welcome to manila in the turbulent period of the philippines late dictator it is a world in which american pop culture and local filipino tradition mix flamboyantly and gossip storytelling and extravagant behavior thrivea wildly disparate group of charactersfrom movie stars to waiters from a young junkie to the richest man in the philippinesbecomes caught up in a spiral of events culminating in a beauty pageant a film festival and an assassination in the center of this maelstrom is rio a feisty schoolgirl who will grow up to live in america and look back with longing on the land of her youth