TRAVELING IN STYLE : EXCELLENT ADVENTURES : Swimming Near Cambodia : For the water-loving traveler, Asia is full of surprises--devilish waterslides, secret coves, mountain spas and fish with fangs.

I love to swim. I love the quiet monotony of doing laps, or the fun of roughhousing in a small surf. I love the thick chlorine smell of an indoor pool as much as the salty waft of the sea. I happily watch reruns of Olympic swimming races on TV. When I travel, I check out a hotel’s pool before I check in.

My family and I spent nearly four years traveling and living in Asia (we returned to the United States last fall). During that time, my romance--well, all right, my obsession--led us to the most exotic swimming holes we’ve ever experienced and some of the most treasured adventures of our journeys.

One day in Manila, which is not a treasure, for instance, I fled the city with my two sons--Tad, 7, and Tommy, 10--while my husband was stuck in town working. In a rented car, we wound our way for two hours along the highways and through small villages in quest of a tourist retreat called Hidden Valley Springs. The name, surprisingly, turned out to be a literal description of the place--unlike the names of the American prefabricated subdivisions it calls to mind. It was so well hidden, in fact, that we thought many times along the way that we were lost to the Philippine jungles, but the villagers we stopped to question kept urging us on just a little farther.

When we finally arrived, we found a rustic, natural settlement-- resort is too fancy a word--where we installed ourselves in small frame cabins with broad, screened porches. Then we trekked through well-marked jungle paths to stumble onto a complex of spring-fed pools: cold pools, hot pools, bubbling pools, pools with waterfalls, mineral pools--pools for every taste.

The boys frolicked under waterfalls, dug into coarse, sandy pool beds looking for the source of eternal hot bubbles, taste-tested the different salty waters. I lazed like a sea turtle, paddling from cool spot to hot pocket, diving mermaid-like to the source or floating supine, watching the rays of the tropical sun filter through the tall vegetation around us. We were nearly alone.

Later, hungry from our day in the waters, we stopped for curry in a small outdoor restaurant nestled among the jungle paths, then hiked through the dark evening back to our cabin. Paradise!

In sharp contrast to Hidden Valley Springs, but just as much fun, was Siam Water Park, outside Bangkok. An hour or so of frustrating, bumper-to-bumper traffic finally released us, limp, just where Bangkok’s urban sprawl stopped and Thailand’s tranquil countryside began. Here we found a man-made, Disneyish water heaven with lots of stomach-churning land rides as well as seasick-making water slides.

Amusement parks in Asia--which is short on safety regulations of any sort--make for a terrifying kind of fun. I climbed up the steps to the top of the slides, to a point overlooking a small neighboring village where a young elephant ambled gently about. I dared not brave the twistiest of the slides, partly because these devices have a way of burning a hole in the bottom of a swimming suit, but I watched my sons having what they undoubtedly would have described as the most fun they’d ever had. They were quickly swooped up into a small band of Thai youths, and the gang of them formed a human train, screaming down the slides again and again.

Climbing down from my perch, I tried the more dignified doughnut-shaped pool, about a quarter-mile in circumference, which had a flowing current strong enough to glide swimmers effortlessly around the perimeter. Later, we all played at the source of the current, a mammoth gushing hole that funneled water into the pool. Once you stepped into its range, the water snared and hurled you like a rag doll for a dozen yards until its strength dissipated. The wave pool, like a small piece of the ocean where a gentle surf rolled in and out, was disappointing in its attempt to re-create the feel of the sea but astonishing in the way its concrete “beach” resembled a tropical shore.

Thailand also offered us a natural retreat on the River Kwai, site of the notorious Japanese prison-labor camp for the Thai-Burmese Railway, immortalized in the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Today, that river is the site of a tranquil tourist spot called Kanchanaburi, where people of all nationalities walk the famous bridge (although a portion of it really was destroyed during World War II, it has been repaired and the original basic structure remains), and later bob peacefully on the simple river-raft hotels nearby.

At dusk, other tourists beckoned us to the river, to rinse off the hot day’s dust and sweat in the cool water. My husband and I went in first, assuring our uncharacteristically reluctant boys--the river was murky, the currents strong--that the water felt great and was, of course, perfectly safe.

We were only partly right. The boys followed, but after several moments one of them, and then the other, shrieked in horror that something was biting them.

In unison, we scrambled onto the raft and found deep gouges on their toes and thighs. The pla pak pao , a tiny but vicious piranha-like fish, had attacked them. Twenty stitches and several hours later, the boys were lulled by antibiotics into a drugged sleep, lying on their mats just a few inches above the river.

We found safer waters in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, where we lived for two years and were charmed by the city’s stately colonial architecture, gleaming contemporary skyscrapers and rows of traditional Chinese shops. In the town’s center is Weld Pool, a 50-meter (165-foot) competition pool and accompanying three-board diving well, where anyone lacking entree to a fancy club or hotel pool can do rigorous laps or just take a break from the debilitating Malaysian heat.

The first time I used Weld Pool, I was discouraged by its no-goggles rule--a genuine obstacle for a very nearsighted contact-lens-wearer like me. Arguing with the lifeguards and pool manager got me nowhere. Their reasoning? “If the Malaysian men wear goggles, they like to pinch the ladies’ bottoms,” they informed me humorlessly. (Apparently, a clear underwater view of a passing female swimmer would be an irresistible temptation.) It did not help to point out that I was not a Malaysian man. Finally, I removed my lenses and swam carefully and nearly blindly. I was pleased to find, on a return trip to Kuala Lumpur last summer, that Weld Pool now permits swimmers to wear goggles. I swam--and no one pinched me.

Malaysia’s best swimming waters are along the country’s eastern coast, in the South China Sea. Our favorite swimming spot there was Rawa Island, a 15-hut bit of land that lies an hour and a quarter by slow ferry off the town of Mersing.

Rawa is owned by a royal family of Malaysia and is watched over by the Tunku Maria, an undulatingly heavy, Polynesian-looking princess with flowing black hair and a pet monkey that often rides on her shoulder.

Tunku Maria guards her island fiercely. She loves to see visiting children have fun, and she encourages them to leap from the pier, whooping and hollering on their way into the water. She advises you where the best spots are for sighting fish, and she’ll tell her boatman which secret island cove to take you to for a secluded swim.

The waters around Rawa entice you from your chalet porch for early-morning swims, mid-morning swims, afternoon and evening swims. We donned our snorkels and masks and joined troupes of clown fish, flitting in and out of swaying purple coral. We were alert for legions of long-nose gar, which swam in formation like soldiers, then abruptly split ranks and circled around behind us, as though with military purpose. We watched for the unsettling profile of baby shark like the one we had seen in waters off Cebu in the Philippines. Although it was barely a foot long, that one sent us kicking and pulling back to the shore as fast as we could.

Finding a place to swim in Japan is more difficult than it is in most other places, but we eventually discovered the ku , or county, pool near our small house in Yokohama. It became a favorite. It was 25 meters (just over 80 feet) long, and three feet deep (which was fine for the boys and me--I’m 5-foot-6--though admittedly less suitable for my 6-foot-2 husband, who would routinely scrape his fingertips on the bottom while doing the crawl). There was also a smaller, warmer pool for less serious swimmers and a water-slide pool for the kids. The ku pool kept reasonable hours and was cheap.

There was a catch, of course, which was that every other swimmer in the neighborhood had discovered the ku pool, too. At any given time, I counted hundreds of people vying for enough space to get across the pool. I never managed to swim its full length without being interrupted by slow or clumsy swimmers, thrashers or some heedless person doing the backstroke.

We eventually gave up on the idea of swimming for exercise in Japan and concentrated instead on water for pleasure. You can still find public baths just about anywhere you go in Japan, and on a cold winter’s night it is extremely pleasurable to luxuriate in those big, steamy rooms, soap up and scrub down, and stretch out in huge, scalding tubs--tubs so big that they almost seem like pools.

And in Hakone, a mountain village in the shadow of Mt. Fuji, we found a resort spa, called Kowakidani, with tropical themes. My sons reported to me that things were much grander on the men’s bathing side than on the women’s--that there were cascading falls, stately palms, waving ferns and such. Nonetheless, when I tiptoed outdoors one evening into the cold winter air--protected only by darkness and a tiny hand towel--and slipped into the boiling bathing pool under the stars, watching the steam rise and swirl into the silhouetted branches of the pines above, I was sure that even in Japan, I had found a little piece of swimmers’ heaven.

GUIDEBOOK: ASIAN WATERS

The Philippines: Hidden Valley Springs, about 45 miles from Manila near Alaminos. For further information and reservations, contact the Hidden Valley Springs reservation office in Manila, local telephone 509-903.

Thailand: Siam Water Park, in the Bangkok suburb of Minburi, may be reached on the No. 26 or No. 27 tram from the Victory Monument in downtown Bangkok. For information, telephone 517-0075 in Bangkok. Kanchanaburi is on the River Kwai, about 75 miles northwest of Bangkok via train or bus. Numerous small river-raft hotels are available.

Malaysia: Weld Pool is on Jalan Raja Chulan (Street), across from Wisma Stephens (The Stephens Building), Kuala Lumpur. Rawa Island is near the town of Mersing. Telephone Rawa Safaris in Mersing; local telephone 791-204.

Japan: There are ku pools in every county in Tokyo. The author swam at one of two pools in Midori-ku, the one adjacent to Eda train station. Kowakidani Spa, in Hakone, is about two hours from Tokyo by train. No telephone, but travel information may be obtained from the Hotel Kowaki-en, just across the street, local telephone 2-4111.