Travel Time: The journey continues

I have so many fond memories of Susan Calo-Medina. Decades ago, I remember Susan asking me to handle the publicity of Travel Time. My friend Floy Quintos was on board as writer. Susan believed in me as a publicist as I believed in her as a woman like no one.

“Huwag maging dayuhan sa sariling bayan,” Susan asked her audiences to travel with her around the country and more. On her show Travel Time, we discovered that in every place there lies a beautiful story, a history that is unique and a people who are infinitely interesting. Susan was an engaging television host as she was engaging as a person. She was always bubbling with ideas and she tried to put them visually in her show. We will miss traveling with her. We miss her.

Below is a Q&A with Susan’s son Marc Medina (currently on-leave from his doctoral studies at Oxford University in England) on the continued travel of Travel Time. Read on.

Did your mother encourage you to be part of Travel Time? How are you preparing for that role?

“My mother never planned for any of her children to take over Travel Time. She said so many times. We had our own careers, and we were expected to distinguish ourselves in whatever we chose to do. Travel Time was her own project, her own advocacy. She made it what it was: The show was hers alone. She began the show in 1986 with barely P60,000 to her name, and she made it grow into something that was larger than she had ever imagined it could be. The show became even larger than Susan Calo-Medina.”

How did Manu Sandejas come into the picture of co-hosting Travel Time?

“She had been looking for a male co-host for years. Even back in the ’90s, she was already inviting younger male co-hosts to travel with her. I remember Calvin Millado and Ogie Alcasid. In 2012, she thought of my cousin Manu Sandejas (son of my dad’s cousin). I remember distinctly she told me in a London taxi: ‘I’m taking Manu as my co-host. I think he’ll do well. And I know he’ll never leave me for another show.’ Manu had my mother’s full confidence and I know she was considering turning over the show for him to host. In November 2014, I remember telling her over dinner in a classy London restaurant that she ought to start reinventing Travel Time so she could slowly pull away so we could see more of Manu. While discreetly avoiding the word ‘retire’ — a word I’m sure she didn’t want to hear — I told her, ‘Pagod ka na no?’ She smiled, ‘Oo nga eh…’”

Did you always think of Manu to succeed your mother?

“When my mother passed away, our natural choice as Travel Time host (‘our’ meaning my sisters’ choice and mine) was Manu. Luckily, the choice was one agreeable to Travel Time’s main sponsor since the very beginning, the Department of Tourism. We are planning to get a female co-host at some later date, but right now we’d like to establish Manu as the new face of Travel Time.”

What makes Travel Time unique?

“What made the show interesting, admittedly, was that everyone was watching a mother, and later grandmother, traipse around the jungles of the Philippines in her shorts and slippers. Sometimes, she would deck herself up in a Maranao or Maguindanao malong (antique gold earrings to match), but most of the time she was how she was at home — casual and easygoing. That was Travel Time’s special flavor: Watching a glamorous grandmother hanging off a cliff or walking over a forest on a suspended bridge (or eating crickets and fish heads). You traveled the Philippines and traveled with interest because you traveled with her.”

What made Travel Time as the travel show?

“The show has carved its own niche among travel shows. It is to the show’s advantage that my mother was the first among local travel shows. Travel Time has become famous for its intelligent, informative, authoritative and — above all — entertaining features on domestic travel destinations, Philippine arts and culture, with a bit of history here and there. Travel Time had done a bit of adventure destinations, but we’re hoping to add more to that with Manu at the helm. Diving was not a top priority, for instance, simply because my mother couldn’t swim, much less dive.”

How are you moving towards traveling without Susan?

“Transition is always difficult. When my mother passed away, our immediate concern as her children was to protect her legacy — the previous episodes built over two decades, for which she became famous. My mother was able to feature places and people rarely seen on mainstream local television. She filmed a Yakan wedding, for instance, and the banig weavers of Tawi-Tawi. She shot the churches of Pampanga before the lahar, Bohol before the earthquake and a Manobo ritual sacrifice. She featured both Hudhud (Ifugao) and Darangen (Maranao); the pre-Hispanic writing of the Mangyans and Palawanons; Sagada and Batanes before they were on the guidebooks. These are episodes in Travel Time’s current library, and we would like to preserve that and make that accessible to the general public in the future.”

Have you and your siblings talked about handling Travel Time?

“We are, of course, sentimental about our mother’s legacy. But among all her children, I am the most sentimental about the show itself — where it will go with Manu, how it will evolve and reinvent itself. Maybe it’s because among us siblings, I was the only one who ever got involved with the show directly as a writer. My mother was always particular about the script (‘A good show begins with a good script; an intelligent show, with an intelligent script,’ she used to say). Indeed, that became the show’s trademark to accompany the lush images: What she said and how she said it were intelligent, but immensely approachable. Among the many comments on social media after she passed away was one that struck all of us: ‘Thank you Susan Calo-Medina for never underestimating the intelligence of the Filipino.’ It was a formula that worked not only for the country’s well-heeled, but for the market vendors, bibingka makers, banig weavers and piña embroiderers all over the country. The congressman or governor’s daughter from the Assumption was accessible to all.”

Will there be new additions or changes to the show?

“So, if there’s one thing that won’t change, it’s the need for a well-written script. ‘Scripts are meant to be heard,’ she told me once when I first started writing for her. ‘The written word is not the spoken word, but good writing is good writing is good writing.’ Meaning, if you knew how to write and you could write well, you could write anything. My mother had Floy Quintos and Rikki Lopez to write her scripts, with Dr. Jaime Laya and Bambi Lammoglia Harper on occasion (Floy was her personal favorite, even over me). They were all knowledgeable in their respective fields of expertise, and they knew how to turn written word into visual image.”

Is anyone afraid of Susan Medina?

“Nobody wants to be compared to Susan Calo-Medina (not even — or rather, not especially — her children!). My mother was a theater actress, who graduated college at 14 (two degrees, both cum laude), read voraciously (classics, modern literature, travel books); could switch from Butuanon to Visayan to a smattering of Kapampangan, to Tagalog to a bit of Spanish; played Bach and Chopin on her 50-year-old Steinway; and could spot a fake antique or pretentious artwork a mile away. She had an insatiable desire to eat the best of whatever was on offer — be it the freshest seafood for her Butuan kinilaw, the most authentically slow-cooked Kapampangan meal (my dad was from Arayat); a Michelin-starred restaurant in London or Paris, or the juiciest burger at the mall. She had a fascination for the indigenous communities of the Philippines, many of the major ones she had already featured in the show. She was on the committee of the Gawad Manlilikha ng Bayan of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, a relationship she valued immensely. We can’t expect anyone to match those personal achievements; that wouldn’t be fair.”

What’s next for Travel Time?

“For now, our priority is to get the show on the road, if you’ll forgive the cliché. We have destinations and other features lined-up, most of them on the table when my mother passed away. We plan to continue that, with the same treatment, the same visual formula, the same intelligent script that Travel Time has become famous for. Manu is a curious, intelligent observer with all the right questions in his head (my mother was always appreciative of those qualities in him). He has the right perspective, the right television presence and can set the right tone for the show (albeit a different approach to that of my mother’s — but who wants to be compared to Susan Calo-Medina, anyway?). It is difficult, of course, to think of Travel Time without my mother. But with Manu at the helm, I think my mother’s legacy is in good hands.”

Susan with co-host Manu Sandejas: With him on the helm, Travel Time is in ‘good hands’ — Instagram photo