We’ll say it up front: group travel doesn’t always sound flexible. A lot of us travel solo for exactly that reason, for the luxury of choosing things on a whim, or doing nothing at all without hearing a word about it from anyone. But after years of running and promoting gay travel ourselves, we’ve watched how many shapes a group trip can take, and there is almost certainly one built around something you already care about.

Then there’s the part that adds another layer to it: we’re gay.

Queer travel is more visible than it has ever been, and yet the hesitation about joining a gay group trip is still there for plenty of people, sometimes subtle, sometimes not. Many of us grew up in households where we had to perform a very classic version of masculinity, and that habit doesn’t disappear the moment we’re out. We’ve heard it countless times: someone scrolls through the photos of a trip, doesn’t see anyone who looks like them, and their brain goes straight to “definitely not for me.”

Queer group travel has changed a lot. There are trips for bears, for men over fifty, for hikers, for nudists. It helps to know how to read a trip before you book, so you can tell whether it was made with someone like you in mind.

Habibi Lads is one we’ve been watching. It’s a new small-group trip operator that takes queer men from anywhere in the world on trips across Asia, started by Wafi, a Yemeni-Indonesian queer man based in Bali. Before starting Habibi Lads, Wafi spent years operating and leading gay tours for international guests, and it shows in how much thought has gone into the details most people never think to ask about.

We asked Wafi what the important things to think about are when researching a gay group trip:

What holds the group together

Some queer trips are built around a destination. Others form around a shared interest or a shared value, and when there is one, that’s usually what decides whether you’ll feel at home.

Look at who’s in the photos and ask yourself whether it looks easy to become part of that group. Read what the trip seems to expect of you before you’ve even arrived. And find out what the week is actually built around, whether that’s nightlife, hiking, food or something else, because it’s better to know that before you land than after.

Habibi Lads is built around the idea of a week where you don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t need to be loud, out, partnered, single, fit, fluent, or well-travelled. The trips are for queer men of any background, roughly in their twenties to fifties, travelling solo, as a couple or with a friend. The week itself is busy: a morning with elephants, a wet-market tour and a Thai cooking class, a longtail boat on the river at sunset, a dinner reviving ancient Thai recipes. There’s one proper night out, and the rest of the week belongs to the days rather than the nights.

A queer host who actually lives nearby

Hosts make more difference than almost anything else on this list. On a queer trip, we’d expect the host to be queer too. A queer trip without a queer host reads as performative to us.

The other question worth asking is where your host actually lives. A host who flies in with the group brings real strengths, and plenty of excellent trips run that way. But living nearby changes what a host knows as a queer man in that place, like which bar on the queer strip is worth your night this year, which walk home is fine at 1am, how people read two men holding hands, and which supplier actually picks up the phone.

Wafi will be running Habibi Lads’ first trips in Thailand. He isn’t Thai, but he is Southeast Asian, based in the region, and has spent years leading trips for international guests. That’s the kind of local we mean. Not a passport, but a network and a working understanding of the part of the world you’re travelling into.

The size of the group decides who gets heard

On a queer trip, group size matters more than you’d think. In a big group, the confident, social guys find each other fast, and the quieter ones, or anyone newer to being around other gay men, can spend the week at the edge of the table.

That’s much harder to happen in a small group, where everyone ends up talking to everyone. The guy who took a year to decide to book gets the same week as the one who’s done ten of these.

It shapes the itinerary too. Twelve people fit around one table, into one boat, and through a cooking class without anyone being managed. Habibi Lads caps its trips at twelve guests, and when twelve places are taken, the trip is full.

Mind where you sleep

Sharing a roof with men you’ve only just met can feel like a lot, especially if you’re not used to being around other gay men yet. Some trips put everyone in separate hotel rooms, and some retreats are closer to a dorm.

Habibi Lads puts the whole group in one private house in a quiet neighbourhood of Bangkok, and you choose how you sleep: a private room, alone or with whoever you came with, your own bed in a shared room, or a bunk in the bunk room. After dinner you can stay up talking on the sofa, get in the pool, or go straight to bed, and nobody will think twice about it.

The queer part shouldn’t only happen after midnight

Nightlife is a big part of queer travel and we wouldn’t want to lose it. It’s still worth checking whether a trip has a queer side during the day as well, in who owns the places you eat and drink, who’s on stage, and which neighbourhoods you spend your time in.

The Habibi Lads week in Bangkok includes queer-owned bars and one night on a historic queer street, with live Thai music and a drag show, and you can stay out with the group or head back to the house. There’s also a free day in the middle, for exploring on your own or doing absolutely nothing by the pool.

Safety, the queer version

“Gay friendly” can mean very different things, and two places that feel equally welcoming can look quite different on paper.

Thailand legalised same-sex marriage in January 2025, the first country in Southeast Asia to do so, and Bangkok has long had one of the biggest queer scenes in the region. Bali is a good one to compare. It’s relaxed day to day and plenty of queer travellers love it, but Indonesian law doesn’t give queer people the protections Thailand now does, so it pays to be a bit more discreet there.

Wherever you’re going, a good queer trip should brief you on local etiquette and what happens if something goes wrong.

Some of it is funnier than you’d expect. “I once got stopped at airport security over a tub of petroleum jelly and I had to use it on my lips to prove to them it’s a legit petroleum jelly,” Wafi told us. Most of those moments turn into good dinner stories later.

We’d also always ask about the photo policy. Not everyone on a queer trip is out at home or at work, and one tagged group photo can cost someone a lot more than a holiday. Habibi Lads starts each trip with a welcome meeting that goes through local etiquette, queer safety and the photo policy before the first dinner.

Finding a gay group trip that resonates with you

For us, it mostly comes down to whether you’ll get to be yourself there. Unlike our straight friends, we tend to move through the world with a certain amount of care, and a good trip lets you put that down for a week.

“Queer spaces are not a business idea I simply arrived at. I’ve spent more than 12 years in them, from queer film festivals to local queer communities and the cultural spaces that hold them, and these trips have come out of that rather than out of a gap in a market.

I grew up in a family where being myself wasn’t really an option, so I learned to perform early, and for a long time I didn’t even notice I was doing it,” he told us. “Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with the idea of spaces for queer men during my travels, the places and the people where you don’t have to explain yourself. It took me years to unlearn what I’d learned growing up. Now I’m proud of who I am, of my skin and my identity, and I’d love more men to have a week where they get to feel that too.”

If it sounds like your kind of week, the first Habibi Lads trip is in Bangkok from 24 to 30 March 2027, seven days in one private house, from $2,390. There’s no rush to it, but there is a ceiling. Twelve guests, and once they’re in, that’s the group. You’ll find them at habibilads.com or on Instagram at @habibilads.