Meeting Pong Pagong

I intended to publish this blog originally to share some underwater pictures when I dived the seas of Okinawa. I had a picture of me taken with a sea turtle at that time and I made "Meeting Pong Pagong" as the title to this blog.

While searching for some pictures of the "original" Pong Pagong, I found out some things I didn't know about my childhood companion.

As I discovered the reality about Pong Pagong and Kiko Matsing, I was a little bit disheartened... that my childhood idols were originally from Sesame Street (which I also watched as a kid) and was just borrowed to appear in Batibot. They were a key reason why Batibot was made in the first place. It came to a point that Indonesia wanted to have their local version of Batibot and this disappointed Sesame Street. It complicated and eventually, Pong Pagong and Kiko Matsing were returned to their owners...

I watched Batibot earnestly when I was a kid. I knew all the songs and the characters by heart and they were my idols. Batibot taught me a lot of things and when I think of it today, it really affected who I am right now.

Salamat sa inyo, Pong at Kiko.

***I'll share with you anyway the dive pictures***