treetop walk

*** brace yourself for my longest post ever ***

doris only managed to confirm that the trek is on yesterday when ky and doris’ friend, wendy said that they can make it.

originally, we had planned to meet at 9:00am at macritchie reservoir. very early for me considering it’s hari raya puasa but we had to be realistic since the trek to the treetop walk and back is expected to take 3 to 5 hours as written here.

however, wendy suggested 8:00am instead since she has a lunch appointment. in the end, a decision was made to meet at 7:45am at bishan mrt.

that means i have to wake up at an ungodly hour of 6:00am so that i will be punctual and still have time to grab some breakfast. i’ve not woken up so early for a very long time. i only keep such hours when i go for my icts.

it was raining when my handphone alarm sounded off at 6:00am.

received an sms from ky… he’s not going because it was raining heavily at his place .

sms-ed doris, she replied to say that it’s not raining at yishun…

what the heck… just do it!

decided to take the new sbs service 52 to bishan on a whim. played with my camera "action" mode while waiting for the bus…

after a while, i was the one and only passenger on the bus until it reached sin ming.

the bus arrived at bishan in a rather quick 35 minutes and i rushed off in search of breakfast. gobbled up my macdonald’s big breakfast in double-quick time, got to eat else i’ll definitely faint from hunger during the trek.

met doris and thomas at the pick-up point at 8:00am. wendy and his brother, victor soon joined us too.

waited a while for terence and diana. since the 5 of us couldn’t fit into the car, me, doris and thomas followed terence’s car in a cab to kim’s place at jalan lembah thomson.

that’s where the "secret" entrance of the trail is situated. don’t bother trying to locate it on the map because it is not an "official" start point. we set off at 8:30am in an adventurous mood.

when our side trail opened into the main route to the treetop walk, we encountered many runners along the way. doris is surprised to find so many health nuts running so early in the morning on a public holiday.

most of these runners [of all ages and gender] were in their running gear and nothing else, not even water bottles. some teenagers were even running in sandals and slippers!

compared to them, we seemed overdressed in our bermudas and trackpants; over-equipped with our backpacks containing our water-bottles, insect repellants, umbrellas, etc…

victor’s nike fell victim to the trail. he had not been wearing those shoes regularly. both soles came off eventually and had to be secured with elastic band and shoelaces.

although it was cloudy and the ground was still wet from the earlier showers, it was still humid.

walking and chatting merrily, we sometimes occupied the entire width of the trail impeding the runners’ way. probably pissed off quite a few of them as they had to slow down to pass through us. :P

only after a rather long while did we encounter other trekkers. the trail merged with the venus drive entrance route to the treetop walk. that’s where we encountered the holiday crowds of families out in full force.

doris couldn’t believe that the treetop walk can be this popular. ever so gungho, she kept talking about wanting to proceed on to bukit timah hill but nobody took her seriously.

finally reached the ranger station which is a short distance away from the treetop walk.


we had to scale a rather steep slope to the starting point.


here we are on the suspension bridge…






views from the bridge…

me and doris took our time on the bridge making the rest wait for us. hehe… :P

towards the end of the treetop walk, there’re signs that advised us not to turn back. i jested that it’s the "nai he qiao" which one has to cross on the way to reincarnation in chinese folklore so you’re not supposed to turn back. haha… :)

after the bridge, it’s many flights of steps up… and then down… to the board walk that will bring us back to the ranger station.

we decided to exit by venus drive and bade our farewells to kim and terence.

trekked past a stream… sighted an adult and baby monkey.

strange but true, we came across workers cutting the grass by the stream. didn’t know this trail requires "maintenance" too. no kidding.

by the time we reached the public carpark at venus drive, we had trekked for about 2.5 hours.

victor was craving for prata, so we took a bus to casuarina road for my favourite crispy plain prata.

a delicious and satisfying end to the morning physical exertion.