On Airplane Mode and Ready To Explore!

It’s so hard to pick one place but we fell in love with all of Southeast Asia! I, Christine, could live in the Philippines for a lifetime and never grow tired of its beauty! Kirstie favored Malaysia for its diversity, landscapes, and especially the food!

Nature is one of our favorite aspects about traveling. Wherever we go, we’re always drawn to beautiful landscapes and environments and often pick travel destinations based on nature – amazon, oceans, mountains, etc. While cities are great, we can’t help but fall in love with green and blue surroundings, whether we’re doing a hike in the mountains of Laos or exploring the ocean in Malaysia and seeing some of the beautiful coral reefs we have ever seen. Next to food, it’s probably the best part of traveling for us.

We realize we are very privileged to be from the United States where being a part of the LGBTQ+ community is tolerated. There are over 170 countries worldwide where simply loving someone of the same sex is illegal. We hope to use our photography to help educate and bring positive awareness to our community worldwide especially while traveling. The LGBTQ+ community still has a very long way to equality, but we think in the last decade there have been massive strides towards change.

When we started On Airplane Mode, we wanted a tagline that represented who we were as individuals and travelers. When you put your phone on airplane mode, it turns off your service and you have to be present in the moment which is so important to us.

Absolutely, one of the things you will notice when traveling internationally is the direct effects of climate change on smaller villages and towns worldwide. While we saw some amazing coral reefs in Southeast Asia, we also saw reefs that were completely dead due to global warming, leading few to no fish and leaving villages hungry and having to go further out into the ocean to get their meals. While we are noticing more changes in plastic waste and more plant-based diets to help the ecosystem, we wish there was a faster and more direct approach to help our planet.

If we had a choice to be somewhere year-round, we would choose somewhere tropical! We feel a sense of freedom when we are by the ocean and our feet in the sand. There’s something so magical about exploring the ocean and after all, it does make up most of the earth.

I would ask how we could help save it faster and why it is constantly so good to us even when we as humans don’t reciprocate our love to nature nearly as much.

We were so very excited to be nominated for the Gay Travel Awards in 2020. We started On Airplane Mode in 2019 in hopes to help people follow their passions while celebrating who they are and who they love. We could not believe we were nominated especially with all of the other inspiring content creators we look up to in the category. Winning was absolutely mind blowing as we truly felt that it was a reflection of our dedication and hard work in the past year.

While having a day dedicated to Earth Day is a great reminder to give back to the planet, we wish it could be celebrated year long. We believe it is important to continue educating ourselves and others how to live a more sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyle. If we all did a small part, we could create a positive impact on the world around us!