We are the Vanlifeboys, Kyle and Rayko! We have been traveling through Europe since October 2020 living in our campervan in search of freedom and an active adventurous life!
Never expected dream
This was never something we had even thought of before covid hit the Netherlands. We met in December 2019 and only had a few ‘normal’ months together before the world changed. We both love to travel and pretty fast after we met we talked about leaving the Netherlands and going to Australia and New Zealand for a few years. When covid came, this plan had to change, and after 4 months as an ‘official’ couple we decided: let’s go on an adventure to where we are allowed to go and lets travel Europe in a van!
Challenging
And honestly: life in a van is perfect for us: we really want to do this full-time! But I hear you think: how can you, as a fresh couple, survive on 6m2?! Well, we can tell you, it’s challenging sometimes! There’s not a lot of me-time and being next to each other 24/7 can be romantic, but also challenging. But hey, we are still together after 6 months of doing this! And we do believe: if we survive this, we’ll survive anything!
Gays on the road
Being a gay couple on the road in a van, with a big logo saying VANLIFEBOYS brings some doubts every now and then. We do think about where we go and about countries culture before actually visiting it. Unfortunately being gay is not accepted everywhere. Only 29 countries on this whole planet allow gay marriage, which leaves another 169 countries NOT accepting us for showing our love. We prefer to avoid confrontations and only visit countries of which we think they accept gay people. Our route from the Netherlands all the way to the Canary Islands via Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal didn’t give us any negative feedback. This is so amazing and we feel so welcome anywhere we’ve been.
Vanlife community
The vanlife community is very open minded and this is so great. We feel like being in a big warm family whenever we meet other vanlifers. It doesn’t matter if they are young, old, girl, guy, live in mini vans like hours or in big white campers for retired people. We wave high to everyone on the campsite and immediately are part of the family. Ofcourse we sometimes have doubts of how open we can be, can we kiss, can we hug, can we hold hands, whenever there’s people parked next to us which we don’t know? But we’ve learned by experience: just DO it and in 99% of the cases, we can be who we want to be!
Discrimination anno 2021
Yet the world outside of the secure camper community is not always welcoming. "You will burn in hell for this", "disgusting" and "shitpussies": just a few things we get as comment on our Instragram page from time to time. And we can’t ignore: this hurts! We are very active on social media and regularly receive negative reactions to our content. That affects us and makes us more activist. We also share that side on our Instagram because we want to let the world know that such comments hurt us. Fortunately, we get a lot of support from friends, family and followers that we really don't know at all. The most important thing is that we feel accepted by our immediate environment.
Instagram @vanlifeboys
In the first place we started an Instagram account for our family and friends being able to follow us. Soon enough we noticed that many vanlifers and gay people were intriged by our adventure and by seeing that it ís possible for 2 gay guys, being a couple, to live in a van! Vanlife is much imaged with straight white couples, but there is more than that, doesn’t matter who you are! Right now we want to use our Instagram page also to give gay guys who never dared to go on adventure like this space to dream! Everything is possible and I mean we are out here and loving this life. We love all the positive comments and dm’s we get on our account from people sharing their love and respect. This really keeps us going. We only met a few other gay vanlifers and gay couples on the road. But via Instagram, we’ve met many! All around the globe we are represented! YES, we are EVERYWHERE!
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