So what has this got to do with travelling? Well, let's face it, when on holiday, chances are, we're all going to be more active. As far as we're concerned, anything that promotes safe fun and helps to minimise the spread of HIV infections (when taken with all the precautions and checks of course!) is something to be celebrated! “Negative on PrEP” has become so prevalent across the gay dating app world and interwoven into modern-day gay culture. Whilst we're not here to discuss or pass judgment on anyone who is or who is not taking PrEP, one thing's for sure, it's massively altered the way we gay boys approach and prepare for safe encounters. …a legit comment we heard at a gay bar in London one cold February morning in 2020…!
We applaud it and love the fact that it makes meeting locals so easy.Īlso, note the many other gay dating apps, usually depending on where you are (and of course, what you're into): Some of the best friends we've made in each new place we've visited has been from Grindr, whether it was in Beijing, Buenos Airest or Bucharest. When it used to be illegal to be gay in India, we used Grindr to find out to discover the gay parties taking place in Delhi – without it, there was no other way for gay travellers to find out about them unless you already knew people locally. We had never thought to do this beforehand. When we were travelling in Russia on the Trans Siberian railway, visiting places like Yekaterinburg and Irkutsk where there are no gay hangouts, our friends told us that we needed a Grindr profile to get the local ‘word' on what's happening. However, when travelling to a country outside this pink bubble, we found that Grindr literally “became” the gay scene, and was more an important way of finding out about any underground gay parties happening as well as connecting with LGBTQ locals.
In this day and age, our iPhones have pretty much become our main go-to-item for almost everything, with apps to cover all the things above, and more. When it came to travelling, we simply had a Lonely Planet guide, a compass (for the geeks amongst us), an alarm clock on our wristwatch, a walkman with a few spare cassette tapes, those old-style cameras and a few spare negatives… (and naturally, plenty of spare condoms/lube, let's not leave out the essentials!)
Since we began travelling in our more (ahem!) junior years, smartphones didn't even exist…Cue our elder Millennial lecture about the good old days…īack then, the Internet was limited to email, ICQ and Windows Live Messenger. Which are your favourite gay apps for travelling boys?