This week’s episodes were so overloaded with cuteness I was squeeing all the way through. Luckily each episode is really less than 30 minutes long, but that just meant I hated waiting until the next day, or in the case of Friday episodes, until the next week. How does such a small girl end up overturning the lives of all the guys she gets in close contact with, and she doesn’t even know yet that she’s a princess? Once she finds that throne, they don’t stand a chance, I tell you.
Ashi Behati waits up for Jao to come home, to tell him she’s spoken to the king about his appointment. She feels sure His Majesty agrees with her that Jao is overqualified for his job. But Jao takes more after his dad when it comes to responsibility, and he gets angry with her.
That night, Jao finds it hard to sleep. He’s grouchy, thinking of the king’s orders and of Mikay. The next morning, he keeps his word, knocking on the door of her hotel room bright and early to tell her to hurry up.
Meanwhile, back in the Philippines, Dad Dinoy was referred by an acquaintance to someone who needed a van driven from Pampanga to Manila. Bianca asks to come along on this trip… and why do I feel that this isn’t going to turn out well?
Mikay and Jao are out on the tour the king tasked Jao with conducting. Mikay asks him to take more photos of her, ignoring his grumpiness. She apologizes for the previous day, and insists on shaking hands, saying she’s grateful to have him as her personal assistant. Jao: I am not your personal assistant!
When she sees the airport from a mountain lookout, she can’t help but feel a bit sad, however. She tells Jao she misses her family, leading him to stare at her again.
And then he takes her to… go rafting on a river? She balks, protesting that she’s afraid to drown, while he insists on putting the protective gear on her, assuring her that she’s perfectly safe. She makes him promise that he’ll go with her, but to her consternation she sees him waving cheerily at her from shore. When she gets back to dry land, she’s soaked and miserable, and he meets her, looking all cool and urbane and princely, to ask how it was. She yells that it was fun, a great experience, and it was a pity he couldn’t come along– at first you think she’s happy, but the tone of the last makes it clear that she’s really angry. She flips her wet hair in his face for good measure before stalking off. Pwaha. I can’t say you didn’t deserve it, Jao.
LOL, she really is the perfect foil to his standoffish dignity… much like Gino was several years back. She insists on going to a souvenir shop and makes him wait, fuming, while she looks around. He’s all “hurry up” and she purposely dawdles to make him mad. Finally she sees a carved mask that looks kind of scary, and he says she should buy it (you could almost hear him huffing “Tourists!”). She grits out that he should be the one to buy it because it looks like him, and even puts it on front of his face, only he pulls it aside and leans in close. Gulp. She mutters that he’s cute (pogi) but rude (masama ang ugali), and he chides her for talking to herself again.. and what’s “pogi” mean? She passes it off as a joke.
Mikay criticizes Jao for putting down his own country’s native products– why isn’t he proud of them? In response, he decides to take her to a monastery at the top of a mountain (the Hanging Monastery where Ariya’s own naming ceremony was conducted). Only they have to walk all the way there. She finally complains that her legs hurt and they should stop and rest, but he’s all “oh no, you wanted to see the best of Yangdon, didn’t you?” Um, I wouldn’t tease her anymore if I were you, Jao… Finally she just stops and sits down by the side of the road… and then slumps over. He tells her to get up at first, but then gets alarmed when she doesn’t respond…
…and so he ends up piggybacking her the rest of the way. As he walks, she opens her eyes and stares down at the back of his head questioningly, and then she smiles and pretends to be asleep again.
He’s huffing and puffing by the time they get to the monastery, and puts her down on a wide bench, leaning against a pillar. She’s still got her eyes closed, so he tries to wake her up, but finds himself staring at her face… her nose… her lips…
Meanwhile, Dad and Bianca are on their way to Pangasinan, only Dad can’t help but talk about Mikay– her favorite music to listen to while on a journey, her favorite stopover for lunch, her favorite food. Which is sisig. Bianca points out that Dad just recovered from sickness, and makes him order something else a little less cholesterol-laden. She also gets fed up with all the mention of Mikay, saying that she shouldn’t have come along, since it’s clear he’d have preferred Mikay to be there.
Jao finally gets concerned, especially since they’re on top of a mountain far from a hospital. Mikay lets him panic for a while before opening her eyes and laughing at him– she’s perfectly all right. She was just getting back at him for the fright he caused her earlier. He’s indignant, but she just tells him airily that she’s a Filipino– start something, and she’ll finish it.
They explore the monastery, with Mikay taking more photos for Dad. A monk tells her that he can see in her face the joy in her heart, and that she will return to this place. Jao translates it as something else, however, leaving her confused.
Jao keeps nagging Mikay to hurry up, they have to go back down the mountain before it gets dark. Mikay finally tells him not to be too hard on himself. He’s always busy, always in a hurry, never taking time to stop and smell the flowers. He says he has more important things to do– others can relax, but not him. They get into a debate about luck vs. hard work– Jao doesn’t believe in luck and can’t afford to rely on it, while she believes that even if she works hard, there are things she can’t control and thus luck has to factor into the equation. Fortunately, she informs him, she was born lucky.
While Jao nags her, Mikay keeps saying “just one more picture!” She’s so engrossed in looking at her camera viewer that she doesn’t notice a stand holding a bowl, and walks right into it. It falls and shatters, and while she stares, horrified, Jao turns to see… and then begins to laugh. Just then a group of monks walk round the corner, and she grabs Jao and runs.
When they get outside, and have run quite a distance, Jao tells Mikay what she broke– the “Bowl of Luck.” It means she’ll have seven years of bad luck! She bursts into tears. He finds this reaction too much, because he doesn’t believe in luck– people make their own luck, he tells Mikay. She retorts that it’s the only thing she has, and ends up telling her about being adopted because her dad considers her to be “lucky.” When she storms off, he follows, trying to stop her, but it’s quite dark by then and she ends up losing hold of her camera, which falls over the side of the mountain. He has to hold her back from pitching over the mountainside to look for it.
Jao tells her that she should leave the camera, it’s only trash. She yells at him that it’s not trash– it’s important to her, it has all those photos, doesn’t he know who those are for? The struggle and argument escalates until Jao ends up pulling rank on her– he’s a prince and will be king someday, and he commands her to go. She yells back at him that if he’s going to be king someday, she feels sorry for Yangdon because he doesn’t deserve to be king. Furthermore, since she’s not Yangdonese, she’s not obligated to obey him, and she’s glad she isn’t.
This gives him pause, and he tries another tack, offering to give her books about Yangdon, with photos in them far better than the ones she took. Poor boy’s missing the point. “It’s not the same,” Mikay sobs. The photos were for her parents, who couldn’t come with her. The camera was very important to her dad, and now she’s lost it.
They make it down the mountain without the camera, and find their driver trying to fix the car, meaning there will be quite a delay before they can leave anyway. The two end up napping in the car, and Jao finds out that Mikay snores, but he’s not annoyed at all. He even smiles.
Back in the Philippines, Dad and Bianca finally meet their passengers, all young women. One of them is being seen off by her own dad, who asks Dad to take care of his 16-year-old daughter. Dad promises, saying that she’s justthesame
I am still liking the episodes so far and is feeling kind of different from any of the other teleseryes I’ve watched. Jao – Mikay and Gino – Mikay’s meetings had me all smiles! I am so easy. Please upload photos to make the recaps more exciting.