Boracay Island Land Tour: The Kawa Bath

What a kawa actually is

A kawa is a very large cast iron vat, historically used across the Philippines for boiling sugarcane juice down into muscovado sugar. They are wide, shallow and heavy, and they turn up on old sugar estates all over Panay.

When the sugar industry contracted, a great many of them were left sitting around doing nothing. Somebody in Antique province, on the same island as Boracay, had the idea of filling one with water, lighting a fire underneath and getting in.

That is the whole invention. A kawa bath is a hot bath in an agricultural relic, heated by an open fire, and it has become one of the more distinctive things a visitor to this part of the Philippines can do. Panay's sugar estates left a great many of them behind, which is why the idea started where it did.

Boracay island beach tours and the photo op

The tour lists a kawa bath photo op among its inclusions, and the wording is precise. This is a photo stop rather than a bathing session with towels and a changing room.

That is the right expectation to set. You are not going to spend twenty minutes soaking; you are going to see a kawa, understand what it is, and get a photograph in or beside it.

For a five and a half hour tour built around beaches and snorkelling, a small cultural item like this is a good addition. It is the part of the day guests do not see coming. Nobody books an island hopping tour expecting a sugar vat, which is exactly why it lands.

A kawa bath, a large iron vat set over a fire, at one of the stops

How it works

A fire is built underneath the vat and the water inside is warmed by it, with somebody tending the fire to keep the temperature reasonable. There is usually a wooden platform or steps to get in and out.

Flower petals and leaves are scattered on the surface, which is partly for the photograph and partly a genuine tradition. Herbs and flowers in a hot bath are not a Philippine invention alone.

It looks alarming and it is not. The vat is thick iron and the water is warmed rather than boiled, with the person managing the fire doing the temperature control that the bather cannot. Guests photograph it more than almost anything else on the day, which is presumably why it was added.

Where the idea came from

Antique province, on the western side of Panay, which is the large island Boracay sits off. The concept spread from there through the region over the last decade or so.

It sits in a broader Filipino tradition of repurposing agricultural equipment rather than discarding it. The same instinct turns jeeps into jeepneys and outrigger fishing boats into tour vessels.

That is part of why it earns a stop on a tour like this one. It says something about the place that a beach and a reef between them simply cannot, and the whole thing takes about five minutes.

Do you actually get in

That depends on the stop and on you. The inclusion is described as a photo op, so treat getting in as a possibility rather than a promise and bring swimwear you are already wearing.

Plenty of people photograph it without climbing in, and on a day that has already involved several swims a hot bath is not necessarily what everybody wants.

Ask the guide what the arrangement is at the stop before you plan anything around it. They run this route daily and they will tell you straightforwardly what happens and what does not.

Boracay island hopping and the cultural stops

This is the only one on the itinerary, and it is worth noticing for that reason. Island hopping tours in this part of the world are overwhelmingly about beaches, reefs and lunch.

A stop that is about a piece of Filipino agricultural history, however lightly, gives the day a texture that sand and water alone would not. It is also the item most likely to prompt a question.

Ask what a kawa was used for and you will get an answer about sugar, about the estates on Panay, and about what happened when the industry changed. That is a considerably better souvenir than the photograph. It is the question guides seem happiest to be asked, which is usually a good sign about a stop.

Is it worth it

It is included, so the question is really whether to engage with it rather than whether to pay for it. Engaging with it takes five minutes and produces the most unusual photograph of the day.

The alternative is to treat it as a gimmick and stand to one side while other people photograph it, which is a legitimate enough response to any attraction built primarily around a photograph.

The middle position is probably the right one: understand what it is, appreciate that somebody looked at a disused sugar vat and saw a bath, take the picture, and get back on the boat.

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