Reality check: travel wows or woes?
MediaCorp TV, Kwok Kar Peng
Artistes who fly overseas for work on paid expenses: is it blissful luxury or an experience filled with untold horrors? We ask actress Jeanette Aw to clue us in on reality.
For those of us who wince at our largely-reduced bank balance after a holiday, it’s a time when we wish we were stars who get thrown onto air planes and flown off into another country to preen, pose and frolic in the sun, all for free and in the name of work.
Li Lin and Tay Ping Hui in Switzerland for a Tag Heuer Photo Shoot; Bryan Wong and Xie Shaoguang in Australia, New Zealand and Japan for variety programme Rail Adventure; Sharon Au in Taiwan for another show Naruwan Taiwan, countless artistes for the Australian travelogues…
For Jeanette Aw, star of Through It All which debuts next Tuesday (August 15) at 7pm, her passport also boasts airport entry stamps to Taiwan for the drama C.I.D, Malaysia for The Champion and Holland V, Australia (Perth and the Northern Territory) for Channel 5’s Wish You Were Here and China for Channel 5’s Extreme Gourmet 2.
While we silently cooed and ahh-ed and fantasized over how lovely it must have been to save up on air tickets and hotel bills, she pricked our balloon with a huge syringe filled with reality.
“It’s very tiring when it comes to filming overseas. In fact, when we went filming in Taiwan for C.I.D, I thought it was going to fun because we don’t have night scenes so we’ll end by evening. But by the time we end and reach the hotel, we were already very tired and didn’t have the energy to go out again; plus on top of that, we have to wake up early for work because the day gets bright very early there. We’re always very rushed for time but I enjoy doing variety programmes overseas more because you get to do a lot more sightseeing,” she told us.
Yes, I bet you went to some touristy places Jeanette… and more. Remember the time you were in China for gasp! Channel 5’s Extreme Gourmet 2??
Apparently the lady recalled not the hideously grotesque gourmet munchies, which included a plate of juicy-looking deep-fried lizards, but the cab ride from the airport to her hotel.
The trip there was very tiring and bad. We were supposed to go to Changzhou but all the internal flights were cancelled because of bad weather. So we reached there around 8pm and took to the road in a cab. The roads were so bumpy throughout the long journey (it was a few hours) and it was so cold – the temperature must have been a single digit degree Celsius. Worse still, I was sitting next to the cabbie who had a metal grille fence surrounding him. On one side, I had a shaky door that looked like it was about to fall apart, and I couldn’t lean on the other side because the metal fence was so cold. It was quite excruciating…” Jeanette sighed
That’s not the end of her agony. Every traveler to China would have at least one horror story to tell of the public toilets there and Jeanette received no celebrity treatment in this instance. “… and then we had a toilet stop; it was quite gross. It was a building next to the highway and consisted of just a wall separating the gents’ and the ladies’. Inside the toilet were two cubicles with no doors. You pee into the drain and you could see used sanitary pads and maggots in it! There weren’t any basins in there as well…and I thought to myself ‘Is this the kind of toilets I’d have to use?!’ But fortunately that’s the worst one I saw!” she shuddered in recollection.
Luckily or unluckily for Jeanette, she’ll be missing out on the filming trip to far-flung Brazil for her new drama The Peak (Zui Gao Dian), which also stars Christopher Lee, Qi Yuwu, Elvin Ng, Dawn Yeoh, Ben Yeo and Ann Kok. Chris, Yuwu, Ben and Dawn will be making the trip to South America instead.
Jeanette tells us more about her character Zhong Xiaoyang: “I play a tomboy working in a shipping logistics company and a lot of scenes will require me fixing things hands-on on the ship. Xiaoyang’s good friends with Tianjun (played by Qi Yuwu) and Zhihang (Elvin Ng) and they are called the Three Musketeers. The scenes with them seem quite fun.” A love triangle is also in store: Xiaoyang likes Tianjun although she doesn’t let him know it while Zhihang is interested in her.
Filming for The Peak will begin shortly; come back for more news on the show!
Don’t miss Jeanette in Through It All, where she plays budget hotel owner Xiaoxuan opposite Li Nanxing, Christopher Lee, Jesseca Liu, Apple Hong, Darren Lim and Liu Qianyi. The drama begins next Tuesday August 15 at 7pm.
