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  • Prince Jefri’s Xanadu: A Palace of Your Own at Brunei’s Empire Hotel

    The Empire, Brunei

    “In Xanadu, did Kublai Khan

    A stately pleasure-dome decree:

    Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

    Through caverns measureless to man

    Down to a sunless sea

    So twice five miles of fertile ground

    With walls and towers girdled round:

    And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

    Where blossomed many an incensed-bearing tree;

    And here were forests ancient as the hills,

    Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”

    When Samuel Taylor Coleridge envisioned Kublai Khan’s palace in Xanadu he imagined a place of over-the-top luxury, of unimaginable wealth. We’ll probably never know if Prince Jefri, the Sultan of Brunei’s wayward younger brother, had this poem in mind when he dreamt up, then built the Empire Hotel and Country Club through the Amadeo Development Corporation. But he could have.

    Or maybe he was thinking of that Kevin Costner hit film, “Field of Dreams,” where Mr. Costner’s Iowa farmer character heard voices that said, “Build it and they will come.” In the film, ghosts from baseball’s past such as Shoeless Joe Jackson do come – to play baseball on the field the obsessed hero built against all odds.

    In Prince Jefri’s case, he has built his Xanadu but almost no one has come, giving the hotel a ghostly silence. Though maybe they should, as the Empire Hotel is a place of almost unparalleled splendor on the sunny north coast of Borneo. Imagine a hotel that combines the immensity of the huge Hawaiian resorts with the Arabic touches of the Omani and Dubai beach hotels with the luxury of posh London establishments with the wacky fantasy touches – and emptiness – of Hearst Castle.

    The domed lobby of Brunei’s Empire Hotel is supported by six-story-high Italian marble pillars crowned by Corinthian flourishes and trimmed with gold leaf. And that’s not gold-colored paint: that’s real gold. The gold leaf is used generously around the edges of the lobby’s walls as well as the ceilings, giving the whole massive open space a glittering look when the sun hits. In the lobby are generous displays of Baccarat crystal, including a crystal camel with a solid gold saddle. Not to mention the enormous crystal chandelier that hangs over the front entrance.

    The marble floors are inlaid with bright decorations of tropical flora. And there’s a huge mural of one of the sultan’s ancestors welcoming British ships of war at an earlier palace that was far less imposing than the hotel. Just so the vastness of the lobby – and not the empty retail area nearby – doesn’t overcome you, there are a couple of Fazioli player pianos endlessly tinkling out lonely tunes.

    The walk to the rooms is no less imposing, through bouncy thick-carpeted hallways surrounded by a forest of Italian marble pillars. The décor inside the rooms is lavish, with furniture and linen by Meritalia and prints of ancient maps of Borneo in gilded frames. The china and silverware in the guestrooms is all Asprey – as they are throughout the hotel. The bathroom is the size of a typical Hong Kong apartment, with toiletries from Molton Brown. (If you take a suite or villa you get Bulgari.) The plushness of the room might remind you of somewhere in Europe except when you open the drapes to see a huge balcony and further off the crashing waves of the South China Sea.

    To relax you have choices fit for, well, a prince – or a sultan. To get to the clubhouse you ride a golf cart that the staff called a “buggy” past an on-site waterfall and a lake. There’s an eight-lane bowling alley with stylish, aqua-colored furniture – no hard plastic chairs like nearly every bowling alley on earth. My family and I were the only ones playing with a staff of four to cater to our every need. At the club there are two badminton courts. And two squash courts. And a two-story pool and snooker hall. But one thing is missing: players.

    In case racket and stick sports aren’t your game, there’s a golf course and clubhouse with day and night golfing. And tennis. And a Jacuzzi and sauna. And row after row of unused polished wooden lockers in the men’s room, each one containing a fresh, folded terrycloth bathrobe, towel, razor, comb and toothbrush. And even though it is in the tropics, there is a heated indoor swimming pool with lanes on the bottom of the pool covered in gold tiles. Again, that’s real gold. When I used the pool and sauna I was the only one doing so. I never saw anyone using the rest of the facilities either. Friendly staff just hung around, waiting for someone, anyone, to show up and give them something to do.

    There are also the outdoor pools, four of them. The freeform one is the size of a lake with flooring covered in sand to give it that beach feel. There is also a school of stone sculpture dolphins swimming up a grassy hill towards the sea on the other side. My children loved those. They also loved the freeform pool – especially since we were usually the only ones using it.

    Stone dolphins at The Empire, Brunei

    At the Arabic-Mediterranean restaurant called “Falafel,” you can admire the world’s only titanium cutlery and dinnerware collection. The prince had it especially designed in the U.S. and produced in France at a cost of several million dollars. It’s the same metal that is used in fighter planes.

    After dinner, you can visit one of three cinemas on the hotel grounds. Again, the ghost town nature of the place has its advantages. Unlike other hotels, guests here are not limited to small-screen entertainment in private guestrooms because the empty theaters guarantee a big screen practically all to oneself.

    Nearby the hotel is Jerodong Park, another favorite project of the price. This is Disneyland and Coney Island wrapped into one, with everything from kiddy rides to roller coasters for the teenagers or the adults who don’t mind losing their dinner. (Strangely, the park doesn’t open until 5 pm, so your lunch will have been digested by then.) For a mere $3 my children could ride on all the rides they wanted – all night long until 2 am. But as with the hotel, the prince may have built but “they” didn’t come. As for lines, forget about those. My children were almost always the only ones on any of the rides, randomly selected. Whether it was the bumper cars, the merry-go-round or the flying swings, they were all empty. Same for the adult rides. It wasn’t exactly like being in a Twilight Zone episode, but at times the complete desertion of having one’s own private palace got close.

    Finally, not to be outdone, Prince Jefri’s Xanadu has a musical fountain. Near an imposing gate flanked by ancient cannons, there is an immense fountain with water sprouts that dance and sway to the music. Again, on the beautiful, starry night of our visit, my family and I were the only ones watching the spectacular light show. While it might have started off with the cheesy “Eye of the Tiger” it soon moved into hotter tunes. My favorites were those by Tina Turner. With the balmy breeze off the South China Sea and the sense of being in a kingdom – a real kingdom, not a fantastical Xanadu – where everything seemed to be done just for you, sometimes literally, the big, colorfully lit droplets hanging magically in mid-air suddenly made Brunei seem like a really cool place to be.

    Published in The Asian Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2002

  • Iconic Buildings Live Up to Hype as Billboards

    SINGAPORE: There was symmetry to the moment: I was standing on the balcony of Singapore’s colonial-era iconic building, the Supreme Court, while taking a photo of its 21st century one: the Marina Bay Sands. The meanings of the two buildings couldn’t be more different yet more appropriate for their respective eras. The Supreme Court stood for rule of law in an unruly part of the world in the 1930s. And the triple-towered Marina Bay Sands, designed by Moshe Safdie, with its colossal boat-shaped SkyPark, stands for fun in a country that recognizes the economic value of “the pursuit of happiness.” As “billboards” advertising their respective messages, they work. The Marina Bay Sands, for example, just brought in a record-breaking profit of $314 million for its corporate parent, Las Vegas Sands.

    Iconic buildings have been central to humanity since Stonehenge. Architecture has always been about context. This is what Moshe Safdie calls on his website, “Responding to the Essence of Place”. And also content, or “Shaping the Public Realm”, also from his website. Their purpose in ancient times was either to foster religion or generate fear and respect for the governing body. Whether it was the Parthenon on the Acropolis or the pyramids of Egypt, rulers created iconic buildings to secure their hold on the populace.

    But now it is different. Culture and business, today’s soft power drivers, are the reason these buildings are created. Government involvement is more backseat: from encouraging the development through zoning laws, approvals or tax and other incentives.

    It is perhaps Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao that started the latest wave of iconic buildings as billboards. Although Asia and the Middle East were already approving plans and laying foundations for their own monumental billboards before the Guggenheim was opened in 1997.

    The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, opened in 1998, signaled the emergence of Malaysia as more than a country of rubber and palm oil plantations. Architect Cesar Antonio Pelli said, “I tried to express what I thought were the essences of Malaysia, its richness in culture and extraordinary vision for the future.” And Taipei 101, from 2003 until this year the world’s tallest building, reminded people that Taiwan still mattered as a business hub and wasn’t overshadowed – yet— by China.

    Iconic buildings can create a buzz that translates to perceptual and economic benefits over time. When the Burj-al-Arab opened in 1999, it put Dubai on the map as the ultimate luxury destination. Like the Marina Bay Sands, it communicated fun in a part of the world that is usually more associated with oil and the occasional war. The term “seven star” hotel was invented to describe the hotel. Looking like a colossal chrysalis from which a butterfly is about to emerge it has attracted celebrity guests and incalculable positive PR.

    Dubai followed up this year with the can’t top this Burj-al-Khaifa. As Christopher Davidson, a University of Durham professor said, “The tower was conceived as a monument to Dubai’s place on the international stage.” The world’s tallest building by far it is a litany of superlatives: 828 meters high, 160 floors, world’s fastest elevators at 64 kilometers per hour, 12,000 workers and contractors involved in the building of it. When compared to the rest of the Dubai skyline it looks like it is nearly double the height of the next highest building. It is truly a Great Pyramid of Giza for our time. But its opening earlier this year was colored by the collapse of Dubai’s economy. Still, I believe that over time it will deliver on its promise to transform the city’s image. Scenes from Tom Cruise’s next “Mission Impossible” movie will feature the building, creating buzz for Dubai that it needs in its economic recovery stage.    

    Not that Qatar will allow its sister gulf state to grab all the attention easily. Doha, the capital of Qatar, now has its own iconic building: the Museum of Islamic Art, which opened in 2008. The I.M. Pei designed building showcases a stunning collection of Islamic Art to remind the international community of the richness — not just riches – of the Arab world. Like the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, it’s a transformative culturally-oriented building, making Doha a destination in its own right. Perched pyramid-like on the edge of Doha Bay, it is a visual anchor of the city. As the Qatar Museums Authority website says: “It will bring the world to Doha, but it will also connect Doha to the world.”

    And of course China is building a number of iconic buildings to flesh out its progressive 21st century image. I remember standing on the Oriental Pearl building in Shanghai, that 1990s Flash Gordon inspired image of the future with its spheres and pointy spire and looking down on the iconic buildings of the 1920s on the Bund with their colonial-era stolidness, projecting wealth and power with fluted columns and granite. And I looked up at the iconic building of the 21st   building, the Shanghai World Financial Center building, opened in 2008, which at one angle looks like a giant bottle opener overshadowing the nearby Jin Miao tower. Shanghai, like the New York it seeks to emulate, and Hong Kong, which it is overtaking, is a city of iconic buildings.

    When will this latest wave of building competition end? Not anytime soon. If you want to understand the power of iconic buildings to attract attention to a city trying to compete in this globalized economy, then think of the cities that don’t have them. Bangkok perhaps. Or Mumbai. Or Jakarta. Or Manila. You’ll discover that the negative clichés about these metropolises tend to define them. In a world where a positive image translates to economic advantage, iconic buildings give just that more of a winning edge. You only need to take another look at the Marina Bay Sands and its recent profits to see that the gamble to build it has paid off. As British archaeologist, Jacquetta Hawkes, said, “every generation gets the Stonehenge it deserves – and desires.”

    Published in The Straits Times, November 2, 2010

  • Jakarta’s Money Central

    A trip to Jakarta is usually a chore. Traffic can be so bad that you’ll spend more time commuting to a sight than you did at the sight itself. With a little digging, though, the city has some one-of-a-kind cultural gems.

    In Kota, also known as Old Batavia, are a number of museums in stolid Dutch colonial buildings better suited for northern European winters than the tropics. The Fatahillah, Shadow Puppet, and Ceramic museums all sit around a picaresque cobblestoned square where you can almost forget the jammed traffic in the streets around you. Two of the most engaging museums though are nearby and next to each other: The Bank of Indonesia and the Bank Mandiri museums.

    The Bank of Indonesia museum is the flashier of the two, with informative exhibits that underline its role as a pillar of a volatile ever-evolving society. After three years of meticulous restoration, it was opened July 2009.

    MUSEUM WITHIN THE DE JAVASCHE BANK BUILDING

    The museum sits within what was once the The De Javasche Bank. That bank, also known as the Bank of the East Indies, was founded in 1828 and moved into this building by Dutch architect Edward Cuypers, in 1909. As the colonial central bank it played a stabilizing role through the Japanese occupation, the 1945 declaration of independence until finally the Indonesia government nationalized the bank in 1953 and turned it into the Bank of Indonesia.

    While the replacement of De Javascche Bank was a nationalist move, it is curious to note the original Bank of Indonesia logo was closely aligned with the De Javasche logo: the letter J was changed  to the letter I without altering any other design elements. So much for continuity.    

    EARLY 20TH CENTURY DESIGN

    For early 20th century design aficionados, the museum is a treat. The lobby has tiled azure pillars supporting a high vaulted ceiling. Through an archway is the old teller system. A bank customer would go into an enclosed room and do their transactions through a wire mesh.

    The exhibits take you through Indonesia’s mercantile history. Life size mannequins of laborers loading sacks of spices for shipment to Europe for the VOC company; Dutch colonialists having dealings with pigtail wearing Chinese; even soldiers firing on the Japanese in a World War II scene. The message was clear: the bank and nation’s history are intertwined.

    STACKS OF GOLD BULLION

    And, of course, no visit to a central bank is complete without seeing its gold bullion. Within a clear plexiglass enclosure are stacks of gold bricks. And nearby, inside a spacious walk-in vault, are displays of Indonesian money from the 14th century to the present.

    While I like history, the restored to its original grandeur building was worth lingering in: the bank’s boardroom with its malachite green-tiled walls and intricate stained glass windows, a grandfather clock in the rear; the huge open-air courtyard covered in decorative tiles and potted trees surrounded by the bank’s white-colored pillars and covered interior walkways. The building projects the stability it sought to achieve.

    BANKING IN THE 1930S

    While the Bank of Indonesia museum projects a stolid national institution, the Bank Mandiri museum next door is more lively, a sort of this is how banking really was in the 1930s.  The building originally was the Netherlands Trading Society. Designed by Dutch architects JJ de Bruyn, A.P. Smits and C van de Linde in an art deco style it was opened in 1933. The building was nationalized in 1960 to become part of the Bank Export Import Indonesia until finally through a series of mergers it became Bank Mandiri in 1999.

    The museum has a cluttered hodgepodge collection with teletypes from various eras, paper shredders, logbooks, securities, antiquated computers, old currency, and colonial era antiques.

    ART DECO AT ITS BEST

    Fans of art deco will be delighted. As you walk in the massive building you see a 50-meter long polished counter where a lot of the bank business was conducted with customers. Behind the counter bank officers sat at elegant wooden desks on polished red-tiled floors. You can stroll amidst the exhibits and mannequins to get more of the bank experience. The walk-in vault in the basement was the highlight. There were walls lined with safe deposit boxes, and a mannequin bank officer and his female assistant going through a log book while soldiers in wide-rimmed hats stood nearby.

    PANORAMA VS. NOSTALGIC SNAPSHOT

    While the Bank of Indonesia museum is structured and organized as a panorama walk through history, Bank Mandiri is a snapshot focused on a nostalgic 1930s experience. Two sides of Indonesia banking: one depicting the nation’s history; the other it mercantile spirit. Both set in stunning architectural examples of the early and mid-twentieth century. A visit to both will give you a perspective of Jakarta that will be refreshing after a long bumper to bumper drive.

    Published in the April-May 2015 issue of Asian Journeys magazine

  • I Voted For Vigan!

    I Voted For Vigan!

    When I arrived at night I saw a poster asking for votes for Vigan to be one of the new seven wonder cities of the world.  It was the first time I had heard of the vote let alone seen a city lobbying for to be one of winners.

    Over an al-fresco dinner along a cobblestoned lane, surrounded by Spanish-era mansions from the 19th century with capiz-shell windows, I wondered how 21st century social media could transform this place. Kalesas, horse-drawn carts, are still a form of public transport, the sound of hooves nearly as common as the buzzsaw sound of low riding three-wheelers. At night, the yellow tinted streetlights gave the town a sepia-toned look, like a faded postcard from a bygone age.

    PHILIPPINES ONLY UNESCO HERITAGE TOWN

    With a population of 50,000, Vigan is the Philippines only UNESCO heritage town and the best preserved Spanish colonial town in Asia.  It has Vietnam’s Hoai An’s antiquity and charm without the tourist hordes and glossy five star hotels. I saw only a dozen or so foreign tourists during our four days there and not that many local tourists either.

    With mansions from Filipino, Chinese and Mestizo merchants lining street after street, some well-restored, others falling apart, some just plain run down, it feels like a place that skipped a beat in time. I was reminded of my first visit to Myanmar in 1981 where cars from the 1960s were traversing the roads. Or, my first visit to Luang Prabang in Laos in 2001 where monks in flowing orange robes were the most commonly seen pedestrians. Vigan is that rare town in Asia — a piece of the past that looks joyfully stuck there.

    Vigan almost had the war-ravaged and recovered look that many places in Asia have. At the end of World War II, American bombers were about to target Japanese forces stationed there when they found that they had already left. Just before the bombing run the planes pulled up and headed back to base.

    The best place to start is the Plaza Salcedo where the St. Paul Metropolitan Cathedral is. A massive pale yellow edifice with white trimming flanked on one side by the archdiocese building, inside ivory-carved saints with natural hair wigs looked down upon the devoted.  Kalesas were lined up in front of the church.

    Across from the church is the Vigan Dancing Fountain where every night at 7:30pm multi-colored water sprouts swing to the beat of decidedly modern talents such as the Irish chanteuse Enya.

    Then further along the church-state power axis is the capitol of the state of Ilocos Sur. A stolid Spanish colonial building, it’s an imposing counterweight to the church.

    Next to the town’s other plaza, Plaza Burgos, is the beating heart of Vigan, Crisologo Street. A pedestrian only cobble-stoned lane lined with mansions and stores selling antiques and handwoven items along with some cookie cutter tourist souvenirs, kalesas regularly trot down it. Some of the antiques were good finds. My wife and I bought a beautiful Chinese porcelain plate painted with swimming fish, a reminder that Vigan is just a few kilometers from the shore and has been a trading port since before the Spanish arrived.

    PHILIPPINES “MACONDO”?

    On Quirino Blvd, we visited Syquia Mansion, home of Elpidino Quirino, the sixth President of the Philippines. Inside was a 19th century European home with unique Filipino touches. Figurines graced oversized antique mirrors and furniture. Paintings of the house’s most famous occupants were set high in the living room, looking down at visitors. Sprinkled throughout the home were black and white photos depicting earlier eras in a time-warped town. Filipino touches were panels of fabric that hung from the ceiling over the dining room table where they were pulled back and forth to create a cooling breeze. Between the outside of the home and its interior was a narrow corridor which was meant to trap the heat.

    On Liberation Blvd. is the Crisologo mansion. The Crisologos were one of the leading families of Illocos Sur. Floro Crisologos was governor, senator and a Philippine military adviser during the Vietnam War. At the museum is the rusting Chevy his then pregnant governor wife Carmeling was in when it was attacked, bullet holes along one side of the car. She survived. But he wasn’t so lucky, having been assassinated in the cathedral in 1970. His trousers, neatly ironed, covered in dried blood, sit in a glass case, along with his shoes and a glasses case, a reminder of his sacrifice.

    The presence of the Sy and Crisologos families dominating the town reminded my wife and I, both fans of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez book, “100 years of Solitude,” of the mythical town of Macondo.  You sensed that there was a novel hiding somewhere in the town, in hidden courtyards, up musty stairwells.

    A visit to the museum in the Archbishop’s palace gave you the sense of the pull of faith.  Religious icons carved in ivory, embellished by silver, were pushed together in the downstairs room of the museum. But it was the upstairs, where the baroque presence of the palace held heavy sway. You could feel the secular power the clergy once had.

    FAMED POTTERY AND LOOMWEAVING

    The iron pottery works at the edge of the town have been a traditional source of commerce for centuries. The RG Jar Factory has a fifty-meter dragon kiln which can bake a thousand pots at one time. The pottery is called “iron” because a tap on it with a coin provides a metal clink even though it is clay.

    Loomweaving is another traditional form of commerce. Barangay Camaggaan is about a fifteen minute three-wheeler ride from town and has a half dozen looms all being worked to create colorful blankets, towels, placemats, washcloths.

    GOOD BASE TO TRAVEL ILLOCOS

    Getting to Vigan isn’t easy. It isn’t on the way to anywhere else.  It’s an eight-hour bus ride from Manila or you can fly into the city of Laoag, captital of Illocos Norte, and take a two-hour car ride south to the city.

    The town provides good base to explore Illocos, an under touristed part of the Philippines.

    South of Vigan, about an hour coastal drive, is the UNESCO protected church of Santa Maria, at the top of eighty-eight granite steps, an auspicious number.  Built in 1769, it is what is known as “earthquake baroque”.  This architectural style is only found in the Philippines and Guatemala, because of their proximity to earthquake zones. The churches were designed lower and wider with broad-shouldered walls that are heavily buttressed to provide stability during seismic shaking. Santa Maria’s bell tower was stout in keeping with the style. Inside the empty church birds flew to and from the nests they created in the eaves.

    CATHOLIC ANGKOR TEMPLE?

    North of Vigan about an hour is the town of Paoay. In the 19th century the town was famous for two of its sons: Antonio Luna, a general and Juan Luna, one of the Philippines most famous painters. The latter’s house is a museum. Paoay is also famous for another UNESCO protected baroque church, St. Augustine’s, also known as the Paoay Church. Begun in 1704 and finished ninety years later, it sits in the center of manicured lawns with plants growing haphazardly from the building, giving it the mysterious aura of a Catholic Angkor temple, a place of faith still standing in a place of implacable elements.

    MARCOS COUNTRY

    Paoay is also Marcos country.  While he may be reviled as a dictator in the rest of the Philippines in his home province of Ilocos Norte he is the favorite son. You can get Marcos t-shirts, iphone covers, watch a game at the Marcos stadium, take classes at Mariano Marcos State University, named for his father.  At the Malacanang of the North, the traditional mansion on idyllic Paoay lake, you can see how the Marcos family lived and played during his more than two decades in power.  The family still

    holds the political power in the province with his daughter Imee as governor, his son Bong, a senator, and his shoe-loving wife Imelda, a congresswoman.

    The Marcos museum pays homage to his life in a way that is more fitting for the hero of a pulp romance novel. He developed toughness from his grandfather during stints in the woods; learned academic excellence from his mother; discipline from his father. Known as the “golden voice of the north” the baritone Marcos was supposedly the highest scoring student on the national bar exam — except jealous examiners marked him down from 98.01 to 92.35. The museum noted that he was the most decorated Philippine soldier during World War II, having miraculously survived the Bataan Death March to take on the Japanese as a guerilla leader. You can also read about his shinkansen fast 11-day courtship of Imelda after he fell in love at first sight when he saw her munching on watermelon seeds.

    IS IT REALLY MARCOS?

    At the squat gray Marcos mausoleum next door, funereal music plays at too high a volume when you step into its black painted interior.  You pass medieval armaments, from battleaxes to maces to clubs, to enter a high-ceilinged room where white flowers created from seashells line the walls. Marcos lays in state, in socks, no shoes, encased in a crystal sarcophagus.  While we strolled quietly around we looked closely at Marcos to determine if is it really him? Or, a wax representation? The only security was a middle-aged guard wearing a t-shirt that was stretched over his considerable gut. Once the half dozen visitors were done looking, sometimes gawking, we were ushered out and he shut the door behind us.

    CUISINE YOU CAN’T GET ANYWHERE ELSE

    The Ilocano cuisine can’t be found outside of the Philippines. Vigan longanizas, pork sausages, are slighty sweet and famed throughout the country. Other specialities are chicken cooked in its own blood; bangus, a local fish, grilled and stuffed with herbs; bagnet, pork with crispy skin; and more exotic dishes such as Ugsa Pochero, sundried wild deer with pork belly made into a stew. If you’re a calorie counter, Illocano food is a challenge.

    Hotel options are largely mansions converted into lodgings with various levels of homage to the town’s past. The best and most authentic hotel was the Villa Angela, a 140-year old mansion. Filled with antiques, rattan chairs and artifacts of the family’s history you feel like a privileged guest with a vantage on a more serene lifestyle.  It may be museum-like but it’s one you wouldn’t mind living in. In our room at night we could see light from the floor below shine through the worn though highly polished wooden boards.

    TOM CRUISE STAYED HERE

    On the wall on the living room is a photo of the actor Tom Cruise with the owner of the villa.  He stayed there when he was filming the movie “Born on the Fourth of July.”  When I asked the manager which of the rooms at the hotel he slept in, she replied, “Yours.”

    I smiled and thought, “Yes, I’ll vote for Vigan.” And yes, Vigan got voted as one of the new seven wonder cities of the world. (https://www.new7wonders.com/en/cities)

    Published in December 2014/January 2015 Asian Journeys magazine