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Malacañang Palace of the North

Also in our list of "to visit" in the Ilocos region was the Palace Ti Amianan, where the Marcos' had a man-made lake built at the back of the house in order to attain grand scenery from looking out of the balcony and the garden. I can just imagine from the balcony, one could catch a magnificent view of the sunset reflecting on the lake.

The first level of the house on the right wing is where the dining room is located. I can't remember clearly now if it was a twenty sitter table or perhaps even more. The table was so long that I doubt if the two persons sitting at both ends could still communicate properly at mealtimes. When we went there, we couldn't get inside though since they were putting wax on the floor of the dining room. The area had to be sealed off. Actually, I can recall now that the whole place was quite recently waxed at the time of our visit since one could still smell the very strong toxic smell of it. On the left wing of the house are still more bedrooms. I assume they served as guest rooms and a couple more toilets. In between these wings is the lanai or foyer that would go directly to the garden. With long sliding doors, I can imagine that the whole receiving area would embrace the sunrays the whole day. The view of the man-made lake just made the picture perfect for a lovely setting.

A view of the Malacañang Palace of the North from the garden.

The second level of the house looked liked a hotel lobby. This is where most of the rooms are located. The master bedroom connected to the study/library is also located here. This room is the biggest among the rooms found in the palace of course. Unfortunately, the whole place is somehow empty. Cheap paintings hung on the walls except for that Malakas & Maganda mural on the wall to the stairs. There are several sets of old tables and chairs which are placed there just for the sake that there is furniture in the place. Mind you not old as in antique ones, but old common ones which where probably used in some government offices before. D.O.T. who is now managing the maintenance of the area must have placed the selected cheap furniture so the house would still look nice if not impressive. But the cupboards and the beds according to the guards are still the original ones.

A view from the long balcony of the palace.

Upon entering into a bedroom, (which seemed to be made for girls) on the right corner of the room is filled with cupboards made of Nara wood and fitted with several body sized mirrors. Facing the mirrors, one could see how one looks like in the dress that they're wearing from all angles. Again, this is how it is set now. Before, it may have been arranged in a different way. Meaning, they may have just put all those cupboards together to make space for the other old stuff in the room. Each bedroom had a four poster bed with drapes of matching floral designs as the comforters and sheets. This is set to show how the beds looked like before. But, hello? COMFORTER? in the Philippines?! One can just imagine the air conditioning being ON all the time then, if they have those in their rooms which is actually common only in countries with cool climate. Well, that explains the size of the air conditioning units that they have there as well....I should have taken photos of those as well! The luxury that they enjoyed in exchange for the hardships of the commoners!

The whole property is now government owned. To keep it maintained, people can come & visit for a meager price which is used for any minor reparations and cleaning. Too bad though, that the Palace is not properly maintained as can be seen in the photos.

The neighboring property is a Golf Club which is owned and frequented by the Japanese and Korean neighbors who fly in for the day to play golf. Most of the time, they come to the palace looking for the corpse body of the late president Ferdinand E. Marcos, as what the guard there informed us. It was indeed true, because there were a couple of them who came to ask us where the body of the late president was located in that house. I wanted to tell them, if you come with us, we can show you around, but you'll have to pay for the tour, hehehe!

Posted by missP at December 7, 2004 01:42 AM