Through my childhood and early teen years, a family routine on a weekend usually included going to this little resort in Los Baños, Laguna (Philippines) called Lakeview. Sunday afternoons, after church, my dad would pack us into his big American car and we would go swimming in the hot springs of Los Baños. And the place to be in the 1960s was Lakeview: it was new and it was trendsetting.
It sat beside an older icon in Los Baños: Agua Santa (which pioneered the hot spring resort business: see link for an even earlier history). From my preteen mind in the late 1960s...that was ancient and uncool. Lakeview is the new and better resort. Newer hot springs would come around and later my dad would venture to those places and as time and other adolescent preoccupation takes its toll, Lakeview gradually drops out of the radar.
A week ago, both in the spirit of adventure and being sentimental, I took my son and daughter to explore and revisit Lakeview again. It was still there! It was still operating (a side trip next door reveals the fate of Agua Santa). It was a time warp: I was back in the late 1960s again.
Being with my autistic daughter, I would rent a room so we would have a private place to change into swim wear and perhaps a bed to nap before the drive back home. Suffice to say it feels like the bedding were from the 1960s...
Obviously a shadow of its former self it provided a sentimental visit but I probably would not go there again.
I could probably post a full size crop version of those photos in the wall and other memorabilia in the two photographs above but I felt they were too personal for the owners of Lakeview. But the black and whites and the certificates are echoes of the glory days of another time.
It sat beside an older icon in Los Baños: Agua Santa (which pioneered the hot spring resort business: see link for an even earlier history). From my preteen mind in the late 1960s...that was ancient and uncool. Lakeview is the new and better resort. Newer hot springs would come around and later my dad would venture to those places and as time and other adolescent preoccupation takes its toll, Lakeview gradually drops out of the radar.
A week ago, both in the spirit of adventure and being sentimental, I took my son and daughter to explore and revisit Lakeview again. It was still there! It was still operating (a side trip next door reveals the fate of Agua Santa). It was a time warp: I was back in the late 1960s again.
Being with my autistic daughter, I would rent a room so we would have a private place to change into swim wear and perhaps a bed to nap before the drive back home. Suffice to say it feels like the bedding were from the 1960s...
Obviously a shadow of its former self it provided a sentimental visit but I probably would not go there again.
I could probably post a full size crop version of those photos in the wall and other memorabilia in the two photographs above but I felt they were too personal for the owners of Lakeview. But the black and whites and the certificates are echoes of the glory days of another time.
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