MacRitchie Nature Reserve, Singapore

Singapore is known throughout the world as the Garden City. It rightly deserves this name. But more than that, the locals know that there are many pockets of primary and secondary rainforests flourishing in the Central Nature Reserve zone. MacRitchie is located within this zone.

There are several well established trails in MacRitchie. One of them is a 4-km boardwalk that skirts the edge of the reservoir. This is my favorite trail so far. It's easy to forget that we live in one of the most crowded cities in the world here. Just the forests sounds, birds and lively fishes in the lake. You can spot giant iguanas basking in the sun.

Another trail, 11 km long, brings you counter-clockwise around the reservoir and features a tree top boardwalk. I will go to this one this weekend.

The trails are well marked. But if you intend to get off the track, then it's best to contact the rangers office. There were cases of hikers getting lost in there.

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The Chinese New Year holidays this year is a pretty long one, a total of 4 and a half days off, so my friends and I decided to take a nature trail at MacRitchie. Well I must say that, to date, this is the healthiest thing I've done, for a long, long time. heh!

We started the trail at about 10.30am. I was pretty excited and was expecting to see some snakes or some wild animals...like some tigers (yeah right!). I must say this walk is more for the fauna lovers (that or I'm not observant enough to spot those reptiles...heh!) though if you are lucky, you'll be abe to spot some monkeys.

Spotted some streams and some interesting plants on the way. I spotted some touch-me-not plants. They are nothing special as they are actually weeds (which is almost not possible to see anywhere around anymore). But they caught my eyes as they reminded me of my childhood days where I would look out for these plants to play with. You see, these touch-me-nots will have its leaves closed when touched. The leaves will then reopened the next day. It always amazes me...

It was a good 45mins trail before reaching the rangers range that in turn leads to the suspension bridge where the tree top walk is. The bridge only allows walking in a single file and is a one way walk only. On this bridge you can take a bird's eye view of the MacRitchie reservoir. Well, I didn't as I was too busy trying not to look down and to steady my wobbly legs.... waaaahhhh!! The walk from one end of the bridge to the other takes about 10mins. Then it's back to another 45 mins walk back towards the exit.

And after that tiring long walk, we all did what we Singaporeans do best, EAT!! heh! Adam Road is just around the corner for some good cheap local food.