Hello and welcome to Ang Around The Globe, a blog about everything travel related and my ongoing attempt to fund my love for seeing the world.

My name is Angelique Vestil. This blog actually started because of a trip. At 19, I backpacked Europe for the first time with my childhood best friend, and somewhere between hostels and missed trains, I knew I needed a place to write it all down. I started this blog in 2017, mostly as a way to figure out my life. Schooling, traveling, all of it. I still don’t have it all figured out, but I’ve got a lot more of it sorted than I did then, and I like having this place to look back on and see how far things have come.

I’ve always loved traveling, but for a long time I thought of it as something you did after you retired. Work for decades, save up, then finally see the world at 65. A lot of people plan their whole life around that. Here’s the thing though: traveling takes mobility, and mobility isn’t guaranteed forever. We only get one life to live it in, and for me, that never meant working it all away first and traveling later.

I’m not saying quit your job tomorrow (or, well, maybe I am). But traveling while you’re young and able to move is the best time to do it. That belief is basically the whole reason I live the way I do now.

Growing up, I traveled around North America through sports and with my family. We didn’t have much money. My parents packed all of us into a beat-up nine-seater Yukon XL and drove across the country, crashing at family and friends’ places along the way. It wasn’t glamorous, but my parents always found a way to make travel happen, and they made sure we understood why it mattered.

My family is first-generation Filipino, so I grew up loving a culture outside the one I was raised in. That shaped a lot of how I see the world. It made me curious about people’s roots, about where they came from, and it planted this need in me to go see it for myself.

I had a Paris-themed bedroom as a kid, even though I hadn’t been to Europe yet. I dreamed about the countries I wanted to see and the food I wanted to try. That dream became real at 19, when I finally backpacked Europe with my best friend from childhood. That trip changed everything, and it’s the reason this blog exists.

The following spring, at 20, I went back to Europe to study abroad, and I haven’t really stopped since. I’ve stayed in hostels that cost less than a coffee and hotels that felt like a splurge, and I wanted a place to write about both. Traveling taught me more about what I actually wanted out of life than four years of school did. Mainly, that a desk job was never going to give me the freedom to keep doing this.

I graduated from Marquette University in May 2019 with a double major in Information Systems and Marketing, booked a one-way flight to Asia, and never used the return.

Fast forward: I’ve been living abroad ever since! I’m currently living in Chiang Mai, Thailand since 2019, with my British partner, Pete, and our cat, Bandit and frequently travel to other countries across SE Asia & Europe. Somewhere along the way, traveling turned into something along side building my business and a career. I now run a creative design agency where I work with health and wellness practitioners on their branding and websites and make affiliate & partnership income from this blog.

I don’t have everything figured out, but I’m here to take you along on the journey! Feel free to follow along either here or on Instagram, where I talk about building a business, experimenting with AI, traveling the world, and so much more!

Love always,

Angelique Vestil – Ang Around The Globe