Fantasy Lodge Kawa Bath

The kawa bath at Fantasy Lodge uses a wide iron cauldron of the same type once used across the Visayas to boil sugarcane juice down into muscovado sugar — filled here with hot, herb-infused water instead. The idea of repurposing these sugar cauldrons as bathtubs traces back to Tibiao, in Antique on Panay Island, where lodges started filling old kawa pots with heated, herb-scented water as a wellness draw sometime in the past couple of decades. The concept spread from there to Cebu and Bohol, where a handful of lodges — Fantasy Lodge among them — built the same setup into a mountain or garden setting.

Before that repurposing, a kawa this size would have sat over an open fire at a sugar mill, reducing pressed cane juice down through repeated boiling until it thickened into muscovado — the darker, less-refined sugar that was a staple crop across much of the Visayas before centrifugal white sugar production took over the industry in the 20th century. The pots that survive that era are heavy cast iron, built to take direct flame for hours at a stretch, which is exactly the durability that makes them suited to a second life as a bath rather than scrap metal.

At Samboan’s version, the setting does as much work as the bath itself: mountain jungle on all sides, with local herbs added to the water rather than commercial bath products, in a part of south Cebu where small tourism ventures like this increasingly supplement farming income. Heating a kawa bath still means burning wood underneath it for a sustained stretch, the same basic process as the old sugar-boiling operation minus the cane juice — a detail worth knowing since it means the bath isn’t instant, and lodges typically need advance notice to have the water hot and ready rather than being able to offer it on a walk-up basis.

The herbs that go into the water are usually gathered from the surrounding hillside rather than bought from a market, which keeps the ingredient cost low but also ties the bath’s exact scent and character to whatever’s growing and in season on a given week rather than a fixed recipe. That local-sourcing arrangement is common to small agritourism ventures across this part of south Cebu, where farming families increasingly add a tourism-facing offering — a kawa bath, a homestay room, a guided trail — onto an income that would otherwise depend entirely on crop cycles and weather.

Booking ahead matters more here than at most attractions on this list, since a cold kawa isn’t something staff can turn around on short notice, and a lodge with only one or two pots can only serve so many groups in a day. Visitors who plan the stop into a wider Samboan loop — pairing it with a waterfall earlier in the day and the kawa bath as an evening wind-down — tend to get more out of it than those who show up expecting an on-demand soak.

• The bath uses native mountain herbs rather than commercial additives, sourced locally rather than bought in.
• The jungle setting keeps the site quiet, away from the more heavily trafficked south Cebu routes.
• Late afternoon is the recommended slot — the mountain air cools while steam still rises off the water.

Explore More in Samboan to Badian

• Ginatilan Church
• Cambais Falls
• Samboan Heritage District