Singapore Forest Walk
You think Singapore is all about buildings and no forests?
Think again.
Anyway, yesterday I went with my friends from KP GPO for an outing to MacRitchie Natural Reservoir. It’s not as big as some real rainforests or jungles, but for a hiking spot it is big enough and have many natural wonders of its own. The funniest thing is that while forests are usually separated far from civilization, considering the scale of Singapore, the natural reservoirs - although quite far from the city - are still much in the Singapore centre themselves. What does it mean? It means that you can still get a full signal coverage for your cellphones inside the forests. Yes, as we walked up the mountain trail, surrounded by trees, we are still sending SMS and making calls with ease. How “amazing” is that…
We started out about 8.30 am in the morning and planned to finish the entire trek of about 8-10 km in 3 to 4 hours time. In the beginning, we were all cheerful and energetic, taking photos all the way (the photos are still not in my possession at the moment, I will post as soon as I get my hands on them) and singing cheerfully. But as we trailed up and up the inclining mountain path, we start to get tired after about 2-3 km of walking. We planned to get to our destination, the HSBC Treetop View, which is located about 5 km from the entrance in about 2 hours (11.00 am) and we felt like the destination was still very very afar. We kept on walking and everytime we see a signpost that tells us how much farther is the HSBC Treetop View, we would get all happy and take photos near the post, because that means we have walked 100-200 metres nearer.
Finally, after a long walk, we reached the destination. The treetop walk was some kind of a suspension bridge, hanging about 25-27 metres above ground and having a total length of 250 metres. Yes, the view was beautiful from up there, but as I have fear of height and the bridge keeps swaying left and right, I got a headache and just want to get to the other side of the bridge as soon as possible. It didn’t help that my friends kept making some scary comments like, “Hmm what if our cellphone falls from here, ya?” and things like that. After we crossed the bridge, it was a long long way walking up and down through a set of stairs, and when we found some resting place we decided to take a little rest, eating some bread and drinking some water.
The challenging part came after this. Since we all came here to see the Treetop View, after we passed that there was no more motivation for us to go any further. We just want to get out of there as quickly as we can and go have some lunch at the tantalizingly delicious Roti Prata House. There was still about 3-4 km walk left before we reach it and tired as we are, the walk felt very longggg… first we got out of MacRitchie itself and reached a normal road, then we walked all the way to the end of the long road to reach Thomson Road, a big roadway, to catch a bus that goes to the Roti Prata House.
The food in the Roti Prata House was probably the best I’ve tasted since I came to Singapore. The crispy roti prata was so damn good and the nasi briyani + fried chicken was amazing. We all entered the place with hungry and loud-sounding stomaches and after the food arrived, we all became menacing gluttons. I ate two roti pratas and one nasi briyani with fried chicken myself and that made me feel very full. Some others ate a whole lot more than what I ate, and in a moment suddenly our long table became a mess of empty plates and leftover food.
Feeling very tired, all of us went home to grab some sleep after having a good meal and full stomaches. My legs were sore, I got two blisters one in each leg and I also had a great deal of pain on my left kneecap joints, making it hard for me to walk (and later that night unfortunately I had to take another long walk to Marina Square to retrieve my new Creative Zen Vision:M). I was dead tired, but was also very happy. In this one month I’ve been in KP I had experienced so many good and fun things which I never expected to have in Singapore. It’s been years since I had a hiking session with friends and this felt refreshing. It’s nice to actually have friends and a community you can belong to and have some great deal of good time with…
