I finally went to the St. Nino Shrine here in Tacloban. It is one of the two actual tourist attractions here, the other being MacArthur’s landing spot. I’d been to St. Nino Shrine before, but I didn’t go in as I was tired and irritable that day and didn’t like that I couldn’t buy a single entrance ticket. I had to buy tickets for three people.

On this trip, I think I figured out where this seemingly bizarre policy comes from. It is in place because everyone gets a tour from a tour guide. You aren’t allowed to go into the place on your own and just look around. You must have a tour guide. This could be because they are worried about security and theft. But it’s more likely because all the lights in the couple of dozen rooms are kept off. My tour guide mentioned several times that the electricity bill for this place was about 30,000 pesos a month, and that’s with keeping the place dark most of the time. My tour guide had to go into each room ahead of me and turn on the light. Then he had to turn off the light when we left. Some of the rooms were extremely large – the massive ball room, for example – and the tour guide had to walk a long distance through the room to a light switch at the back. This being the case, they couldn’t really have a cheap entrance ticket for individuals. They can only accommodate groups, and they have a rule that only groups are allowed. If you want to go inside on your own, you have to pay for an entire group anyway.

I think my annoyance the first time I went there came partially from the way they presented this idea. They could have said that the entrance fee was 200 pesos and two extra people can go in for free. That makes it sound like a good deal. But they said that I had to pay for three people. It sounded like I had to buy three tickets. It amounts to the same thing, but it sounds good one way and sounds bad the other. On this visit, they didn’t worry about the details. The woman just told me the entrance fee was 200 pesos plus a 30-peso camera fee. She didn’t bother trying to explain about groups and the rest of it.

[slickr-flickr tag=”st nino shrine” type=”slideshow”]
The St. Nino Shrine is a difficult place to pigeon-hole. I understood that it was a home (an extremely large one) that Imelda Marcos ordered built and then never slept in – not even once. However, the largest part of the main floor looks identical to a church. There is an altar at the front with statues of Saint Nino and other saints. And there are dozens of large pews. It is a perfectly functional church. Why would Imelda build a luxury home with a church inside it? I suspected that the building was converted to a church afterwards, but according to my guide, that wasn’t the case. The church (or shrine) was part of the original design.

Around the pews and altar on the main floor are about 12 large bedrooms. Each one has a bed and bedroom furniture, decorations, and a full bathroom. My guide kept referring to the whole place as a museum, and this confused me more. Had Imelda built her home to contain both a church and a museum? If so, why make each room in the museum a bedroom? At this time, I was still assuming that these bedrooms were meant for the members of the Marcos family. And, if so, why were they lined up in such an official and unfriendly fashion? The layout was more suitable to a hostel or a hospital. And each bedroom door opened directly into the church. That hardly seemed very efficient or comfortable. More bizarrely, most of the rooms contained a diorama. These were full-on diaoramas built a couple of feet into the walls with lights and a glass front. They illustrated various stages in the life of Imelda Marcos from her childhood to her school life to her marriage and activities as a public figure. It made no sense to have these diaoramas in the family bedrooms. That would be insane even for a woman famous for her thousands of pairs of shoes. Again, I assumed that these dioramas were installed later when they converted the house to a museum and shrine. But my guide insisted that they were original and part of the house from the beginning.

Strange as the dioramas were, stranger still was the fact that each room was themed and had a name. Some of the rooms were named after regions of the Philippines, and the rooms contained items from that region – artwork, agricultural products, historical items, etc. Some of the rooms were named after things found in the Philippines. My favorite (not surprisingly) was the butterfly room, decorated with cases of pinned specimens of all the butterflies and moths found in the Philippines. Again, the guide said that these room themes were there from the original construction. They were not added later.

Things began to make a bit more sense as the tour progressed. Behind the church was a very large meeting room with ornate furniture and massive chandaliers and a stained glass roof. The stained glass windows that made up the center of the room were the most impressive, but the lights up there were broken and it was no possible to get the full effect of the colors. This room was clearly not intended to be part of any kind of personal home. It was meant for official functions of government.

A large staircase brought us upstairs where the guide walked me through more large meeting rooms and what he said was Imelda’s favorite room – the ball room. This was an impressive room with a tremendous chandelier and a monstrous painting of Imedla Marcos as a mermaid covering most of one wall. (I’m not sure how this could be her favorite room if she had never visited the building or spent even one night there.)

Also on this second floor were the actual bedrooms for the Marcos family members. These rooms made a bit more sense since they were more natural bedrooms and opened onto living areas and not onto a church. They were also not themed and did not contain dioramas or anything like that. With these bedrooms meant for the family members, then the bedrooms on the first floor were clearly meant for visitors and dignataries.

Imelda and Ferdinand had separate bedrooms, with Ferdinand’s having a separate attached room for his bodyguards. Imelda’s bedroom was by far the largest and the most elaborate. The bed was of a size to be off the scale completely. Much larger than king-size. Perhaps emperor-size? The bathroom was more of a suite of rooms than anything else with a Jacuzzi, a hair salon, and a separate shower room.

In all the rooms and on the walls and in the staircases were items that had been given to the Marcos family from world leaders. My guide pointed out llama-skin rugs from Argentina and huge display cases filled with ivory carvings from China. In fact, there seemed to be more gifts from Mao Tse-tung than from all the other world leaders combined. My guide said that Marcos had a special relationship with communist China. My knowledge of history is pretty sketchy, so I don’t know if there was a special relationship there, but Mao certainly appeared to be a generous gift-giver. Take away all his presents and the walls of the St. Nino Shrine would be quite a bit barer.

Overall, I found the St. Nino Shrine to be well worth a visit. It’s one of the more bizarre buildings I’ve ever seen. By the end of my guided tour, I didn’t understand the place any better than I had at the beginning. I can’t imagine what kind of thought process went into its design. Its architecture made no sense as a residence, a church, a meeting place, a dance hall, or a museum. It was all of those things mixed together in a very uncomfortable and awkward fashion. Still, it was fun to walk through it and take it all in. To listen to my tour guide, the point of the building today is to illustrate the corruption and extravagance and waste of the Marcos family and by extension of all politicians. During the tour, he mentioned, with resigned gloom, the members of the Marcos family that are still in politics – still rich and still living off money taken from the people. The St. Nino Shrine itself is still considered her own private possession by Imelda Marcos. There is an ongoing court case as she tries to establish her legal ownership.

When the tour was over, I returned the slippers I was given and put on my worn-out Teva sandals. I felt that I should give my tour guide a tip, but since I had paid an entrance fee for an entire group, I didn’t bother. I think I’d made my contribution toward the 30,000-peso monthly electricity bill. (I doubted this figure very much in any event. The place was kept in near total darkness, so little electricity could possibly be used. And there was certainly no air conditioning. I was soaked with sweat by the end of the tour. My guide fanned himself with a hand fan the entire time. I didn’t have a fan and just had sweat pouring down my face the entire time. Perhaps had my guide offered me a fan for the duration of the tour, I’d have felt more inclined to toss a tip his way…)

 

 

Tags: fee, Imelda Marcos, museum, Nino Shrine, Philippines Bike Trip 2013