One thing became evident the minute we left Manila for the Ilocos region at the crack of dawn: Francisco Sionil Jose’s energy is awesome. While almost everybody else (many of them half or even a third his age) was barely able to open their eyes before we stopped for breakfast in Tarlac three hours later, "Manong Frankie" talked and talked—about topics like faith healers for example, why Tagalog became the national language or how Tarlac is a melting pot of languages. During the two-day trip, we hardly ever saw him dozing off—he kept up his incredible stamina until we returned around midnight the following day.

Sixteen MVP members and four guests (including the grandson of Mr. Jose) had the unique privilege of having F. Sionil Jose, one of the Philippines’ best-known writers, as a tour guide for a weekend trip to Pangasinan and the Ilocos. In many respects, it was a literary journey following the traces of Mr. Jose’s Rosales Saga, particularly the first book, Po-on. One of our first stops was indeed Rosales, Frankie Jose’s hometown in Pangasinan. He left Rosales as a very young man and has lived in Manila ever since but, as is evident from his novels, the place is still close to his heart. "The most important asset of a writer is his memory," he says. "And that what shapes a nation is that it has a collective memory."

He says that to nurture his roots, to hear the old dialect and to be close to the themes he is working on he makes a point of returning to Rosales every now and then. His old barrio in Rosales is now a rather nondescript, small rural town. We saw Frankie Jose’s old school and the creek where he used to swim as a child. "Manong Frankie" also took us to the street where he grew up, a small road with modest rural dwellings next to rice fields. Rosales used to be a rice trading center. Unfortunately, the house where he used to live with his mother and three siblings has burned down. According to Mr. Jose, life has in some ways improved in his old neighborhood—the old dirt path is now covered with concrete and the houses are bigger and better than before. But people here are clearly still quite poor and many of them are still landless. Frankie Jose calls Rosales a "rural slum." He talked a lot about the injustices of land ownership in the Philippines, how it all started with the Spanish encomienda system and how educated Filipinos had abused the Torrens Title system that the Americans had originally introduced to improve land distribution. According to Mr. Jose, even today rich landowners [including very well-known politicos] try to find ways to get around land reform.

The social injustices in the Philippines and the reasons for poverty in his country are a topic Mr. Jose reflected on a lot. He told us how he once had dinner with some of the richest people in the country. When they asked him about the reasons for the poverty in the Philippines, Frankie Jose shouted: "There are three reasons: It’s your fault, your fault, and your fault!" One of the problems, he says, is that many rich Filipinos—particularly Spanish or Chinese mestizos— send their money overseas instead of investing it in the country. At the same time, however, he criticizes the poor for being too apathetic.

The first day of our trip was quite tiring as we spent most of the day in the bus. We had lunch at a nice beach resort in La Union province and saw some beautiful churches like

Both churches are included in the UNESCO’s World Heritage List as classic examples of Philippine "earthquake baroque architecture." The scenery along the way to Ilocos Norte was beautiful—rice paddies and the Cordillera range on one side of the road and the South China Sea (visible for some of the time) on the other side.

Frankie Jose told us a lot about the character of the people from the Ilocos. His forefathers were Ilocanos. Like the fictitious Samson family in Po-on, they migrated from the Ilocos to Pangasinan many generations ago. Several former Filipino Presidents were Ilocanos—Quirino, Magsaysay, Ramos and the most famous/infamous Ilocano of all times, Ferdinand Marcos. Mr. Jose calls him "the only Ilocano aberration" because generally speaking, Ilocanos are famous for being extremely hard working and frugal. Their work ethic becomes evident in the perfectly manicured fields along the way and later, in the cleanliness and orderliness of towns like Laoag and Vigan. Other things we learned from "Manong Frankie" about the Ilocanos: They are the only ethnic group in the Philippines with their own folk epic, their food is very plain and not that tasty, they are not show-offs, they like to be independent and are very migratory people. Many houses are built with the help of remittances from overseas foreign workers. The Ilocos region is also infamous for its high number of political killings. Ferdinand Marcos, for example, is said to have killed a political opponent of his father.

We spent the night in Fort Ilocandia in Laoag, a huge, red brick, Spanish hacienda-style beach resort built by the Marcoses for the sole purpose of presenting an extravagant venue for the wedding of their daughter Irene. As ‘white’ was the theme for the wedding, Imelda Marcos had all kinds of antiques painted white for the occasion and made the people of Laoag decorate the streets with thousands of white flowers made out of tissue paper. A private company now owns the hotel but there are still many photos of the Marcoses in the lobby—a rather strange and surprising sight. Then again, the governor of the province is still called Ferdinand Marcos—Junior, that is! The next morning we first

visited an old brick church, Santa Monica (Imelda had ordered stripping off the protective plaster to expose the bricks) and later the very picturesque market of Laoag.

We then went on to the Malacañang of the North— the Marcoses’ beautiful lakeside mansion near Laoag. The huge complex is complete with golf course and a "Marcos shooting range." In the town of Batac we finally saw the man himself. Like several other famous dictators of the world, his remains are exposed in an air-conditioned mausoleum. He doesn’t look real but the guard assured us that it was indeed the body of Ferdinand Marcos, covered with a layer of wax. In many ways it’s quite appalling that the Marcos family was allowed to build him a public shrine but, compared to the Mao or Ho Chi Minh mausoleum for example, it is quite humble and in a relatively remote place. There didn’t seem to be many visitors around. Next to the mausoleum is a small museum containing a statue and photos of Marcos as well as objects that belonged to him—like a series of car number plates that show his ascension from governor to president. The same building contains an office of Marcos’ daughter Imee, who represents the Ilocos region as a congresswoman. Even today, the Ilocos region remains Marcos country.

Later, we passed through the small town of Cabugao, the ancestral village of F. Sionil Jose and also the place where the Samson family in Po-on lived before they had to flee from the Ilocos to Pangasinan. We saw the church where the priest was killed in the novel and the river the family had to cross when they fled. Frankie Jose first came here in the 1950s to do research for the book and to look for his family’s name in the church records.

Our last stop in the Ilocos—and for many of us it was the highlight of the trip—was the old town of Vigan. The town has retained its colonial charm and we felt more like being in Spain or Latin America than in the Philippines. Despite the heat, it was fun to walk through the beautiful old streets, browse through souvenir shops, visit the beautifully preserved home of a Spanish family and take a leisurely calesa ride.

The long, long ride back from Vigan to Manila seemed shorter due to the ever-energetic F. Sionil Jose. Not only did he entertain us with Ilocano jokes—he also provided us with a lot of juicy gossip about the mistresses of famous Filipino politicians. Material for a new novel, Mr. Jose?

photos by Jill Gale de Villa