Taiping Club’s Jungle Swimming Pool, 1959
This picture shows three “young at heart” Europeans enjoying the slide into the top pool of three that made up the Taiping Club’s swimming pool in the 1950s. It is still there but sadly overgrown and in a serious state of disrepair. Of course the club now has a new pool.
A user of the pool in 1959, Isobel Hatherley, recalls:
“This afternoon we went to the Taiping Swimming Club – very different from Ipoh. It is quite a drive up the hill through the jungle to a delightful waterfall that feeds the baths. It is much more primitive than Ipoh, with rather murky looking water, but it is really cold and refreshing, whereas at Ipoh the water is usually tepid. I had decided to give up swimming when we left Ipoh, but there were so few people up there I couldn’t resist it.”
Does anyone out there have more memories of this unique recreational facility?
More information about the pool may be found on our database.
I visited this place a few years ago. What a wonderful setting for a swimming pool – making the most of natures gifts of jungle and cold running water. What a pity it was abandoned.
**A user of the pool in 1959, Isobel Hatherley, recalls:
“This afternoon we went to the Taiping Swimming Club – very different from Ipoh. It is quite a drive up the hill through the jungle to a delightful waterfall that feeds the baths. It is much more primitive than Ipoh, with rather murky looking water, but it is really cold and refreshing, whereas at Ipoh the water is usually tepid. I had decided to give up swimming when we left Ipoh, but there were so few people up there I couldn’t resist
it.”**
MY MY MY…I am actually dumbfounded and very surprised to see such a note coming from a white person describing a waterfall in the MIDDLE of a MALAYSIAN JUNGLE…. IN THE 50′s for crying out loud ! More so when knowing that it’s located in our darling relatively untouched, Taiping. Even today’s Burmese Pool in Taiping has crystal clear water and as cold & refreshing as ever. Seriously, this kind of raw observation in the 1950′s ?? She must be having a bout of afterbirth sickness (meroyan) or something. hehehe ;D Either that or somebody is trying to paint a totally different image of our beautiful natural habitat.
Won’t work honey…not when I’m around ! Just give it up ! LOL ;D
Hello, lovely to see an image of the old pool at Taiping. I, and twin brother,learned to swim there in 1948 when we were six. We loved the slide (it was wood then). I remember it being a lovely natural area with a waterfall close by serving the slide.I have a photo of the occasion. Memories !!
Vince, thanks for the memory and for sharing it with us. As you have a photo would you consider sharing it with us please. A good scan (at say 600dpi or thereabouts) would be very welcome and would join the one above on our history archive (the database) for use in education.
The scan can be sent to info@ipohworld.org. Thank you.
I remember well this pool as we used to swim there most weekends (1952-55). I particularly remember the wood slide in the top pool with a little hole near the bottom which once tore my swimming trunks! My brothers and I learned to swim there. However the most memorable memory was of the delicious curry puffs, one could buy, served out of an old round biscuit tin. Memories!
Thanks for the memory. When I saw the wooden slide everything from the past evolving around this swimming pool and in particular visits there with school or classmates like Woon Ho Thye, Tan Choon Teik, Ng Hoong Kee, Toh Teong Kee,Leong Chee Woh and others during the 1940s. As regards to the Taiping Lakes preserve it as it is and what was in the past – a green and comforting sanctuary for all and not allow coveting politics or any other denomination to destroy the nostalgia of the environment that tourists and we who were born here so specially feel and treasure with such poignancy. AND REMEMBER WE ARE STILL GOOD AND CARING HUMAN BEINGS, NOT TURNED ROBOTS AND UNFEELING MONEY AND STATUS MAKING MACHINES.