The Mansion

 

After my BIL returned home from his week of work in Manila, we spent one weekend day going to visit "The Mansion" which is a cross between the White House and Camp David or creating an analogy for the current occupant, a cross between the White House and Mar-a Lago. In all my previous trips to the Philippines, it has been a summer home for the President of the Philippines and technically still is though the guards won't say that specifically. However, recently the main structure you see in the photo above is now a museum and open to the public with approved reservations which my SIL had obtained.

The Mansion was actually built by Americans for American leaders after the Spanish American war and was completed in 1908. During World War II, it suffered greatly from bombing but was eventually repaired before being turned over the Philippines who then converted it into the summer home of their President. Not quite two years ago, it was renovated again and opened up to the public as a Presidential Museum.

No pictures were allowed but as I have come to expect with any history museum in the Philippines, it was quite "lite" and heavily redacted as far as facts go. There have only been 17 presidents of the Philippines and nearly every room on the tour contained information on 2 or 3 of the presidents. The rooms were very tiny and with no air conditioning, were very hot and humid at the time we visited. We were allowed to stand while the guide gave us a short speech on every president. The facts we were told often related to the age of the wife of the president, their marriage and every president bio had a chart informing us how tall that president had been. You know, all the important historical details. Ferdinand Marcos was given an entire room to himself and besides his height, his most important fact that he was the "longest serving president" in Filipino history. It mentioned not one thing about him becoming a dictator and told of not one thing he did as president other than his fabled 11 day romance of Imelda. 

Like I said, it was rather "lite" on details and wishful thinking. At first I thought that was par for the course as I have seen that elsewhere in my travels through the country but then it hit me, with Ferdinand's son, "Bong Bong" Marcos currently the president in office and the one who had final say over the museum, it probably shouldn't have surprise me.

Eventually we were ushered into a gift shop that sold maybe six different items, all cheap trinkets with an official presidential seal mass made in China. They really could take a lessons from Americans on capitalizing financially from gift shops at tourist attractions. Since none of us were interested in a coffee cup or key chain with the presidential seal, we were allowed to enter another room outfitted with a long table with pieces of paper and pencils placed around it. They said we could write a letter to Bong Bong Marcos and he would surely read them. Not wanting to end up in the gulag for telling him my true thoughts about the museum, I wisely declined and we were ushered out.

Then and only then we were allowed to take pictures of the Mansion from the driveway above the sign in the above picture or of the park down below that holds the Filipino version of the reflecting pool complete with fountains. But we were monitored and told that we could take no photographs of the area off to the left which was a grassy expanse built upon what obviously were underground bunkers. Since we never got to view the second story of The Mansion and definitely weren't underground at any point, I assumed that is where the president stays whenever they visit though with air conditioners being more common, they probably don't travel all the way to Baguio these days just to beat the heat in the lowlands.

I thought I would include two more pictures for your amusement. After we made it through security which was just a simply walk through a scanner, we had to sit in a waiting room while badges were created and until our tour was allowed to officially proceed up the driveway. The waiting room had a bunch of seats, some photographs of other historical buildings around the Philippines that one could visit and two magazine that were free for us to read while waiting. Their covers are presented below.