My Chance Travel Encounter With Imelda Marcos

Imelda Marcos demonstrates her phone shaped like a shoe.

Note: This is the second in an occasional series of chance encounters I’ve had with famous people while traveling. The first was with anthropologist Margaret Mead in Kenya as she hesitated to cross a busy Nairobi boulevard. 

Several years ago I was in Manila, capital of the Philippines, and in a bit of a funk.

I was traveling with a group of journalists and we had just finished dinner at a mediocre Chinese restaurant that was located in a nondescript mall way across town from our hotel –a two-hour bus ride, or should I say crawl, away. (Without traffic it would have been maybe 20-30 minutes, but Manila traffic is notoriously brutal.) The dinner was as bland as its surroundings.

As we walked back to the bus all I could think about was the long return ride that awaited. Our… Continue reading →