After lunch, we tried our best to walk to the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, a rainforest within the City. One thing we noticed about Singapore and our other destinations in Southeast Asia was that they aren't particularly pedestrian friendly. We walked up and down a number of staircases over the highway running between us and our destination. We saw a sign for the Nature Reserve that ran underneath a bridge. There weren't any sidewalks in that direction and we didn't want to chance it. We ended up locating a cab to take us the rest of the way. After a major ordeal to turn around and face the other direction on the highway, we realized that we were merely a few blocks from the reserve when we approached that bridge. Had we known, we would have walked the rest of the way. Oh well...live and learn.
The nature reserve was located near a high-end suburban style neighborhood. Standing on the street corner, we were shocked to see monkeys -- monkeys everywhere! They seemed kind of like the deer you see in the US; used to having people around. The monkeys were entirely nonplussed by the fact that we were walking nearby. I could have spent hours just watching them frolic.
We made our way into the rainforest park and hiked sharply uphill. The hike was touted as "easy" but it was actually pretty challenging in the heat and humidity. We could hear cicadas calling from all directions. We were disappointed that we didn't see any birds but did come across a screeching squirrel and more monkeys!
This park also appeared to be a local haunt for exercisers. We saw a number of Singaporeans stretching at the base of the hill and also passed them in route going up and down. In fact, I swear I saw one person twice which implies that they ran up and down the hill more than once per day. Crazy! On of the local walkers recommended that we take a short hike to a quarry. We were rewarded by a beautiful view. We also saw a foot reflexology path along the way. Very cool.
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