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Just about anything you want can be found on the net, even love, right? Here’s a resource for singles with a yen to find both love and adventure:
Travel Briefs
Travel dating pairs couples on the road
Single and like meeting people on vacation and business trips? Or simply want to put the downtime spent in the airplane, on layovers and between business meetings to better use? Matchmaking travel agencies can help you connect with like-minded singles who share your flight or itinerary.
TripLife, at http://www.triplife.com, lets you create a personal profile including photo, occupation, favorite sport, alma mater or any appropriate information, enter your travel plans, then instantly see profiles of other people on your flight or already at your destination. You can e-mail invites to prospective golfing partners or dinner companions and remain in the network for later notification whenever you and other TripLife members are in the same city.
Then there’s speed dating aboard a 737. SkyDate, http://www.skydate.eu/v1.0/eu/home/home.php, offers travelers to Europe this opportunity to enjoy brief encounters with several people on an airline flight. Women remain seated, and men make the rounds. Participants are discouraged from asking each other out and instead rate their speed dates by vote. Those who voted to meet each other again are then given contact information.
Other travel dating services include O Solo Mio, http://www.osolomio.com; and MatchTravel, http://www.matchtravel.com.
Isn’t the Internet wonderful? I love being able to go to Google, type in just about any shred of data, and find pertinent information. What did we do before Google? It wasn’t even that long ago that we had to do without it, and we didn’t even know what we were missing.
Likewise with dating sites: There are the biggies, Yahoo! Personals, Match.com, and eHarmony, but more and more, these sites are for “normal” folks with few if any flaws. What if you have a big flaw, as far as dating goes, not just a few extra pounds or too few little inches in height, but lots of pounds or very few inches? Or a sexually transmitted disease, or surgically altered genitals, or a genuine disability like deafness or paraplegia? Presto! The Internet is coming up with sites just for you.
Here’s an article below listing lots of sites for the out of the ordinary. Some may be understandable and welcome, like DateaLittle.com for very short-statured people, but you may wonder about others like DailyDiapers.com. Then again, it’s like sites for married folks looking for affairs: It’s just as well that these folks have their own place to go so that they aren’t lurking around the mainstream sites looking for unsuspecting victims.
If you are “out of the mainstream” and looking for a date, you may find a resource in the article below. Or if not, go to Google and type in your defining term (Like dwarf or transgendered) and then +"dating site”. And see what you get. Good luck!
Deaf and single? There’s a dating Web site for you
By MEGAN SCOTT
Associated Press
Paraplegics need love too. So do cross-dressers, dwarfs, addicts and burn victims.
Oh, and we can’t forget the impotent, diabetic and irritable-bowel sufferers.
How do they find true love on Match.com, eHarmony and Yahoo! Personals?
Dating went digital a long time ago, but the options these days are dizzying. Web sites cater to people with HIV and herpes, people who are tall or short, who are “married but looking,” who love pets, wine, tennis, scuba diving and golf.
There are niche dating sites for every political affiliation, religion and ethnic group. There are ones for Trekkies (TrekPassions.com) and lonely Ayn Rand fans (atlasphere.com).
Of course, none of these niche dating sites can boast the huge memberships of a Match.com.
But some people find them more appealing than sifting through thousands of profiles. If a quadriplegic wants to date another quadriplegic, why waste time on eHarmony?
“You have a few gigantic general dating sites that have so many members. Most people are going with them,” said Lisa Daily, a relationships expert and author of Stop Getting Dumped! “But what’s happening is a lot of people don’t want to date in the general public. Relationships are based on shared experiences. If you come into it already with something like herpes, that can be a help.”
What are some of the most specialized sites?
• 18wheelsingles.com: “Where single truckers meet significant others.” SWF looking for a truck driver for companionship and to ride the open road. Also check: truckerpassions.com.
• Airtroductions.com: Who hasn’t dreamed of meeting someone on a plane? Create a profile, enter your flight information (flight number, airports, date and time) and select a match.
• Cisforcupid.com: Breast cancer survivor searching for prostate cancer survivor for companionship and emotional support? Cancer survivors founded this site earlier this year.
• DailyDiapers.com: Wear Depends? Or Pampers? This site is described as a community for adult babies, diaper lovers, big kids, mommies and daddies.
• DateALittle.com: This dating site caters to people with dwarfism and others of short stature; men under 5 feet 6 inches tall and women under 5 feet tall. Also check out LittlePeopleMeet.com.
• Datingpro.com: For those with no luck finding a perfect match. Design your own professional dating site.
• Deafs.com: “Where deaf friends and singles feel at home!” Partially deaf man seeks woman for intimate conversation. Must not mind speaking up. Sign language knowledge a plus. Also check out: deafpassions.com, deafsinglesconnection.com and soulmatesource.com/deafpeoplemeet.html.
• Disabledpassions.com: For the quadriplegic searching for that special someone. This site caters to people with disabilities, ranging from visual impairment and deafness to people who use wheelchairs. Some others: disabled-world.com, whispers4u.com.
• Hairfetishpersonals.com: Men, get rid of that toupee. Women stop hiding that bald head under a wig. The singles on this site love the bald look, whether it’s on a man or a woman.
• IrritatedBeingSingle.com: This site is for sufferers of irritable-bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease because, “there is no better feeling than being with someone who understands exactly what you are going through.”
• Kizmeet.com: Helps you find those missed connections. (You danced with a hottie at the club last night but never got his name.) Search postings within specific locations, such as bar, club, coffee shop, in 17 cities.
• Marry-an-ugly-millionaire-online-dating-agency.com: Beautiful woman searching for ugly millionaire to shower her with diamonds. This dating site matches the poor with the filthy rich.
• MeetAnOstoMate.com: Wearing a colostomy bag? A dating site designed for ostomates.
• NoLongerLonely.com: A dating site for people with mental illess. Also check out: bipolarparty.com.
• Poormatch.com: Bills itself as the worst dating site in the world.
“Over one million people have had lukewarm romantic encounters since joining Poormatch.com.”
Prescription4Love.com: P4L is for singles who suffer from an array of health conditions, including burn victims, arthritis, infertility or impotence, deafness, HIV and lupus.
Recoveringmates.com: For people recovering from an addiction, such as alcohol or drugs. This dating site boasts the largest database of sober singles.
Sugardaddie.com: Boasts that it has the “most attractive, wealthy and desirable people in online dating.”
Talldates.com: M4M (men for men) dating site because “ordinary gay sites seem to exclude guys who get off on height differences.” Also check out: Tallmentogether.com.
Transpassions.com: MTF pre-op searching for FTM pre-op for a real relationship. NO GAMES. A dating Web site for cross dressers, transgenders and transsexual singles. Some others: tgconnect.com and tg.matchopolis.com.
I did a house exchange many moons ago, trading my Maine island house for a suburban place south of London. It was probably the best vacation I ever had. Here’s an article aimed at hooking up singles (for travel only, not sex—well, maybe not sex) for travel adventures. Just points to the great uses people are finding for the Internet and online dating-type of connections.
Have cyberfriend, will travel
Rules of the web
Fellow travellers just a click away
The internet is bursting with potential travel companions – but what happens when you make them a reality? Suzy Bennett finds out.
# Is the internet the best place to find new friends?
‘Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter,” wrote Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler, after what was presumably a very sociable fishing expedition.
Marrakesh, Have cyberfriend, will travel
‘A few days later, our trip to Marrakesh is booked: shopping the souks, gawping at riads and being pampered in hammans’
Other well-known travellers would no doubt agree: Samuel Johnson and David Livingstone both famously enjoyed the benefits of companionship on the road.
Today, Britain has 15.4 million single travellers - up from 9.6 million a decade ago - and while some happily embark on trips by themselves, most still prefer the security, companionship and economy of travelling with someone else.
Until recently, if friends or family didn’t share your interests, it meant signing up to a singles’ holiday, joining an agency or cruise, or posting an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine such as The Spectator.
But as people began to book their holidays at the last minute, this process became outdated. Something quicker and more efficient was needed, and it was only a matter of time before the internet came to the rescue. Travel networking was born.
Social networking sites such as MySpace, which allow like-minded people to meet and chat over the web, have been big news for a couple of years. What’s new is that travellers have joined the party.
In the past year, about 25 internet-based clubs have been set up with the sole aim of introducing holidaymakers to each other and helping them meet people local to an area they want to visit.
The advantage is that instead of being confined to a four-line advertisement or an agency’s questionnaire, travellers have entire pages to themselves - a kind of cyber CV - on which to post photographs, list their favourite destinations, their likes and dislikes and describe the kind of companion they are looking for.
On some sites, such as MySpace’s travel arm (http://www.myspace.com/roaminggnome), launched in April, you can even post your home videos. People simply contact those who share their interests and weed out the rest.
If you are a single traveller, the chances are there’s something for you. High society? Asmallworld.net is an exclusive, invitation-only club whose members are rumoured to include Naomi Campbell, Paris Hilton and Quentin Tarantino. Pensioner? Retiredbackpackers.com hooks up adventurous oldies. If you’re looking for love, Travelhotties.com cuts to the chase, matching people looking for romance, while Welcometraveller.com connects people with local hosts.
There’s no need to worry about your street cred, either. “A few years ago there was a stigma attached to meeting someone on the web, but now it’s normal to be looking for a travel companion online,” says Tom Hall of Lonely Planet, whose Thorn Tree website was one of the first to connect travellers.
How much time you spend with your fellow traveller is up to you: you can search for someone to join you on a gap year, or for a local to meet for a drink and a dose of insider knowledge. You don’t even have to meet. Many people just exchange tips by email.
There are, or course, risks associated with meeting people over the web. Information is rarely checked, and the person in the flesh can vary wildly from a persona that has been crafted over a keyboard. But for the most part, communication is friendly and horror stories tend to be more of the “we didn’t get on” variety rather than anything sinister.
According to Christine Davies, a former producer of the BBC’s Holiday programme who set up a travel-networking site, the Thelma and Louise Club, after searching for a companion herself, the chances of getting on with someone you meet in cyberspace are about 60 per cent.
“It’s a spin of the roulette wheel, but when it works, it really works,” she says.
Her company boasts dozens of success stories, including that of Chris Baker, a recently retired pharmaceuticals manager from Perth, Scotland, who went on a two-and-a-half week holiday to South Africa earlier this year with a woman she met on the site.
“I love travelling and have reasonable funds to do it in luxury, so I was looking for someone in a similar position,’’ she said.
‘’Jill and I both had a burning desire to go to South Africa, so we did, and had a super time. We went diamond shopping, ate in lovely restaurants and went to wildlife reserves. We got on really well, with no cross words, and spent 90 per cent of the time together. We’d both be happy to travel together again.”
Travelchums.com, one of America’s biggest travel networking clubs, has had its share of successes too, and its first marriage. Its home page is crammed with endorsements from customers, including a pair who got on so well they wrote: “We are twins separated at birth.” So, is travel networking really a land of limitless potential? What would happen if a thirtysomething like me tried to find a companion? Armed with my dream holiday itinerary, I log on to find out.
I choose Davies’s Thelma and Louise Club, set up for women looking for companionship. Named after the 1991 film starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, it’s aimed at adventurous women of all ages, although most members are between 40 and 65. Britons make up the majority, but Americans, Europeans and Asians are there too.
As well as connecting single travellers, the club, which is free to join, organises regular group holidays, from trekking in Nepal and cruises round the Caribbean to shopping excursions and city breaks. Road trips are on the itinerary, but the Grand Canyon, scene of Thelma and Louise’s famous cliff exit, is not. “It would be tempting fate,” says Christine.
I plug my details into the four-page questionnaire and upload my photograph. Application approved and profile page set up, I am free to start searching. They are a mixed bunch: intrepid backpackers seeking like-minded companions, young career women, housewives with busy husbands, and young-at-heart pensioners. Scrolling through them is like browsing through a mail-order catalogue, only instead of buying some CDs I’m shopping for a travel buddy.
To refine my search - the club has 4,000 members - I use the automatic matching service, which links people with similar requirements. It throws up 24 potential travel companions. I decide to poke six of them - not a literal poke, of course, but a virtual one, the cyber equivalent of a friendly hello. Of the three who reply, one can make the same dates as me.
Her login name is Flying Solo. She looks nice. From her profile page, I learn that she is a university educated, 31-year-old living in north London, a social drinker and non-smoker. She lists her hobbies as sightseeing, clubbing, food and outdoor sports.
New to the UK, she has written in her “further information” box: “Looking to meet interesting, fun, adventurous types.” Ditto.
After exchanging a few emails, Flying Solo and I agree to meet in IRL - cyber speak for “in real life”. It’s awkward at first, and feels peculiarly seedy. Why am I meeting a strange woman in a Soho bar on a Friday night?
But I soon get over it. She is a high-profile entrepreneur, articulate, cultured and well-travelled. We talk about our holiday successes and disasters, our likes and dislikes. She has a self-confident air and our discussions are frank and open. “I think we are reading from the same page,” she tells me at the end of the evening, and we agree to give travelling together a go.
Back home, a Google search reveals she was recently ranked one of the world’s most powerful young businesswomen.
A few days later, our trip is booked: four days in Marrakesh, shopping the souks, gawping at riads and being pampered in hammans - Moroccan steam baths - with one night in a kasbah in the High Atlas Mountains. To save on single supplements, we choose to share a twin room and agree to split bills down the middle.
When we meet again at Heathrow airport, the sense of camaraderie we originally felt is still there and conversation flows easily. It’s a promising start.
There’s something thrilling about travelling with a virtual stranger. With friends or family you always know what you’re in for, but with a stranger you have no idea what will happen next.
Our hotel is an exquisitely restored riad in the Medina: all intricately carved woodwork, cool marble and orange trees.
The benefits of being with Flying Solo pay off immediately. Her haggling skills in the souks, honed by years living in India, are ruthless and she bags us countless bargains. She has an ability to sniff out a tasty lamb tagine, which borders on genius and encourages me to be more adventurous with local delicacies, although I stop short of boiled sheep’s head.
Being together in an Arab country such as Morocco allows us more freedom than we would have by ourselves. We wander around Marrakesh late at night, watching snake charmers and fortune tellers, eat in beautiful courtyard restaurants and mingle with the Marrakshi elite in bars and clubs.
I’m painting an idyllic picture, but it’s not all mint tea and bougainvillea. After just two days, some of my companion’s habits start to niggle at me.
On such a short trip it hardly matters, but if our holiday were longer they would be irritating. She warned me that she was a late riser, but she is rarely up before 11am, meaning I either have to wait for her or go on ahead by myself. She’s a poor timekeeper too, rarely apologises when she’s late, and leaves all the organising to me.
Worse, she has virtually stopped talking. I’m hardly a chatterbox, but entire mornings go by when she says nothing. We shop the souks in silence. We drive for two hours through the mountains - not a peep. We have a six-course meal, and still nothing. I try to engage her in conversation, but she replies in half-sentences that don’t invite further comment.
When I confront her, she seems genuinely surprised, and assures me she feels no animosity towards me. “I’m just tired,” she explains, but things don’t improve.
Instead of reading from the same page, I now feel as if we are in completely different libraries. I would be better off alone.
By the final day, I have given up. I spend the afternoon by myself in the souks buying last-minute presents, and she stays at the hotel. We meet only to catch our flight home.
Despite the disappointing outcome of my first internet-meets-reality experience, I am addicted to travel networking. I join the party at my desk each evening in my dressing gown and slippers and when “new messages” flash in my inbox, my mind spins with the promise of finding the perfect travel buddy.
So, my advice for anyone wanting to give it a try? Remember that, if good company can make the journey seem shorter, bad company can make it seem like a lifetime.
Read between the lines, take time to find the right person, and stay clear of anyone who eats sheep’s brains for breakfast.
# Suzy Bennett travelled to Marrakesh with the Best of Morocco (0845 0264588, http://www.bestofmorocco.co.uk). A four-night break, including flights, transfers, two days’ car hire and half-board accommodation at the Villa des Orangers, Kasbah du Toubkal and the Dar Zemora, costs from £770 per person during June and July.
Rules of the web
# 1 Get to know your potential companion by email before disclosing your telephone number.
# 2 If a site verifies users’ details, check that your potential buddy is registered.
# Meet your companion as many times as possible before travelling with him or her.
# Ask about shortcomings and be upfront about your own.
# Ensure you are both on a similar budget, but avoid discussing personal finances in detail.
# Give family or friends your buddy’s contact details.
Fellow travellers just a click away
http://www.flight-club.org
With free membership, this site links people who are on the same flight or in the same airport to relieve the boredom of long-distance flights.
http://www.someone2travelwith.com
A unisex version of the Thelma and Louise Club, this site offers single travellers the chance to scout out buddies. The fee is £30 for 11 matches. Most members have had their names and addresses verified, so it is relatively safe. Companions2travel.co.uk is similar.
http://www.asmallworld.net
“Anyone have a private jet I can borrow for a weekend to Capri?” These are the kind of requests posted on this ultra-exclusive website. Those who manage to get behind the virtual red rope share information about restaurants, clubs and hotels.
http://www.welcometraveller.com
Welcome Traveller is a free hospitality service that links travellers with local people in 30 countries. Members are grouped by very specific interests. Accommodation with a local host costs from £5 a night.
http://www.singleagain.co.uk
Looking for love as well as companionship? Try the traveller section of this British-based dating website. Annual membership costs £25. Travelhotties.com and speedbreaks.com are similar.
http://www.thelmandlouise.com
The website through which Suzy Bennett found her travelling companion.
If you’d like a subtle way to meet and get to know other singles over an extended period of time while traveling to interesting places AND affordably, check out Contiki. Read this article by Sheila Flynn which describes the experience of a Contiki tour. While not specifically billed as a singles’ tour (those in relationships can also sign up and travel), singles can identify themselves as available for dates with a red or green light designation. Romances can bloom while all are traveling in the company of like-minded others (well, travel-lovers, anyway). And I would think that the arrangement would be both safe for otherwise solo travelers, and potentially more fun with soon-to-be friends.
The tour options are world-wide, and better-known in Europe. But how about expanding to older age groups? Lots of us are over 35, ya know.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
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