A Memorable Walk Down History Lane

For the past years, I've been hearing raves about Carlos Celdran's tours of Metro Manila but I haven't been able to join one. The people I've talked to who have been on one of his tours promised that Carlos will provide such a great learning experience as well as entertainment. And so, as aforesaid in my weekend report, I had the opportunity to join his tour of Intramuros, If These Walls Could Talk! last September 23. And what a tour that was!

It was a brooding morning as it was with the Binondo tour, but that didn't deter me from being in high spirits. The only thing that got me worried was when the taxi my mum and I rode got stuck in the perpetual Legarda traffic coming in from Nagtahan, and it was already 9AM at the time; the tour was supposed to start at 930.

When we finally got to the San Agustin Church, it turned out that we were the first ones to arrive. And when the other people who joined the tour came, all of us had to wait for quite some time before the tour began. It was quite funny coz the people who came in later wore worried looks on their faces because they thought they were late. Well, why am I not surprised that it's because of the traffic?

And now, for the tour...

It was such a sight to see Carlos in his costume: Barong Tagalog, shorts, sandals, and a top hat. He even had this bag of props and a radio, all of which were very helpful in his theatrical tour. We started out with singing the Lupang Hinirang, in which Carlos gave a trivia: the last few notes of the Lupang Hinirang are similar to the last few notes of France's national anthem, only backwards.

If there was a crash course of Philippine history, Carlos Celdran definitely is the man to give it. Yes, he had mentioned the obvious things from the time before the Spaniards came, plus some really juicy bits that we didn't learn from school. Take note our language, for example. As we Filipinos know, our language is a mixture of Malay, Spanish and English, the last two courtesy of the two colonial periods our country underwent. One example that Carlos gave was before the Spaniards came, we already had the concept of heaven, langit as we call it in Tagalog. When the Spaniards came, they introduced another concept: infierno--which is just one of the ways the Spanish friars of that time scared the Filipinos half to death. One other thing I remember most about what he said about the Spanish colonization of the Philippines was that those governor-generals who came here are just poor creatures who don't have the power; it's the friars who had it. Who could remember from their history lesson that the main reason why those good friars went out of their way to learn our language and dialects was to be able to understand what WE say while WE could NOT understand them? Hm, pretty sly for those messengers of God, no?

We also learned about the importance of the Chinese in Philippine history. Those Spaniards who were so insecure of the Chinese's abilities during that period made sure that their quarters was just one cannon shot away from Intramuros. That's also to insure that the Chinese won't even think of revolting against them. Of course they did, and thus resulting in several revolts that cost the lives of thousands of Chinese. And as the saying goes, if you can't beat them, join them, right? So if you go around Manila high society these days, you'd see more Asian-looking people than Caucasians.

In between walks inside the San Agustin museum, Carlos played some songs on a radio he brought along with him to enhance the "historical mood" as well as to emphasize on which colonial time he was talking about. We had enough time to explore Father Blanco's garden, which, I may say, I've wondered about all those times I stood along Calle Real, just outside the wall of the garden whenever I'm in Intramuros. I really love the feeling of being inside a historical structure such as this and even if I savor the sight of the crumbling walls more than the plants, I just love...