Our ship visited the Philippines for two days. These days were added to our itinerary when other ports were eliminated. We were greeted by drums and dancing when we pulled into Manila on June 8 (Day 146). I was delighted, but some late sleepers commented that they did not appreciate the drum alarm clock outside their cabins.
On June 9, we moved to our second Philippine port, Salomague, which is the northernmost port in the Philippines. There I went on an excursion to Ilocos Norte. The biggest attraction there was a former home of Ferdinand Marcos. From Wikipedia:
… Malacañang of the North mansion in Paoay, Ilocos Norte, which was built by the Philippine Tourism Authority (PTA) in 1977, in time for Ferdinand Marcos’s 60th birthday. The Sandiganbayan anti-graft court stripped the Marcoses of the property in 2014, voiding a 1978 agreement between Marcos and the then PTA, deciding that since it is a national park, the Marcos family had no legal rights over it since national parks are “inalienable public domain“.[14]Bongbong Marcos objected to the decision, saying the property was owned by the family.[15]
This house had breezes upstairs and a good view of a lake.
Of course, I had to take a picture of Imelda’s closet, which is very modest in this home.
There were many Philippine tourists there, and it was something of a shrine to the Marcos legacy.
Due to a long history of Spanish colonialism, Catholicism is the predominant religion in the Philippines. The St. Augustine Church Paoay Church) was a very old example of the many churches we saw.
And there were more dancers to greet us on the grass after our visit to the church.
very cool
Once again, your posts provoke more questions; how do the Filipino people view Marcos and how is that view differentiated by class, when was the church built and what imfluences those stone images to merge with Spanish, are the dances done only for tourists or are they part of current popular culture….. thank you for starting the wheels turning