Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Livin' La Vida Imelda
Since we enjoyed Carlos Celdran’s first walking tour so much, we decided it would be worth it to extend our trip by one extra day in order to make his second famous walking tour entitled ‘Livin’ La Vida Imelda.’ This tour would cover the life of Imelda Marcos, the notoriously egocentric and extravagant woman who was both Marcos’s wife and his governor of Manila/head of a-committee-that-let-her-spend-spend-spend. As preparation for this tour Henk and I watched a documentary about her life the night before so we’d have some idea of who this woman was. On the documentary we saw a woman who was bubbly and charismatic yet had something disturbingly off about her as well. She seemed utterly self-absorbed making comments such as “Filipinos want beauty. I have to look beautiful so that the poor Filipinos will have a star to look at from their slums.” and “I get so tired listening to one million dollars here, one million dollars there, it's so petty.” Immediately watching her, I’m no psychiatrist but take a gander at the Wiki description of Histrionic personality disorder and tell me if there aren’t more than a few similarities…
Henk and I started the day by eating somewhere we passed many times but never went into before-- the New Orleans restaurant staffed by waiters and waitresses in fabulous Mardi Gras headdresses. We ordered seafood gumbo and chicken jambalaya but sadly the portion sizes were quite small and not very good. Plus they got my order wrong and we had to wait for them to fix it and snack on bread in the meantime. Guess we’ll just have to go to New Orleans for the real thing! I had wanted to get my nails done but we didn’t have enough time so we decided to return after the walking tour and instead went to get a snack (told you our portions were small, we were still hungry!) of ice-cream for Henk and an Aunt Annie’s pretzel dog (with cheese dips!) for myself. Then it was time to jump in a cab and head to the CCP (Cultural Center of the Philippines) for Carlos’s walking tour.
We arrived and checked our bags (and camera) and headed inside to explore a little hip gift shop and snack on my pretzel dog. Once Carlos arrived, he sat us down on some stair inside and the ‘show’ started! After standing for the anthem he played on his boom-box we heard an introduction to Imelda’s life. He showed us images of Imelda and painted the picture: the 1970’s. Imelda’s mother was dead and her father from Leyte wanted the family moved there. Imelda, from the time she was young, was never considered high society instead thought of as “cheap.” She first ‘appeared’ on the celebrity scene when she protested her loss in the Miss Manila pageant so deeply that the mayor gave her a special title ‘the Muse of Manila’ to accommodate her. In fact, it was rumored that Imelda’s daughter was fathered by the mayor and that she married Marcos (after an eleven-day courtship) as a suggested move by friends to cover up the scandal. The charming, young, Catholic Marcos couple became akin in the world’s mind to ‘the Kennedys of the Philippines.’
Anyways, Imelda was not happy in the relationship because of Marcos’s controlling nature (he dictated how much food she could eat, what she should say, etc.) and his public affairs with other women that she ended up in a psychiatric hospital in New York City for 1 year. However, the psychologists couldn’t do anything for her and she returned to the Philippines with a new (and scary) determination. She started erecting buildings left and right to promote ‘beauty’ in the Philippines. So many in fact that it is joked she had an ‘edifice-complex.’ While her main focus was getting the Philippines on the world map as a place of culture and beauty, her actions did result in increased foreign investment in the region.
Imelda was completely obsessed with ‘looking good for the people.’ She would always have her clothing made for her, new outfits for every outing, new shoes, thousands of pairs of shoes. In fact, she would dress her most elaborate when she would visit the poverty-stricken country people because “they need a star.” When she would go out to the rural areas of the Philippines and she the poor Filipino’s homes she would question them why their shanty homes looked ‘so ugly.’ When they would respond that they only had simple materials like coconuts and bamboo, Imelda told them there was no excuse for building something ugly. Thus she commissioned the coconut palace (we sadly couldn’t go here as it is under renovation) out of coconuts and bamboo to show the people they could build something ‘pretty’ out of ‘simple materials.’ She even had the audacity to wear a crown to Buckingham Palace and when she was told only ‘real’ royalty could wear crowns, she took the crown off and put it on her neck as a necklace. In her quest to become royal she attempted to set her daughter up with Prince Charles as well!
Martial law was a big issue during the Marcos’s reign. No one was allowed in the streets after midnight for 10 years and any opposition to the Marcos’ was immediately shut down through incarceration and torture. But Imelda’s main concern was still events such as the Miss Universe pageant. For such events, Imelda would invite you. But she didn’t just invite you – she sent your airline tickets, had everything arranged for you 1st class, and even had designer clothing IN YOUR SIZE hanging in your hotel closet for you to wear when you entered your room for the event. She had the entire event planned perfectly – but when a typhoon tore apart everything at the CCP where the pageant was to be held, she ordered all the workers to paint the grass green and had teachers make paper flowers and coconuts for the trees! Everything had to be so perfect that dry ice was flown to specifically divert any rain the day of the event away from the CCP. To Imelda’s credit, such events led to increased foreign attention, GDP growth, and tourism for the Philippines and in 1977 the Philippines was selected to hold Asia’s IMF Bank Meeting. But for the meeting, they would need to build another structure! Carlos took us to the window and pointed to Manila’s Convention Center built specifically for the meeting.
Next Carlos recalled to us that he remembers the school books from when he was younger had pictures of the mythological ‘Mr. Strong. And ‘Ms. Beautiful’ (the Adam and Eve of the Filipino people) and their faces were that of Marcos and Imelda! Despite having his face plastered everywhere, President Marcos was very insecure. He was rather short (5’5’’) and hung ‘like a church-mouse’ and took steroids mixed with crushed tiger bone to help buff himself up (he was ripped at the age of 60!) and help quell some of his insecurity. In the process however, he destroyed his kidneys and eventually contracted lupis. We walked now into the ‘Studio 54 Room’ and Carlos sat us down to relay to us how Marcos sent Imelda everywhere to negotiate for him and ‘play both sides of the Iron curtain’ to survive the oil crisis and quell fighting in the Southern Philippines with the Muslims founded by Kaddafi. Imelda had so much power that when Marcos’s rival Aquino was later assassinated it is reported Marcos threw an ashtray at her and yelled, ‘How could you let this happen? This will be the end of us!’ (There is no evidence that they were involved in the assassination however. No one knows who did it.)
The Philippines hosted the International Film Festival in 1982 and Imelda thus had another complex built for the event. However, she wanted the whole thing built in just 60 days using quick dry cement. When the building collapsed and killed 7 workers it was rumored that she ordered that the construction workers be buried inside because there wasn’t enough time to dig them out! (There has been no evidence found that this is true, however.) Anyways after this incident and the assassination both the Marcos’s reputation and then the economy of the Philippines collapsed. The Filipino currency lost 100% of its value in just 2 DAYS! The People’s Party Revolution moved to take back the government from the Marcos dictatorship and the United States encouraged the family to get out and go to Hawaii. Much of their funds were declared swindled from the Filipino people – including the many $$ Imelda spent on her 1600 pairs of shoes everyone discovered she had upon entering the palace for the first time. When the White House refused to help the Marcos’s anymore, Imelda declared: “They did this to me when I was alone, widowed and orphaned," she says, on the verge of tears. "Even the Bible says there are special places reserved in hell for those who persecute widows and orphans. And it was not individuals who did me in, it was governments and superpowers.”
After the Imelda tour finished Henk and I checked out the Coconut Palace up close and then went back to the hostel. There was no way we could leave the Philippines without having a last dinner of Café Adriatico’s amazing food. Henk brought us back two pasta dishes and a slice of their amazing homemade chocolate cake I’d been dying to try ever since we realized their food was so delicious. We made sure everything was packed for our departure (OK, Henk did) and enjoyed our last evening in the Philippines.
Henk and I started the day by eating somewhere we passed many times but never went into before-- the New Orleans restaurant staffed by waiters and waitresses in fabulous Mardi Gras headdresses. We ordered seafood gumbo and chicken jambalaya but sadly the portion sizes were quite small and not very good. Plus they got my order wrong and we had to wait for them to fix it and snack on bread in the meantime. Guess we’ll just have to go to New Orleans for the real thing! I had wanted to get my nails done but we didn’t have enough time so we decided to return after the walking tour and instead went to get a snack (told you our portions were small, we were still hungry!) of ice-cream for Henk and an Aunt Annie’s pretzel dog (with cheese dips!) for myself. Then it was time to jump in a cab and head to the CCP (Cultural Center of the Philippines) for Carlos’s walking tour.
We arrived and checked our bags (and camera) and headed inside to explore a little hip gift shop and snack on my pretzel dog. Once Carlos arrived, he sat us down on some stair inside and the ‘show’ started! After standing for the anthem he played on his boom-box we heard an introduction to Imelda’s life. He showed us images of Imelda and painted the picture: the 1970’s. Imelda’s mother was dead and her father from Leyte wanted the family moved there. Imelda, from the time she was young, was never considered high society instead thought of as “cheap.” She first ‘appeared’ on the celebrity scene when she protested her loss in the Miss Manila pageant so deeply that the mayor gave her a special title ‘the Muse of Manila’ to accommodate her. In fact, it was rumored that Imelda’s daughter was fathered by the mayor and that she married Marcos (after an eleven-day courtship) as a suggested move by friends to cover up the scandal. The charming, young, Catholic Marcos couple became akin in the world’s mind to ‘the Kennedys of the Philippines.’
Anyways, Imelda was not happy in the relationship because of Marcos’s controlling nature (he dictated how much food she could eat, what she should say, etc.) and his public affairs with other women that she ended up in a psychiatric hospital in New York City for 1 year. However, the psychologists couldn’t do anything for her and she returned to the Philippines with a new (and scary) determination. She started erecting buildings left and right to promote ‘beauty’ in the Philippines. So many in fact that it is joked she had an ‘edifice-complex.’ While her main focus was getting the Philippines on the world map as a place of culture and beauty, her actions did result in increased foreign investment in the region.
Imelda was completely obsessed with ‘looking good for the people.’ She would always have her clothing made for her, new outfits for every outing, new shoes, thousands of pairs of shoes. In fact, she would dress her most elaborate when she would visit the poverty-stricken country people because “they need a star.” When she would go out to the rural areas of the Philippines and she the poor Filipino’s homes she would question them why their shanty homes looked ‘so ugly.’ When they would respond that they only had simple materials like coconuts and bamboo, Imelda told them there was no excuse for building something ugly. Thus she commissioned the coconut palace (we sadly couldn’t go here as it is under renovation) out of coconuts and bamboo to show the people they could build something ‘pretty’ out of ‘simple materials.’ She even had the audacity to wear a crown to Buckingham Palace and when she was told only ‘real’ royalty could wear crowns, she took the crown off and put it on her neck as a necklace. In her quest to become royal she attempted to set her daughter up with Prince Charles as well!
Martial law was a big issue during the Marcos’s reign. No one was allowed in the streets after midnight for 10 years and any opposition to the Marcos’ was immediately shut down through incarceration and torture. But Imelda’s main concern was still events such as the Miss Universe pageant. For such events, Imelda would invite you. But she didn’t just invite you – she sent your airline tickets, had everything arranged for you 1st class, and even had designer clothing IN YOUR SIZE hanging in your hotel closet for you to wear when you entered your room for the event. She had the entire event planned perfectly – but when a typhoon tore apart everything at the CCP where the pageant was to be held, she ordered all the workers to paint the grass green and had teachers make paper flowers and coconuts for the trees! Everything had to be so perfect that dry ice was flown to specifically divert any rain the day of the event away from the CCP. To Imelda’s credit, such events led to increased foreign attention, GDP growth, and tourism for the Philippines and in 1977 the Philippines was selected to hold Asia’s IMF Bank Meeting. But for the meeting, they would need to build another structure! Carlos took us to the window and pointed to Manila’s Convention Center built specifically for the meeting.
Next Carlos recalled to us that he remembers the school books from when he was younger had pictures of the mythological ‘Mr. Strong. And ‘Ms. Beautiful’ (the Adam and Eve of the Filipino people) and their faces were that of Marcos and Imelda! Despite having his face plastered everywhere, President Marcos was very insecure. He was rather short (5’5’’) and hung ‘like a church-mouse’ and took steroids mixed with crushed tiger bone to help buff himself up (he was ripped at the age of 60!) and help quell some of his insecurity. In the process however, he destroyed his kidneys and eventually contracted lupis. We walked now into the ‘Studio 54 Room’ and Carlos sat us down to relay to us how Marcos sent Imelda everywhere to negotiate for him and ‘play both sides of the Iron curtain’ to survive the oil crisis and quell fighting in the Southern Philippines with the Muslims founded by Kaddafi. Imelda had so much power that when Marcos’s rival Aquino was later assassinated it is reported Marcos threw an ashtray at her and yelled, ‘How could you let this happen? This will be the end of us!’ (There is no evidence that they were involved in the assassination however. No one knows who did it.)
The Philippines hosted the International Film Festival in 1982 and Imelda thus had another complex built for the event. However, she wanted the whole thing built in just 60 days using quick dry cement. When the building collapsed and killed 7 workers it was rumored that she ordered that the construction workers be buried inside because there wasn’t enough time to dig them out! (There has been no evidence found that this is true, however.) Anyways after this incident and the assassination both the Marcos’s reputation and then the economy of the Philippines collapsed. The Filipino currency lost 100% of its value in just 2 DAYS! The People’s Party Revolution moved to take back the government from the Marcos dictatorship and the United States encouraged the family to get out and go to Hawaii. Much of their funds were declared swindled from the Filipino people – including the many $$ Imelda spent on her 1600 pairs of shoes everyone discovered she had upon entering the palace for the first time. When the White House refused to help the Marcos’s anymore, Imelda declared: “They did this to me when I was alone, widowed and orphaned," she says, on the verge of tears. "Even the Bible says there are special places reserved in hell for those who persecute widows and orphans. And it was not individuals who did me in, it was governments and superpowers.”
After the Imelda tour finished Henk and I checked out the Coconut Palace up close and then went back to the hostel. There was no way we could leave the Philippines without having a last dinner of Café Adriatico’s amazing food. Henk brought us back two pasta dishes and a slice of their amazing homemade chocolate cake I’d been dying to try ever since we realized their food was so delicious. We made sure everything was packed for our departure (OK, Henk did) and enjoyed our last evening in the Philippines.
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