Erick Lirios
Credit the people who put up Ms. Saigon for this idea. Honestly, the piece has nothing to do with Saigon itself and is actually about a different but equally beautiful South East Asian country – Malaysia.
I found myself getting invited to do some articles on the 2008 Langkawi Wilderness Challenge by a good friend, Rovilson Fernandez. You may know him as the partner of Marc Nelson in the Amazing Race Asia 2. I know him as the executive editor of Maxim where I both write (sometimes) and shoot. Nope, not the babes. The food and the fitness expert section mostly.
So, how does Saigon fit into the equation? Not the city in Vietnam really but more the play that launched Lea Salonga’s international career along with people like Isay Alvarez, Monique Wilson, Pinky Amador, and so many others with them and after.
One of the most compelling and moving songs in the play, well, at least for me, is "Movie in My Mind." For those of you who aren’t familiar with the song, it goes on to describe the dream that some of the Vietnamese characters have regarding their lives. This is so familiar to Filipinos – how, upon hooking up with a G.I., one ends up in the States living the American dream. Of course, one of the prostitutes in the story played by Isay Alvarez (who sang most of the song) knows how this is but a dream and how unlikely it is to happen in her own life but yet, she still dreams it. And, in one part, she sings, "The movie plays and plays."
The movie in Langkawi
Cut to Langkawi. It’s beautiful here! And, fortunately for me, the movies that I do play in my mind are a good load of beautiful scenery and people and I don’t have to wish for somebody to share my life because I’ve already been blessed with a beautiful wife and equally beautiful and wonderful children.
Langkawi is a place very much like some places in the Philippines. One gets to think about Subic in certain ways especially since people obey traffic rules and the place is quite clean. I didn’t see people cleaning the streets really. It seems like people know how to take care of their own rubbish and care enough to throw trash in the trash bins. Sigh.
One very amusing thing here is the fact that I saw so many birds just flying around – something I wasn’t really used to in most of Manila’s areas. The birds don’t get shot at here and I was able to get really close to a lot of them. I haven’t been able to get a photo of an eagle at flight yet, but, stay tuned. That’s my target for the next few days.
I’ll make this short for now to make room for photos. Enjoy!
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