More Than a Vacation: Why Italy Felt Like Coming Home to Mikey Bustos

Aug 2

7 min read

Words by Mye Mulingtapang

Photos courtesy of Mikey Bustos

Mikey Bustos enjoying the seaside atmosphere of the Amalfi Coast with the Mediterranean Sea in the background.

Some travelers spend years dreaming about Italy because of films, postcards, or social media feeds filled with sun-drenched coastlines and Renaissance landmarks. For Filipino YouTuber and content creator Mikey Bustos, the journey began decades earlier in an Italian neighborhood thousands of kilometers away.

Before Rome, Milan, or the Amalfi Coast ever entered his passport, Italy had already entered his life.

This summer, despite a record-breaking European heatwave, Bustos continued exploring the cities, countryside, and cultures of Italy, Switzerland, and Austria, documenting the journey for millions of followers. The soaring temperatures never diminished his enthusiasm. Instead, each destination became another chapter in a story that had quietly begun during his childhood in Toronto.

Best known worldwide for his Filipino comedy sketches, viral videos, and the hugely successful AntsCanada channel, Bustos has spent years entertaining audiences with humor and wildlife education. Behind the energetic online personality, however, is someone deeply fascinated by culture, language, history, and the ways travel reshapes our understanding of ourselves. For him, Italy was never simply another destination to tick off a bucket list. It already felt like home.

A Second Motherland

"I grew up in a predominantly Italian neighbourhood in Toronto, Canada in the '90s, so almost all my friends growing up were Italian," Bustos recalls.

His connection to Italy wasn't built through guidebooks or viral travel videos. It came through childhood friendships, neighborhood traditions, and family tables. His elementary school even offered Italian language classes, giving him an early introduction to the country's language and culture.

Outside the classroom, the lessons continued.

"I also ate a lot of Italian food, attending my friends' birthday parties, visiting my friends' houses, and receiving home-cooked Italian meals from our neighbours, the Patrizis."

Long before he stood beneath the Duomo di Milano or wandered through Rome's ancient streets, Italy had already become part of his identity.

"Italy was in a way like a second Motherland. Visiting Italy felt like coming home."

Familiar Values Across Continents

Growing up around Italian families, Bustos discovered striking similarities between Italian and Filipino culture.

"As a Filipino, I already shared the same values of being deeply religious, namely Roman Catholic, family-oriented with huge family parties, and a love for food."

It was the rhythms of everyday Italian life that left the deepest impression. He remembers driveways transformed into makeshift kitchens every tomato season, with hundreds of tomatoes laid out for homemade sauce. Parents crafted their own wines, cantinas overflowed with homemade sausages and preserved fruits, and gardens flourished with vegetables and fruit trees.

"The Italians always had the best manicured and most beautiful gardens in the neighbourhood."

He admired something even less tangible. Every evening, neighbors gathered outdoors, older men played bocce in the park, women volunteered at church, and people walked—not because they had to, but because it was simply part of daily life.

"A deep sense of community was strong with the Italians, and I loved that."

Those childhood observations eventually shaped his own life in the Philippines. Today, Bustos lives on a farm, grows much of his own food, carefully maintains his gardens, preserves harvests, exercises daily, and makes time to speak with neighbors whenever he can.

Even the way he speaks still carries traces of those early influences.

"I will catch very Italian mannerisms and intonations slipping through. I use my hands a lot when I'm passionately trying to say something—or arguing with my partner," he laughs.

Coming Home for the First Time

For many travelers, arriving in Italy fulfills a lifelong dream. For Bustos, it felt more like a reunion.

"Italy was in a way like a second Motherland. Visiting Italy felt like coming home."

One aspect of modern Italy surprised him.

"I was amazed by how multicultural Italy was."

Rather than finding a country frozen in history, he encountered a vibrant society where people from around the world—including thousands of Filipinos—had built lives of their own.

"So many people of different races called Italy home, including a tonne of Filipinos, and it was so cool to see them speaking Italian."

As someone passionate about biology, he found himself captivated by something many visitors might overlook.

"I was totally geeking out at the Italian wildlife and plants—species I had never before seen."

While many tourists admired monuments, Bustos was equally fascinated by birds, insects, native plants, and ecosystems.

Reading History Through Food

Bustos believes food tells stories far beyond taste.

"I was amazed by how multicultural Italy was."

"For me, cuisine is not only a way to immerse oneself in the experience of a country, but is also a great way to understand a country's history."

One meal in Milan became a history lesson. Eating Risotto alla Milanese, he learned how Arab influence during the Middle Ages introduced ingredients such as rice and saffron into northern Italy. Later, tomatoes, peppers, and corn arrived through the Columbian Exchange.

Rather than treating meals as tourist experiences, Bustos sees every plate as evidence of centuries of migration, trade, conquest, and cultural exchange. Food, in his view, becomes edible history.

Rediscovering a Forgotten Language

One of the trip’s greatest surprises was not something Bustos brought home but something he recovered along the way.

Around the fifth day of his visit, the Italian he had learned as a child began returning. More than 30 years had passed since he had spoken it regularly, yet familiar words and phrases gradually resurfaced.

That shift changed the way locals responded to him. Once he began speaking Italian, he noticed that people no longer treated him solely as a tourist. Instead, they sometimes assumed he was an immigrant living in the country.

The experience revived his attachment to the language and convinced him to study it seriously again. Although he also speaks French, Italian remains his favorite Romance language because of what he describes as its heartfelt, sensual sound.

The trip ended with a new commitment: Italian would become his fourth language.

"This trip made me decide to study Italian and get good at it. It's my favourite of the Romance languages. Nothing beats the heartfelt, sensual sound of Italian."

Beyond the Viral Videos

Online, Bustos appears energetic, expressive, and constantly ready to entertain. In private, he describes himself as quiet and deeply reflective.

His various online personas are characters he has created and carefully developed over time. Because audiences associate him with exaggerated comedy and high energy, he once worried that people meeting him in person might find him boring.

In reality, much of his life unfolds internally. Most of his dialogue, he says, happens inside his head. His lifestyle vlogs reveal more of his natural personality, including moments when he becomes soft-spoken, philosophical, and introspective

Europe, particularly Italy, gave that quieter side room to surface.

The journey became a deep dive into the experiences of first-generation children raised by immigrant parents in Canada. Traveling through Italy helped Bustos understand where the parents of his childhood friends had come from and how their traditions had survived migration.

The country also unlocked memories he did not realize he still carried. Familiar gestures, meals, streets, and rhythms of life transported him back to a childhood shaped by Italian households thousands of kilometers away.

Italy did not simply remind him of the past. It helped him understand it.

What Makes a Home?

Travel has complicated Bustos’ understanding of belonging.

The more countries he visits, the less convinced he becomes that home is determined by ancestry or by sharing the same racial background as the people around us. Across Italy, he met Filipinos who had adapted to the local culture, learned the language, and clearly considered the country their home.

To Bustos, home is where a person feels in place—where culture, community, and daily life fit together naturally, like the pieces of a puzzle.

"The more I travel, the more I realize that home isn't where you share the most racial DNA with those around you."

Travel also strengthened his admiration for fellow Filipinos.

"Traveling around the world has shown me time and time again how incredible Filipinos are at adapting and integrating to new cultures."

He points to family members now living in Austria, effortlessly speaking Austrian German as their primary language. For Bustos, this adaptability is one of the Philippines' quiet strengths—an ability to preserve one's roots while embracing new cultures.

Seeing Filipinos Through New Eyes

Travel has also strengthened Bustos’ admiration for the adaptability of Filipinos.

Across the world, he has watched them learn new languages, integrate into unfamiliar societies, and gradually become part of the places where they have settled.

In Vienna, he met relatives whose primary language had become Austrian German—an example of how completely a Filipino family can enter another culture while carrying its own identity forward.

That adaptability does not necessarily erase their Filipino roots. Instead, it expands what being Filipino can mean.

The diaspora is not a story of people suspended between two homes. It is also a story of people capable of creating home wherever life takes them.

Looking Toward the Future

Eight days in Italy were never going to be enough.

Bustos and his partner have already discussed the possibility of buying property somewhere in Europe, although they have not yet decided where. They are considering returning for a longer trip devoted entirely to Italy, allowing them to experience the country beyond a fast-moving itinerary.

Sardinia holds particular appeal. As one of the world’s recognized Blue Zones, the island is known for its unusually high concentration of centenarians.

For Bustos, a longtime biohacker fascinated by health, fitness, and longevity, Sardinia presents both a mystery and an invitation.

He imagines eventually creating a homestead in the Italian countryside or somewhere along the Amalfi Coast—a life shaped by land, food, movement, and community, much like the Italian households that influenced him as a child.

Taking Italy Home

When asked what he will carry with him after the journey, Bustos does not isolate a single landmark, meal, or city. What remains is the Italian experience as a whole: the familiarity, the memories it awakened, and the realization

that a culture can shape a person long before they visit the country from which it came.

The most tangible part of Italy he is bringing home is its language.

Relearning Italian is more than a practical goal or a souvenir from the trip. It is a way of reconnecting with the childhood that first made the country feel meaningful.

For Mikey Bustos, Italy was not simply one destination in a European summer that also took him through Switzerland and Austria, even as intense heat tested travelers across the continent. It became a meeting point between past and present, between the person audiences know and the quieter man behind the screen.

Some places change us because they are entirely new. Others matter because, upon arrival, we realize they have been part of us all along.