we take a risk and head out to other parts of the world that have a lot to offer but might not be as progressive?   

In this post, we’re sharing what it’s like to travel the world as a same-sex couple and whether we find it safe — especially in parts of the world where LGBT people have few rights or maybe no rights at all. 

The story of our travels begins here in Canada. We’re both from Toronto and we met and got married here. And we were very fortunate to have support for our relationship from our family and friends and even our workplaces. Gillian even got a congratulations card from all her colleagues and she was in the Canadian military at the time. That’s how progressive Canada is. 

From the very beginning of our relationship, travel was always our favourite pastime.

Back then, we’d take one big trip a year. But eventually we felt that those two weeks just weren’t enough. We thought that maybe our careers could be the ticket to more travel. If we could both land jobs overseas, we’d have a whole new part of the world on our doorstep. 

After doing a lot of research, we decided on Singapore as the best destination for growing our careers. It’s an English-speaking country so we saw it as a much easier gateway into Asia versus other countries in the region. In the beginning, that’s about all we knew about Singapore. We were hard pressed to even find it on a map.

And surprise! After months of networking and interviews, I got offered a job. Gillian was also really close to landing one. It seemed that our dream was quickly turning into a reality.There was just one tiny little issue. Singapore doesn’t recognize gay marriage. In fact, LGBT people have very few rights at all and certainly no workplace protections. Right away this meant that we wouldn’t be moving to Singapore as a couple. We’d be moving as two individuals and we’d both need jobs in order to stay in the country. 

To put this in context, when a heterosexual couple moves to Singapore, just one person needs to have a job. The spouse can come on a dependent pass and then look for work at their leisure. For us, we both needed a job right away. Since Gillian didn’t have one yet, she would only be allowed to stay in Singapore for 30 days on a tourist visa. 

The move to Asia was starting to feel a lot more risky but we wanted to take the chance and have the adventure. So we started our new life in Singapore by going straight into the closet.

We never outright lied to anyone but our personal lives just became a topic that we never spoke about. 

Even after we got to know colleagues well, we were very careful about oversharing. As we settled in Singapore, we discovered that it’s a very traditional society and, on the whole, people were much more family oriented and religious than we experienced back in Canada.

It’s also important to mention that we never saw it as our job to educate people about LGBT issues. We always considered ourselves to be guests in the country and never wanted to impose our views on others. Especially once I started working in the financial services industry, which was one of the most conservative in an already very conservative country. 

Our real priority was to be traveling anyway. And we did a lot of it. Eventually we’d explored the whole region but were ready to step it up. We wanted to travel the world and we wanted to do it on a full time basis. We got started putting together the first few legs of our itinerary. We realized that we would be going through a number of countries that weren’t gay friendly: Poland, Ukraine, Turkey for starters. We weren’t sure how safe it would be to travel to these countries as a female couple. 

Of course we’d grown accustomed to flying under the radar living in Singapore all those years. But still, what happens when we rent an Airbnb with just one bed? Would we need a cover story? We seriously considered passing ourselves off as cousins if we were asked about our relationship.

It turned out that none of our Airbnb hosts really cared. Or if they did, they certainly never said anything. Our fears were overblown. Either the hosts were relatively worldly because they’re exposed to lots of international tourists. Or they didn’t want anything getting in the way of the business transaction  

Of course, that’s just inside our Airbnb. What happens when we’re out exploring a new destination? How do people react to us out on the street or at a restaurant as a same-sex couple? Quite frankly, unless we tell them, they likely wouldn’t know. When we’re out and about, we limit our public displays of affection. You wouldn’t really know that we’re a couple. It would be easy to assume that we’re just really good friends.  

Now some people might say, I shouldn’t have to change my behaviour in another country. We get it. However we feel that how we conduct ourselves is really about being respectful of local customs. Just like when we lived in Singapore, we’re guests in the country. We’re not there to make a political statement or educate the locals. In fact, in many countries, even opposite sex couples are discouraged from public displays of affection. We also follow basic safety practices wherever we go. We tend not to go out at night. We definitely don’t go to bars or nightclubs. 

However, none of this addresses the important issue of whether we’re basically supporting governments that suppress people’s rights by spending our tourist dollars there. This is probably the part of travel that we struggle with the most.

If we stuck with countries where we agree with all their policies, our travel list would be very short. There are just so many countries in the world that are well behind in this area. Instead, we try to make a difference with our charitable donations. Wherever we see a social issue that really bothers us, we donate to local organizations that are trying to make a change. It’s a small thing but it’s something. 

By now we’ve traveled to over 40 countries and have never had any concerns about our safety. And honestly many of those countries have politics that we don’t agree with. We might not decide to make them our home but we’ve still found the experience to be really worthwhile.

In the end, we feel the trade off is worth it. Yes, sometimes we visit countries where not everyone is treated equally. But we can still learn a lot from the people and the culture. Looking back to our Singapore experience, even though it’s a very conservative country, we made lots of local friends. Some of them were gay, some of them weren’t, but they were all very open and accepting of our lifestyle. 

Despite going into the closet at work, living in Singapore was a life changing experience. So we’ve decided to not hold back on visiting countries just because of the politics. We travel carefully, we make educated choices and in return we get to see parts of the world that we wouldn’t otherwise experience.