A welcome addition to the TV fold

My dream had always been to travel to far and distant places. Unfortunately, I can’t say that I’ve realized that dream to the fullest due to three reasons:

1) Work. I have a weekly program that airs live every Saturday and you know how it is in show business – no work, no pay (sayang the talent fee).

2) Budget constraints. It’s no joke traveling these days because airline tickets have become so expensive and you really have to save up for every trip.

3) Global terrorism. No, it’s not really the fear of getting hijacked and heaven knows what those terrorists will do to you after that that I’m trying to avoid because I believe that when it’s your time, then it’s your time. What I detest is the hassle and inconvenience terrorism has brought upon travelers: At the airport (especially in the US where you wear layers of clothing), you have to perform a striptease act to people who are not even interested in your body, but in what you may have concealed inside you.

Since I don’t get to travel much anymore, I do the next best thing: Watch travel shows – like Susan Calo-Medina’s Travel Time and those other travel programs on cable. (I know this sounds pathetic, but what can I do?)

On QTV 11, there is a new travel show hosted by Drew Arellano. Aired every Wednesday at 10 p.m., it is called Balikbayan. (Balikbayan is actually a term coined during the martial law years referring to a government program aimed at luring overseas Filipinos to come home and visit and spend here their precious dollars.)

The concept of Balikbayan is to bring back to his or her native province the week’s celebrity guest, who in turn will give Drew Arellano a guided tour of the place. This is really such a great idea and you can bet your overpriced plane tickets that with all those artista searches we have today, they’ll have more than enough TV and movie stars to cover the archipelago’s 7,107 islands – low tide.

One interesting Balikbayan feature I caught was the one with Tiya Pusit in it. In this episode, the Bahay Mo Ba ’To mainstay (isn’t she so funny there?) was brought back to her hometown in Pangasinan.

First stop was the Shrine of the Our Lady of Manaoag and here the viewers are brought to the church museum bearing the Blessed Mother’s vestments and jewels. This is a rare treat for viewers – especially for this writer who was once a Manaoag devotee, but had never been to that Pangasinan town. While I’m glad the show featured those priceless collections, I am still somewhat appalled by the idea that so much had been spent on expensive fabric, gold and silver threads and precious stones – when the money blown on these material objects could have been used to feed a lot of hungry people, perhaps in that very town itself.

Although I respect and venerate religious icons like any other Catholic, I don’t like the idea of dressing up and putting jewelry on statues because I don’t think the Blessed Mother (or any other saint) would want to be treated like a Barbie doll. (I hope I am not being blasphemous.)

With that said, let me go on to the rest of that Pangasinan episode with Tiya Pusit – the most interesting of which was the food.

What I truly enjoyed about this food trip was the fact that Tiya Pusit did not just bluff her way through the segment. She really knows how to cook and the best part of all: She knows how to go to the market – haggle and choose the freshest ingredients (this I believe is a skill).

This Balikbayan episode also showed us the house where Tiya Pusit used to live (it looks like a spacious and comfortable home) and introduced us to her relatives, including an elderly aunt, who initially looked strict and cantankerous, but turned out to be caring and loving after all.

In another Balikbayan show, I also caught Christian Esteban giving Drew Arellano a tour of Baguio, where the StarStruck avenger resided after coming from the US a few years ago. In this episode, Christian did not even pretend that he knew the City of Pines inside out – and I admire the show for that... for not trying to fool the viewers. Actually, it even turned out to be so refreshing to watch Christian explore for the first time new Baguio discoveries along with the TV audience. The honesty is much appreciated.

There are really a lot of other aspects of the show that would be appreciated by the viewers. For one, it has a fresh appeal because the script is light and makes an effort to make this lesson on geography painless for young audiences. Then, it has humor – which you can’t say of most other travel programs (except for one travel show on cable) where even the voice-over is cold and the host (not Susan Calo-Medina) as frosty as an immigration officer going over your passport.

In the case of the host, while I’d like my travel show host to be more authoritative (which comes with age), Drew Arellano makes up for this with his fun, relaxed and easygoing ways (he’s backed up by a good script anyway). The fact that he can ham it up – and get away with it – makes him an ideal host of a program that obviously tries to target the young viewers (which is a large market).

Balikbayan is really a welcome addition to the TV fold – especially now that traveling (no thanks again to terrorism) is no longer as pleasurable and as fun as it was before the days of Osama Bin Laden.