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Mistaken identity: A frequent visitor to the Sierras with Vernal Falls in the background, which was wrongly captioned as Pagsanjan F
alls on a pre-war Philippine stamp.| Zoom
alls on a pre-war Philippine stamp.| Zoom
Jaime C. Laya remembers the old days of foreign travel. “It was such a big thing, when even a Hong Kong trip merited despedida parties and society page photos.”
“Study abroad was for government pensionadas and children of the very wealthy,” the former Minister of Budget, Minister of Education, Culture and Sports, and chairman of the Monetary Board and Governor of the Central Bank continues. “In my case, I first went abroad for graduate study as a University of the Philippines instructor on US government and Ford Foundation fellowships, the former for a MS degree and the latter for a Ph.D.”
Jimmy shares that “An Indian classmate read my palm and predicted, among other things, that I would go places. He got it right and I’ve been to over 40 countries. First as an academic, then as a government official, consultant, business executive and nowadays as company director and lolo.”
The present-day chairman of the Philippine Trust Company and independent director of various corporations, who likewise serves as a trustee of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and several non-stock, non-profit organizations and foundations, is pleased that he has usually been able to combine work and pleasure. “Business during the week,” he declares, “and pleasure on weekends. Even during weekdays, I’ve somehow managed to sneak in a museum visit or two, browse book and antique shops, see a play or an opera.”
He does not recall going on more than two or three vacations with his family when his children were young. “Now that they’re grown up with families of their own and mostly live abroad. We try to get together once a year or so I either visit them or they come and visit me,” he says.
So here’s what the former chairman of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the former UP dean does on his travels, here and abroad.
PHILIPPINE STAR: What do you remember most of your first trip abroad?
JAIME C. LAYA: It took forever. That was in 1959, on a Pan Am propeller plane no jets yet. We took off about 10 a.m. and it was already dark when we landed in Guam. We got to Honolulu before noon the next day and arrived in San Francisco about 4 a.m. early the following morning. It took about 30 hours, more than double today’s time and with two nighttimes one between Guam and Honolulu and the other between Honolulu and San Francisco.
That trip was on a US International Cooperation Agency fellowship and my ticket was first class (Uncle Sam had more money then). When night came, the first class section became a sleeping compartment with double-decker beds. My return flight the year after was already on a jet and the luxury was over.
What won’t you leave home without?
Summer bliss: Wife Alice with her young children at Lupac in Marinduque in the late 1970s.
Those tiny screwdrivers needed to tighten the tiny screws on eyeglasses. I had the same set for maybe 30 years, but they got confiscated in Bacolod just last year. How airline security thought I could use them to highjack the plane or overpower the pilots, I can’t imagine. I must look more dangerous than I think.
Describe your present passport photograph.
convinced I look better in person, but the camera obviously didn’t agree.
How do you pass time at airports?
Panting. A perennial optimist, I usually arrive at the airport just before the gates slam shut and I have to make a dash for it. The few times I’m early, I just sit there hoping takeoff is not delayed. If I remember who I forgot to get pasalubong for, I go round the duty-free shop and pick something up. When there’s a long wait in between flights, I buy a pocketbook and read.
Barong Tagalog abroad: Ruben Ancheta, then Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Director, and Jimmy Laya before the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xian, China.
Who is your ideal traveling companion?
Me. My immediate family seems to be typically Filipino. They equate travel with shopping, preferably at some distant discount outlet. I like museums, old churches and historic homes, reading exhibit labels and scrutinizing stuff. I get nervous being tailed by a fidgety someone who can’t wait to escape to some once-in-a-lifetime sale. So I go my way and they go theirs that way, everyone’s happy.
I may have gone overboard when the kids were young. On realizing that we were headed for the very end of the Louvre’s kilometer-long Grande Galerie, the kids all gasped in unison, “Naaaay!”
What is the first thing you do upon checking in at a hotel or at a resort?
Look out the window to see where I am. On my first visit to San Francisco, I stayed at the Embarcadero YMCA and my window was just 20 feet away from a freeway’s upper level.
Later views were better, the most memorable being that from a Venice hotel window, of red tile roofs, San Marco’s domes and the lagoon, accompanied by a chorus of church bells.
After that, unpack, entrust passport and valuables to a safety deposit box, look for the nearest fire escape, and take a shower.
Best ride in town: Daughter Mianne, then age three, on Dad’s shoulder by Baras Church in Rizal during the Holy Thursday Visita Iglesia tour around Laguna de Bay with friends Julie and Arthur Hill.
What would you consider a must-do-activity in every foreign city that you visit?
Finish what I’m supposed to be doing attend a conference, make a presentation, go on some calls, whatever. Nowadays, I go abroad for some business or official purpose and for family bonding three of my four children and three of my four grandchildren live abroad. I try to pass somewhere else on my way home for something I also want to do or see. Last year, I detoured to Valencia after an official meeting in Barcelona to see the original image of Nstra. Sra. de los Desamparados, whose 18th-century replica is at Manila’s Santa Ana church.
Describe your most memorable trip.
I can’t pinpoint just one memorable trip, each one has something memorable.
I was completely astounded by Beijing’s Forbidden City and Cambodia’s AngkorWat. Venice was magical. I had read and reread a Versailles guidebook and when I finally got there, it was as if I’d been there before. Then there was the time I was part of a senior delegation that called on the Emperor of Japan we were all in formal suits, lined up in a row and greeted the Emperor one by one.
Respected, respectable tourists: Jamesy, Amy and father Jimmy all in sarongs before a Balinese temple in Indonesia.
Consulting work brought me to Nepal several times. One time, a little boy stuck to me while walking around Durbar Square in Patan. He hospitably pointed out highlights of graphic carvings on various buildings, including one where the male star was an enthusiastic billy goat.
The one time I was in St. Petersburg (still Leningrad then) was a freezing November. The bathroom was so high and the showerhead was way, way up. The hot water practically froze on the way down and it felt as if hailstones were spraying on my bare butt. It was a very brief shower.
And that long-ago dinner in Port Moresby got my nerves jangling. In the night’s blackness were white eyes and teeth that turned out to be those of the security guard a very small dark man in a G-string and with a bow-and-arrow as tall as he.
Once I presided over a meeting of a United Nations body. Sessions were held in the Economic and Social Council Conference Hall at the UN Headquarters Building in New York. You can’t help feeling important when banging the gavel as respectful tourists file past behind a glass window.
Just a few experiences were negative. Once, in Paris, I almost got mugged by a half a dozen teenagers gypsies, I was told while walking at 10 a.m. on the Rue de Rivoli by the Jardin des Tuileries. They obviously meant to pick my pockets and I elbowed them off. I suppose if that were at another time and another place (like Manila), you’d be interviewing someone else.
I wanted to see the Palacio de Aranjuez and so we all went my daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren. With a bunch of other tourists, a serious-looking guide took us around the hushed rooms, antique furniture and precious objects shielded from rowdy tourists by velvet-covered ropes on stanchions. Isabel, then age four, was not museum-broken and knocked over one stanchion, which then pulled down, one after the other, the 20 others ranged round the gilded room a real domino effect, only louder. In the shocked silence, her parents disowned poor Isabel. The little thing was stunned at the havoc she caused and was all set to bawl. I quickly picked her up, everyone laughed and all was well.
Who, me, frightened?: The fierce monster seems to have no effect at all whatsoever on daughter Amy on a family holiday in Bali, Indonesia.
First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos occasionally included me on her trips. Something memorable would usually happen outside of official meetings. In Salzburg, Austria, the Mayor gave a dinner in her honor at the former Archbishop’s Palace. The way up was via a long straight staircase. A Mozart trumpet fanfaren began when she set foot on the bottom step, continued all the way, ending precisely as she reached the very top. Dinner was in a painted chamber, lit by hundreds of candles. After dinner, everybody was led down a long and freezing-cold stone corridor (it was winter) to the gallery of a large, bare and dark chapel. The only light was a candle down below on the altar. Then a high, high soprano voice broke the stillness. Just one song, a cappella, and the evening ended. That was style.
Then, a few years later, in 1989, when the Marcoses were already in Hawaii, some former Cabinet members, including me, decided to visit the hospitalized former president. I was arrested on arrival at the airport as a material witness in the Marcos trial, taken to the Hall of Justice via a basement entrance and locked up in a detention cell while awaiting a bail hearing. I didn’t have the $10,000 (I think it was) cash needed and neither did the Marcoses. Doris Duke came to the rescue.
She didn’t have enough greenbacks, either, but her private plane had emergency cash locked up in its safe. Someone broke it open to get the money. That was class.
What do you miss most when you’re away from home?
Nothing. Being busy enough on whatever I’m supposed to do, I don’t think of home. Besides, what’s the point of worrying when you can’t do anything about it? Nowadays, though, home and problems follow you. The cell phone rings and immediately you’re in the middle of some domestic or office crisis. The cell phone roaming feature takes a little joy out of travel.
What is the best travel advice you were ever given?
Travel light, guard your pockets and (my own advice to myself) forget photos. I used to bring a camera and shoot all time till I realized that I was seeing the world through a little hole, that postcards are better, that a camera is extra weight, and that the photographer never appears in his photos anyway.
What is the strangest thing you have done on a trip?
A meal by angels: Madrid-based familia Ortega and their favorite visiting pariente are all smiles thanks to riquisimo cochinillo lunch at the Meson Candida just below the Roman Aqueduct in Segovia, Spain.
Not really strange, but something that I can’t do anymore. I was returning to Manila from graduate school in California and was about to get married. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to ever afford to travel again and so decided to go home the long way New York, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Versailles, Madrid and El Escorial, Rome and Florence, Cairo, Athens, Jerusalem, New Delhi and Agra, Calcutta, Bangkok, Singapore, and finally Manila all in six weeks. I was 27 then and it was no sweat, but just thinking about it now makes me want to lie down.
I went around clutching the book See Europe on $35 a Day (including board, lodging and tours). It was okay and included tips such as how to see the Son et Lumière (sound and light) show at the Roman Forum for free. I followed the directions and ended up backstage, as it were, with a group of other $35 travelers. We had the floodlights in our eyes and no sound no son and too much lumière.
It’s only now that I find myself in bizarre situations. My grandchildren go for the extreme and I let myself be dragged along feeling like Superman at the Subic zipline, white water rafting on the upper reaches of the Potomac River and getting on scary rides like the haunted elevator at Disney World’s Hollywood Studios. For the longest time after, I went around with sore knees (I almost fell off the boat) and with hair standing on end from that runaway elevator.
Let’s talk favorites now. Name your favorite city abroad.
London. Such nice people speaking so beautifully, lots of interesting places to see and things to do, wonderful parks and countryside. Very civilized shopping, too, if you like that kind of thing.
Name your favorite spot in the Philippines.
My house. Design, construction supervision, reconstruction, painting and repainting, landscaping, all done by me. It’s not minimalist. It’s maximalist with the things I like. My next favorite is Villa Escudero. It’s in a way different league, of course, but it reminds me of home.
Favorite airline?
The cheapest and the one with the most convenient schedule.
Favorite airport?
They all look alike same shops, same signage, same overkill security. Schiphol in Amsterdam, though, has a gallery with original Dutch master paintings lent by the Rijksmuseum. Washington’s National Airport is so near downtown. Heathrow has a great train service that takes you straight to Paddington in Central London.
Favorite museum?
I like the Victoria and Albert Museum. It has all sorts of wonderful objects, from Raphael tapestries to Dale Chihuly glass to diamond tiaras to Tudor miniatures to stage costumes and Balenciaga dresses to period rooms. It has paintings too, though for the greats just go to the National Gallery. I also like the Uffizi and Pitti in Florence once I was on a special tour that went from the Uffizi to the Pitti via the self-portrait-lined Vasari corridor above busy streets and across the Ponte Vecchio.
Some small museums are like jewels: the Frick Collection and the Cloisters in New York, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Wallace Collection in London. Historic homes, too. Of the ones I’ve seen, I give multiple stars to Blenheim Palace, Knole and Chatsworth in England, Vaux-le-Vicomte in France. Hardwick Hall was closed when I went it’s one that I’m still aiming to see.
And if you could take home a piece of art, which one would it be?
Or what I’d pinch. I collect Philippine objects and my fingers became twitchy and itchy over the solid gold Butuan goddess at the Field Museum in Chicago, the Damian Domingo albums at the Newberry and New York Public libraries, and the 1734 Murillo-Velarde map with vignettes at the British Library.
Favorite hotel or resort?
None, really. However, I wouldn’t mind going back to Disney World resort hotels in Florida. I went with my grandchildren a few years ago and from where we were, we took the ferryboat or monorail, or walked to the different attractions we were just across the bridge from the back entrance of Epcot.
There was also that hotel in Leeds, England (42 The Calls Hotel); a former corn mill on the River Aire; one in Amsterdam that was converted from several adjoining old houses; and where we stayed in Bali, one designed like traditional thatch-roofed homes.
I’d return to El Nido and Club Paradise in Palawan. We went diving just offshore and saw coral, schools of fish, a large turtle and a little shark.
It’s been some time since I was at Isla Naburot in Guimaras and I hope it’s still like that no electricity, quiet guests, five-star cuisine (the owner was host and cook she studied at Cordon Bleu). Ask for buco and someone climbs up the tree and drops you some. The security guard was a dog. The absolute tops, in my opinion.
Favorite landmark or building or park?
In addition to its contents, the Metropolitan Museum in New York has marvelous views of Central Park in January, there’s snow and ice outside and you’re warm and cozy in front of the picture windows. In August, you’re nice and cool while outside is summer heat.
I like long vistas the gardens of Versailles; the Mall at Washington DC; Paris with the Champs Élysées and Champs de Mars; Tienan Men Square in Beijing. Also Manila from behind the Folk Arts Theater you’re near enough to enjoy the view of Roxas Boulevard but far enough not to smell Eau d’Manille and see up close those cheap-looking, busted streetlights.
Favorite musical or play?
I like Cats saw it in New York 30 years ago and just last year at the Cultural Center and it was even better than I remembered. I also enjoyed Lion King, Mamma Mia, Phantom of the Opera. Repertory Philippines puts on wonderful shows.
Favorite mall or store?
None. I don’t really like shopping, but when I need something, I go to Glorietta, Greenbelt or Rockwell. Kultura Filipino (shouldn’t it be Kultura Filipina?) at the Mall of Asia has a wide handicraft selection. Abroad, I’ve been dragged most often by my daughters my son doesn’t like shopping, either to Potomac Mills near Washington, DC. It’s an enormous place with a large bookstore where I wait while they shop. The last time, though, there was a big sale and I got me a Brook’s Brothers suit.
Favorite restaurant or bar?
I’m not a foodie, but lately, I’ve been several times to Manila Hotel’s new Café Ylang Ylang for a great buffet and Mabuhay Restaurant for fantastic Chinese food and the large carved jade panels which, alone, are worth a visit.
On places abroad, the memory of just three get those juices flowing: a) a little restaurant in Kittery, Maine (another discount center beloved of my daughters) where we had memorable Maine lobster and Boston clam chowder; b) Jumbo Seafood at East Coast Seafood Center near the Singapore airport for chili crab; and c) Mesón Cándido by the Roman aqueduct in Segovia with its super cochinillo, so tender they cut it with a saucer (a thick one, though).
Name an event anywhere in the world you would like to participate in?
I’ve always had at the back of my mind the passion play at Oberammergau, but some friends just came back from there and tell me it goes on and on, outdoors in the freezing cold. Since it won’t take place again till 2020, I’ve taken it off my list.
For now, I’m aiming for the Camino de Santiago, hiking (briefly) on one of the pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain where my name saint (Santiago, St. James the Greater, or Jaime) is buried. I’m reading a guidebook that describes spectacular scenery, ancient towns old churches, friendly hostels and fantastic food along the way. I’ve started treadmill training.
What are your preferred pasalubongs inbound and outbound?
Outbound usually some Philippine item that’s not too heavy piña usually gets lots of oohs and aahs, though it’s terribly expensive; also mother of pearl cocktail forks that you have to caution the recipient not to drop.
Inbound since I have neither shopping time nor interest, whatever I pick up at a duty-free shop at the last airport stop, usually chocolates.
What is the worst souvenir you have ever brought back from a trip?
I usually just bring home memories. Objects cost money, just take up space and need lots of effort to dust. Anyway, here and there in the house are souvenirs that I picked up mostly before I knew better: a Bali head from Baguio bought on my first trip there as a kid, a musical football that tinkles “Ramblin’ Reck from Georgia Tech,” a Stanford T-shirt that no longer fits, a tiny Thai goddess. I also have coffee mugs with my children’s school seals, a rosary allegedly blessed by Pope John Paul II during jubilee year, that kind of thing.
Aside from unpacking your suitcase, what is the first thing you would do upon returning home?
Thank God for bringing me safely home and for taking care of the people who remained behind while I was away.
Name a city you have never visited but would like to someday.
Macchu Picchu in Peru, though my creaky knees may not allow it. I’d also love to see Iguassu Falls in Brazil and the old colonial cities of Latin America, like Cartagena and Havana. I understand they show what we might have done, but did not, with our own Binondo, Quiapo and Vigan. Makes you want to cry.
Name a country you wish to explore.
I should say first, that I’ve been all over the Philippines.
My mother used to take my sisters and me around the country, an example that my late wife and I followed for our kids during Holy Week and school holidays. As a Cabinet member, I had use of a cottage on Cabinet Hill and later in Teachers’ Camp and we went to Baguio often.
My mother-in-law built a beach house in Boac, Marinduque and we used to go there for years till it was eroded away by wind and wave. She always used to say that she wanted to give her grandchildren happy memories.
I guess I’m naturally footloose so I’ve been even to out-of-the-way places like Batanes, Bongao, Bulusan, Culion, Marawi, Kiangan. I still hope to visit Sagada, the Agusan marshes and T’boli country.
Anyway, abroad, I’d like to see more of China and the English countryside. I’d also love to go on a cruise including Egypt, Italy, Greece and Turkey. It would be nice to stay awhile in Tuscany and all those places featured by Discovery Channel and National Geographic.
What would you say is the best part of travel?
Getting there.
What would you say then is the worst part of travel?
Paying bills, though it’s better now that the peso is stronger. Also sitting inside the plane and waiting in airports I don’t sleep well sitting or just partly horizontal It takes me days now to get over jet lag.
If you could reside anywhere in the world aside from the Philippines where would it be?
If I had my druthers, Manhattan or Central London. You don’t have to learn a new language, you never get bored with so many things to see and do. And if you want to be alone with your thoughts and your memories, you can.
“Study abroad was for government pensionadas and children of the very wealthy,” the former Minister of Budget, Minister of Education, Culture and Sports, and chairman of the Monetary Board and Governor of the Central Bank continues. “In my case, I first went abroad for graduate study as a University of the Philippines instructor on US government and Ford Foundation fellowships, the former for a MS degree and the latter for a Ph.D.”
Jimmy shares that “An Indian classmate read my palm and predicted, among other things, that I would go places. He got it right and I’ve been to over 40 countries. First as an academic, then as a government official, consultant, business executive and nowadays as company director and lolo.”
The present-day chairman of the Philippine Trust Company and independent director of various corporations, who likewise serves as a trustee of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and several non-stock, non-profit organizations and foundations, is pleased that he has usually been able to combine work and pleasure. “Business during the week,” he declares, “and pleasure on weekends. Even during weekdays, I’ve somehow managed to sneak in a museum visit or two, browse book and antique shops, see a play or an opera.”
He does not recall going on more than two or three vacations with his family when his children were young. “Now that they’re grown up with families of their own and mostly live abroad. We try to get together once a year or so I either visit them or they come and visit me,” he says.
So here’s what the former chairman of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the former UP dean does on his travels, here and abroad.
PHILIPPINE STAR: What do you remember most of your first trip abroad?
JAIME C. LAYA: It took forever. That was in 1959, on a Pan Am propeller plane no jets yet. We took off about 10 a.m. and it was already dark when we landed in Guam. We got to Honolulu before noon the next day and arrived in San Francisco about 4 a.m. early the following morning. It took about 30 hours, more than double today’s time and with two nighttimes one between Guam and Honolulu and the other between Honolulu and San Francisco.
That trip was on a US International Cooperation Agency fellowship and my ticket was first class (Uncle Sam had more money then). When night came, the first class section became a sleeping compartment with double-decker beds. My return flight the year after was already on a jet and the luxury was over.
What won’t you leave home without?
Summer bliss: Wife Alice with her young children at Lupac in Marinduque in the late 1970s.
Describe your present passport photograph.
I’m
How do you pass time at airports?
Panting. A perennial optimist, I usually arrive at the airport just before the gates slam shut and I have to make a dash for it. The few times I’m early, I just sit there hoping takeoff is not delayed. If I remember who I forgot to get pasalubong for, I go round the duty-free shop and pick something up. When there’s a long wait in between flights, I buy a pocketbook and read.
Barong Tagalog abroad: Ruben Ancheta, then Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Director, and Jimmy Laya before the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xian, China.Me. My immediate family seems to be typically Filipino. They equate travel with shopping, preferably at some distant discount outlet. I like museums, old churches and historic homes, reading exhibit labels and scrutinizing stuff. I get nervous being tailed by a fidgety someone who can’t wait to escape to some once-in-a-lifetime sale. So I go my way and they go theirs that way, everyone’s happy.
I may have gone overboard when the kids were young. On realizing that we were headed for the very end of the Louvre’s kilometer-long Grande Galerie, the kids all gasped in unison, “Naaaay!”
What is the first thing you do upon checking in at a hotel or at a resort?
Look out the window to see where I am. On my first visit to San Francisco, I stayed at the Embarcadero YMCA and my window was just 20 feet away from a freeway’s upper level.
Later views were better, the most memorable being that from a Venice hotel window, of red tile roofs, San Marco’s domes and the lagoon, accompanied by a chorus of church bells.
After that, unpack, entrust passport and valuables to a safety deposit box, look for the nearest fire escape, and take a shower.
Best ride in town: Daughter Mianne, then age three, on Dad’s shoulder by Baras Church in Rizal during the Holy Thursday Visita Iglesia tour around Laguna de Bay with friends Julie and Arthur Hill.Finish what I’m supposed to be doing attend a conference, make a presentation, go on some calls, whatever. Nowadays, I go abroad for some business or official purpose and for family bonding three of my four children and three of my four grandchildren live abroad. I try to pass somewhere else on my way home for something I also want to do or see. Last year, I detoured to Valencia after an official meeting in Barcelona to see the original image of Nstra. Sra. de los Desamparados, whose 18th-century replica is at Manila’s Santa Ana church.
Describe your most memorable trip.
I can’t pinpoint just one memorable trip, each one has something memorable.
I was completely astounded by Beijing’s Forbidden City and Cambodia’s AngkorWat. Venice was magical. I had read and reread a Versailles guidebook and when I finally got there, it was as if I’d been there before. Then there was the time I was part of a senior delegation that called on the Emperor of Japan we were all in formal suits, lined up in a row and greeted the Emperor one by one.
Respected, respectable tourists: Jamesy, Amy and father Jimmy all in sarongs before a Balinese temple in Indonesia.The one time I was in St. Petersburg (still Leningrad then) was a freezing November. The bathroom was so high and the showerhead was way, way up. The hot water practically froze on the way down and it felt as if hailstones were spraying on my bare butt. It was a very brief shower.
And that long-ago dinner in Port Moresby got my nerves jangling. In the night’s blackness were white eyes and teeth that turned out to be those of the security guard a very small dark man in a G-string and with a bow-and-arrow as tall as he.
Once I presided over a meeting of a United Nations body. Sessions were held in the Economic and Social Council Conference Hall at the UN Headquarters Building in New York. You can’t help feeling important when banging the gavel as respectful tourists file past behind a glass window.
Just a few experiences were negative. Once, in Paris, I almost got mugged by a half a dozen teenagers gypsies, I was told while walking at 10 a.m. on the Rue de Rivoli by the Jardin des Tuileries. They obviously meant to pick my pockets and I elbowed them off. I suppose if that were at another time and another place (like Manila), you’d be interviewing someone else.
I wanted to see the Palacio de Aranjuez and so we all went my daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren. With a bunch of other tourists, a serious-looking guide took us around the hushed rooms, antique furniture and precious objects shielded from rowdy tourists by velvet-covered ropes on stanchions. Isabel, then age four, was not museum-broken and knocked over one stanchion, which then pulled down, one after the other, the 20 others ranged round the gilded room a real domino effect, only louder. In the shocked silence, her parents disowned poor Isabel. The little thing was stunned at the havoc she caused and was all set to bawl. I quickly picked her up, everyone laughed and all was well.
Who, me, frightened?: The fierce monster seems to have no effect at all whatsoever on daughter Amy on a family holiday in Bali, Indonesia.Then, a few years later, in 1989, when the Marcoses were already in Hawaii, some former Cabinet members, including me, decided to visit the hospitalized former president. I was arrested on arrival at the airport as a material witness in the Marcos trial, taken to the Hall of Justice via a basement entrance and locked up in a detention cell while awaiting a bail hearing. I didn’t have the $10,000 (I think it was) cash needed and neither did the Marcoses. Doris Duke came to the rescue.
She didn’t have enough greenbacks, either, but her private plane had emergency cash locked up in its safe. Someone broke it open to get the money. That was class.
What do you miss most when you’re away from home?
Nothing. Being busy enough on whatever I’m supposed to do, I don’t think of home. Besides, what’s the point of worrying when you can’t do anything about it? Nowadays, though, home and problems follow you. The cell phone rings and immediately you’re in the middle of some domestic or office crisis. The cell phone roaming feature takes a little joy out of travel.
What is the best travel advice you were ever given?
Travel light, guard your pockets and (my own advice to myself) forget photos. I used to bring a camera and shoot all time till I realized that I was seeing the world through a little hole, that postcards are better, that a camera is extra weight, and that the photographer never appears in his photos anyway.
What is the strangest thing you have done on a trip?
A meal by angels: Madrid-based familia Ortega and their favorite visiting pariente are all smiles thanks to riquisimo cochinillo lunch at the Meson Candida just below the Roman Aqueduct in Segovia, Spain.I went around clutching the book See Europe on $35 a Day (including board, lodging and tours). It was okay and included tips such as how to see the Son et Lumière (sound and light) show at the Roman Forum for free. I followed the directions and ended up backstage, as it were, with a group of other $35 travelers. We had the floodlights in our eyes and no sound no son and too much lumière.
It’s only now that I find myself in bizarre situations. My grandchildren go for the extreme and I let myself be dragged along feeling like Superman at the Subic zipline, white water rafting on the upper reaches of the Potomac River and getting on scary rides like the haunted elevator at Disney World’s Hollywood Studios. For the longest time after, I went around with sore knees (I almost fell off the boat) and with hair standing on end from that runaway elevator.
Let’s talk favorites now. Name your favorite city abroad.
London. Such nice people speaking so beautifully, lots of interesting places to see and things to do, wonderful parks and countryside. Very civilized shopping, too, if you like that kind of thing.
Name your favorite spot in the Philippines.
My house. Design, construction supervision, reconstruction, painting and repainting, landscaping, all done by me. It’s not minimalist. It’s maximalist with the things I like. My next favorite is Villa Escudero. It’s in a way different league, of course, but it reminds me of home.
Favorite airline?
The cheapest and the one with the most convenient schedule.
Favorite airport?
They all look alike same shops, same signage, same overkill security. Schiphol in Amsterdam, though, has a gallery with original Dutch master paintings lent by the Rijksmuseum. Washington’s National Airport is so near downtown. Heathrow has a great train service that takes you straight to Paddington in Central London.
Favorite museum?
I like the Victoria and Albert Museum. It has all sorts of wonderful objects, from Raphael tapestries to Dale Chihuly glass to diamond tiaras to Tudor miniatures to stage costumes and Balenciaga dresses to period rooms. It has paintings too, though for the greats just go to the National Gallery. I also like the Uffizi and Pitti in Florence once I was on a special tour that went from the Uffizi to the Pitti via the self-portrait-lined Vasari corridor above busy streets and across the Ponte Vecchio.
Some small museums are like jewels: the Frick Collection and the Cloisters in New York, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Wallace Collection in London. Historic homes, too. Of the ones I’ve seen, I give multiple stars to Blenheim Palace, Knole and Chatsworth in England, Vaux-le-Vicomte in France. Hardwick Hall was closed when I went it’s one that I’m still aiming to see.
And if you could take home a piece of art, which one would it be?
Or what I’d pinch. I collect Philippine objects and my fingers became twitchy and itchy over the solid gold Butuan goddess at the Field Museum in Chicago, the Damian Domingo albums at the Newberry and New York Public libraries, and the 1734 Murillo-Velarde map with vignettes at the British Library.
Favorite hotel or resort?
None, really. However, I wouldn’t mind going back to Disney World resort hotels in Florida. I went with my grandchildren a few years ago and from where we were, we took the ferryboat or monorail, or walked to the different attractions we were just across the bridge from the back entrance of Epcot.
There was also that hotel in Leeds, England (42 The Calls Hotel); a former corn mill on the River Aire; one in Amsterdam that was converted from several adjoining old houses; and where we stayed in Bali, one designed like traditional thatch-roofed homes.
I’d return to El Nido and Club Paradise in Palawan. We went diving just offshore and saw coral, schools of fish, a large turtle and a little shark.
It’s been some time since I was at Isla Naburot in Guimaras and I hope it’s still like that no electricity, quiet guests, five-star cuisine (the owner was host and cook she studied at Cordon Bleu). Ask for buco and someone climbs up the tree and drops you some. The security guard was a dog. The absolute tops, in my opinion.
Favorite landmark or building or park?
In addition to its contents, the Metropolitan Museum in New York has marvelous views of Central Park in January, there’s snow and ice outside and you’re warm and cozy in front of the picture windows. In August, you’re nice and cool while outside is summer heat.
I like long vistas the gardens of Versailles; the Mall at Washington DC; Paris with the Champs Élysées and Champs de Mars; Tienan Men Square in Beijing. Also Manila from behind the Folk Arts Theater you’re near enough to enjoy the view of Roxas Boulevard but far enough not to smell Eau d’Manille and see up close those cheap-looking, busted streetlights.
Favorite musical or play?
I like Cats saw it in New York 30 years ago and just last year at the Cultural Center and it was even better than I remembered. I also enjoyed Lion King, Mamma Mia, Phantom of the Opera. Repertory Philippines puts on wonderful shows.
Favorite mall or store?
None. I don’t really like shopping, but when I need something, I go to Glorietta, Greenbelt or Rockwell. Kultura Filipino (shouldn’t it be Kultura Filipina?) at the Mall of Asia has a wide handicraft selection. Abroad, I’ve been dragged most often by my daughters my son doesn’t like shopping, either to Potomac Mills near Washington, DC. It’s an enormous place with a large bookstore where I wait while they shop. The last time, though, there was a big sale and I got me a Brook’s Brothers suit.
Favorite restaurant or bar?
I’m not a foodie, but lately, I’ve been several times to Manila Hotel’s new Café Ylang Ylang for a great buffet and Mabuhay Restaurant for fantastic Chinese food and the large carved jade panels which, alone, are worth a visit.
On places abroad, the memory of just three get those juices flowing: a) a little restaurant in Kittery, Maine (another discount center beloved of my daughters) where we had memorable Maine lobster and Boston clam chowder; b) Jumbo Seafood at East Coast Seafood Center near the Singapore airport for chili crab; and c) Mesón Cándido by the Roman aqueduct in Segovia with its super cochinillo, so tender they cut it with a saucer (a thick one, though).
Name an event anywhere in the world you would like to participate in?
I’ve always had at the back of my mind the passion play at Oberammergau, but some friends just came back from there and tell me it goes on and on, outdoors in the freezing cold. Since it won’t take place again till 2020, I’ve taken it off my list.
For now, I’m aiming for the Camino de Santiago, hiking (briefly) on one of the pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain where my name saint (Santiago, St. James the Greater, or Jaime) is buried. I’m reading a guidebook that describes spectacular scenery, ancient towns old churches, friendly hostels and fantastic food along the way. I’ve started treadmill training.
What are your preferred pasalubongs inbound and outbound?
Outbound usually some Philippine item that’s not too heavy piña usually gets lots of oohs and aahs, though it’s terribly expensive; also mother of pearl cocktail forks that you have to caution the recipient not to drop.
Inbound since I have neither shopping time nor interest, whatever I pick up at a duty-free shop at the last airport stop, usually chocolates.
What is the worst souvenir you have ever brought back from a trip?
I usually just bring home memories. Objects cost money, just take up space and need lots of effort to dust. Anyway, here and there in the house are souvenirs that I picked up mostly before I knew better: a Bali head from Baguio bought on my first trip there as a kid, a musical football that tinkles “Ramblin’ Reck from Georgia Tech,” a Stanford T-shirt that no longer fits, a tiny Thai goddess. I also have coffee mugs with my children’s school seals, a rosary allegedly blessed by Pope John Paul II during jubilee year, that kind of thing.
Aside from unpacking your suitcase, what is the first thing you would do upon returning home?
Thank God for bringing me safely home and for taking care of the people who remained behind while I was away.
Name a city you have never visited but would like to someday.
Macchu Picchu in Peru, though my creaky knees may not allow it. I’d also love to see Iguassu Falls in Brazil and the old colonial cities of Latin America, like Cartagena and Havana. I understand they show what we might have done, but did not, with our own Binondo, Quiapo and Vigan. Makes you want to cry.
Name a country you wish to explore.
I should say first, that I’ve been all over the Philippines.
My mother used to take my sisters and me around the country, an example that my late wife and I followed for our kids during Holy Week and school holidays. As a Cabinet member, I had use of a cottage on Cabinet Hill and later in Teachers’ Camp and we went to Baguio often.
My mother-in-law built a beach house in Boac, Marinduque and we used to go there for years till it was eroded away by wind and wave. She always used to say that she wanted to give her grandchildren happy memories.
I guess I’m naturally footloose so I’ve been even to out-of-the-way places like Batanes, Bongao, Bulusan, Culion, Marawi, Kiangan. I still hope to visit Sagada, the Agusan marshes and T’boli country.
Anyway, abroad, I’d like to see more of China and the English countryside. I’d also love to go on a cruise including Egypt, Italy, Greece and Turkey. It would be nice to stay awhile in Tuscany and all those places featured by Discovery Channel and National Geographic.
What would you say is the best part of travel?
Getting there.
What would you say then is the worst part of travel?
Paying bills, though it’s better now that the peso is stronger. Also sitting inside the plane and waiting in airports I don’t sleep well sitting or just partly horizontal It takes me days now to get over jet lag.
If you could reside anywhere in the world aside from the Philippines where would it be?
If I had my druthers, Manhattan or Central London. You don’t have to learn a new language, you never get bored with so many things to see and do. And if you want to be alone with your thoughts and your memories, you can.
When in Cebu City, please visit gregmelep.com
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