The Queen Margarette

Sometime around 2am, I’d finally had enough.  It was mid-May 2018, the first full day of my second trip to The Philippines, and despite a day that started at 6am with a 5K, (after checking into my room at 1am thanks to my host taking me a restaurant where guests dance with the chefs & servers), and ended with a drive to Lucena City - a town about four hours south of Manila, thanks to the noise in the hotel, I couldn't sleep. 

I had traveled 27 hours the day before, and after a second consecutive long day, I was beat, and by beat, I don't mean your garden variety travel tired.  No, I am talking 12 time zone jet lag/Bill Murray wandering aimlessly in Lost in Translation beat (anyone who has ever made the trip to Asia knows this movie is both non-fiction, and a rip-roaring comedy).

Unfortunately, the hotel had other plans.   Just outside my room was the Queen Margarette's pool deck, where “soothing jazz” had blared from speakers near my window since check-in.  My body needed sleep – and the jazz was not soothing as it stood between me and my one immediate goal. So, I walked to the front desk, begged them to let me sleep, but it was made clear to me:  'sorry po, the jazz stays on.'

About two hours later, jazz changed to rock love ballads of the 70s and 80s, as the hotel prepared for the breakfast buffet.  I slept maybe an hour that night, and it took my body a week to recover.  Thank God I'll never spend another night in my life in this hotel, I thought as we pulled out of the parking lot.

Good Riddance Queen Margarette.  

What I didn’t count on was God’s sense of humor.  Two weeks ago, on August 29th, I was back.  Back in Lucena City.  Back, checking-in at the Queen Margarette.

Lucena City is a place most visitors to The Philippines don’t get to once, yet here I was, back in this town for a second time.   I literally laughed out loud when I saw the Queen Margarette on the agenda, and after some protest, was assured I wouldn’t get a pool deck room again.   But as I settled into my room on the highest floor on the opposite side of the hotel from the pool, a room complete with a purple couch, and peeling paint, I found myself confronting a new enemy: A window mounted air conditioning unit that somehow caused the wall to bang on the other side of the room.  Maybe the jazz wasn't all that bad, I wondered, tossing myself to sleep.   

Thus is travel in the developing world.

How does one end up in Lucena City, not once, but twice in their life?

Back in 2013, I was nominated by my friend Chip Burpee to the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL), a bipartisan group that connects young leaders around the globe.  I was barely, but technically still young, and if I was going to end up on a delegation before I crossed the threshold from young to not young, I would likely have to say yes to the first offer.  

The call came: Philippines and Malaysia – and we are leaving in 2 months.  Now, while I have never shied away from traveling to places most avoid, these were not two countries high on my list of places to go.   I’ll admit, the more I read about Malaysia, the more excited I was (for good reason – it is a remarkable place), but even as I headed off to Manila, I was a still a little unsure about The Philippines.  I’ve written extensively about that trip, but the key takeaway was that for as much as I loved the people I met, other than a steady stream of Jamba Juice, electrolyte water, and Imodium, I basically didn’t eat for 5 days.  It was a slog.

So as I stood at the check in counter at 4:30 AM at Manila Airport (then ranked the single worst airport in the world) on December 12, 2013 to check into my flight to Malaysian Borneo, while grateful for the chance to visit, I was pretty sure I had seen The Philippines for the last time.  

But just like the Queen Margarette, God had another plan.

Four years later, I met Lord Arnel "LA" Ruanto, a young man I was assigned to mentor through the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI), a program ACYPL helps administer.  LA is a bright and ambitious guy.  Elected to office in his hometown of Infanta, some 4-5 hours east of Manila, at the age of 21, at the time we met, LA was a town councilmember (LA now in his early 30’s, and is the recently re-elected Vice Mayor).   He had come to the US through YSEALI to learn skills that would help him in his work to train Filipino young leaders.  

He has nearly unlimited energy, an infectious personality, and through his work training young elected leaders in his own country, has built a network of friends and colleagues across the nation.  He’s the kind of person you want to root for:  innately positive, ethical, hard-working, decent, and loyal. 

During his month long stay in Tallahassee with Nikole and I, he lobbied me no fewer than 2-3 times a day to give his country another try.  “Steve, brother” he would say, “you have to come visit me – you have to let me show you the country. You will love it and The Philippines will love you. I promise.”  He wore me down,  so when ACYPL allowed me to do a follow-up trip, where I as his mentor could see the things he was working on from our fellowship, I said yes.  

Flying into Manila in May of 2018, I was admittedly a little uncertain.  I was excited to see people I had met 4.5 years earlier, and I was looking forward to seeing LA, but what I didn’t want was a repeat of 2013.  So I said to LA, I want to get out of Manila this time - a city I unfairly blamed for my Jamba Juice week.  He took the direction he took to heart, and over some 10 nights, we slept in 8 cities - often met with banners welcoming me to this city or that city, spoke to well more than a dozen groups, and met with political leaders young and old.  

It turns out he was right about his country – I hadn’t really given it a fair shot the first time around, and by the end of my second trip – notwithstanding the night at the Queen Margarette, I was officially a fan.  This time, as I left Manila, I knew it wouldn’t be my last. 

After his first trip here, and my trip to see him in 2018, LA and I stayed in regular contact - him helping me understand his country, and in return, I tried to help him think through strategy on races he worked on. In the summer 2020, LA called to tell me that he and his wife Jenny were having second kid, and "brother you will be her godfather", he declares.   How does one be a godfather to a child 10,000 miles away, I wondered before remembering my wonderful stepfather's solid life advice:  'There are 3 things you don’t say no to: Being a groomsman, a pall bearer, or a godparent.'  I said I would be honored, and in doing so, knew I was heading back.  

In August 2020, Baby Lexi was born, but thanks to COVID, the baptism would have to wait.  In addition to restrictions on in-person gatherings, going to the Philippines for foreigners wasn’t an option, unless I wanted to spend 2 weeks in a Manila hotel quarantine.   

Once the foreign travel restrictions were lifted, this whole christening evolved around my schedule.  Their family is huge, and many had to travel to get to Manila, the site of the baptism, and Infanta, LA’s hometown, and site of the party, for this event.  My initial plan of going in the late spring was quashed by a series of special sessions of the Florida Legislature.

LA offered a date:  August 25^th, Lexi’s 2^nd birthday, and fortunately, it fit neatly into a window in my schedule. Since I was the one thing standing between Lexi and God's blessing of her soul, I quickly booked a flight.  As LA's Mom said to me at the ceremony, "we've been waiting for you to get here," and it was time to get on with it. 

Unfortunately, Nikole couldn’t make this trip, but joining me in Manila would be my dear friend Numan Afifi, a YSEALI colleague of LA, who had also spent a month with us in Tallahassee.  Courage is a word over used in politics, but courage is the only word applicable to Numan’s work.  More on him in a future piece.

This trip had four goals:  Baptize Lexi, visit LA” s hometown of Infanta (more on this in another piece), do a few meetings/roundtables with young leaders, and use the time to be intentional about growing my own network there, and hopefully find a few projects LA and I can work on together in future years.  

The night I landed, at nearly midnight local time, after 29 hours of travel, rains from a nearby tropical system pounded the town.  I was the literal last person off the flying greyhound bus that was my Korean Air flight, and as such, and after an hour of navigating the commotion of Manila immigration - I walked the 100 yards or so to where arriving cars wait, and there was LA, with a small entourage, recording every moment.  We left the airport, and drove immediately into a crush of humanity.  Ah yes, Manila, just as I remembered you. 

Most days were a whirlwind – a mix of reuniting with friends from previous trips and meeting new ones.   We kept a ridiculous pace – smashing what would normally take two weeks into one, requiring us to spend each of the seven nights I was in the country in a different bed.   The only way to pack so much into the schedule, yet deal with the production-choking morning Manila traffic was to start the day close to the first meeting, which meant ending the day somewhere different each night.  It was an amazing trip – but vacation this was not.  

That being said, traveling in The Philippines as an American is a truly wonderful experience.  The ties between our two countries date back well over 100 years, and relationship between our two countries is vitally important to both.  The slogan the US Embassy in Manila uses - Friends, Partners, Allies - is truly more than just words.  There is in fact a deep shared history - particularly between The Philippines and my now home state of Florida, which was founded at roughly the same time, by roughly the same people, as Manila; and which was part of the Spanish empire for nearly as long as The Philippines.  

Sadly, most Americans aren't aware of these ties, but when one spends time there, it becomes obvious just how important the relationship is for everyday Filipinos.  Culturally, the place leans to the west, and with many everyday Filipinos have family in the US, the idea of America is very much the aspiration. 

For LA, a kid from a small, rural, and fairly poor town, being selected to spend time in the US as a YSEALI fellow was a tremendous honor – not just for him, but for his friends, his family, and the place where he was from.  And as I realized over the last few days of this trip, even more than on the last, me being there with him was also a big deal.  Not many Americans show up in Infanta, or Lucena City - and even fewer show up for the reasons I was on this trip.    

After a few nights in Metro Manila, we woke up on Sunday morning, August 29^th in his hometown, after a rager of a party at his house.  Following a night of the local hooch, karaoke, and conservatively a 1,000 selfies with LA's family, friends, and political supporters, we were headed to Lucena City, the capital city of LA’s province, for a series of talks, and for me to meet one LA’s political clients, the Governor of Quezon Province, Helen Tan.   

But before Lucena, it was time for LA to show us his home.  Numan and I were met by a small party at the town's Jollibee, the nation's ubiquitous fast food chain (and of course, banners - apparently roughly 40 in total in the town - see below).   We visited the fishing port, one of the city’s main economic drivers – and the nearby slum where many who work the port live.  We got halo halo at a beachfront stand, toured downtown, and saw the council chamber where he presides over city council meetings (in the Philippines, the Vice Mayor runs the council meetings).  We visited his high school, toured his local cathedral, and visited with everyone he knew.  For 24 hours, Numan and I were minor celebrities in a corner of the world most Filipinos couldn't find on a map.  

I could have stayed there for a week, but the show had to go on.  Four more hours down the road, we arrived that night back at the Queen Margarette, where the next day I would give a talk with LA under an 8-foot-tall banner of my own head – as club music from a fashion show in the next room pounded into our meeting room.  

For me, it was a chance to do what I loved – interact with political types in a foreign land, talk about the country I love,  listen and learn as they talked about theirs, and to brag about my friend.  For LA, this conference was a big deal – a chance to further cement his relationships among a constituency vital for anything he might do politically outside of his town, as well as for him to brag about his friend.  But what mattered -- for both of us, is we did it together.  

Bourdain was right when he said, “Filipinos are probably the most giving people on the planet,” and that spirit is evident in LA.  When I complained to his sister that he was demanding to pay for literaly everything on my trip, she was unsympathetic, told me I didn't get it -- and that one day, maybe I would understand.  It was the least he could do, she said, to show generosity for me making the trip.  When I pushed back, she pushed back 'Get over it Steve - it is what Filipinos do,' she told me one more time, as I sheepishly stopped protesting.  Bourdain, as usual, had nailed it. 

But the funny thing is, I was absolutely the one getting the bigger gift.  My life is fuller in so many ways because of my relationship with the country, and the many Filipinos who have become friends.  The author Miriam Adeney said of travel that "you will never be completely home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere.  That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place."   

LA has ensured a small part of me will always be in that corner of the world.   Not only did he help me fall in love with his place, thanks to him and his wife, my own life is forever connected with a sweet little girl who lives next to a rice field in one of the most beautiful corners of the world I've ever seen, an honor I will treasure for as many days as I have left on this Earth. 

The Philippines isn’t an easy place to travel.  Getting there from the east coast of the USA is a 24-hour event if you are lucky.  Manila airport is chaotic, and the chaos only grows when you drive into the city.  Some have ranked Manila traffic as the worst in the world, and while I haven’t yet been to India, it is certainly the worst I’ve ever seen.   The city is gritty, poverty is ubiquitous, and in many places, even little things like brushing your teeth have to be done with some caution.  Tropical it is - Cabo San Lucas it is not. 

Getting around the country is even harder - distances that would take an hour or two in the US often take a half a day or longer.  Traveling there requires patience and humility, and the dependence on the good will of  strangers in a foreign land can leave you feeling vulnerable.  It also forces you to deal with your own privledge, and to reckon with the randomness of the birth lottery.  If a walled-off all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean is your idea of the perfect vacation, the Philippines is not your destination.  Those places ensure enjoyment in part by protecting guests from seeing what is around them -- by comparison, The Philippines just smacks you in the face.   

That being said, given a choice, give me the latter every day of the week- and I wish more Americans would do the same.  Perspective is healthy.

I know this:  LA is family.  Watching him shine on stage all week was good for my own soul, and if my presence helped shine the light a little brighter on him, or to validate him in some other way, that is a role I am blessed to play.  God has a plan for him – maybe Mayor – maybe Congress – maybe Governor – only God knows, but I know this, part of my purpose going forward is helping him figure all of that out, and to show up when my presence helps.   If along the way, I get to see a little girl as she grows up...and maybe drink more of the local stuff with the Infanta locals, well, that is all just a bonus.

And since his future will almost certainly run through Lucena City, no matter what he does, I know I have not spent my last night at the Queen Margarette. We’ll be back, both for him, and for me. 

Just next time, I’ll bring ear plugs (and hopefully Nikole).  

Thanks for everything LA.  Love you brother.  I am a truly blessed man. 

(Below - Me, Numan Afifi, Lord Arnel "LA" Ruanto on the beach in Infanta - me wearing the lei I was given before a talk the three of us gave to young leaders in Infanta)