Day 29: Singapore Nature

This morning I traveled with Greg up to north Singapore, where we visited the Singapore American School.  Greg is exploring the possible of moving to Singapore in the future, and if he did, this school would be a candidate for a school for Madi, his daughter.  The admissions folks showed us around the campus, which has distinctly separated elementary, middle, and high schools.  It is a big school, too, with about 4000 students, and thirteen classes in each 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, respectively.  All in all, it looked pretty much like a standard American school, only much bigger.

Afterwards, Greg had some meetings to go to, so he dropped me off at the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.  This reserve is one of the last remaining areas of jungle in Singapore, so I definitely wanted to check it out.  There were several different routes to the top of the hill, and I definitely wanted to walk through the forest, so I took the forest path instead of going up the easy, boring road.  The hike was good, and far shorter than I expected.  When I got to the first map along the trail after about 20 minutes, I was already one third of the way to the top.  There were several hill along the trail, and I liked that there were few others on the hike, but the jungle was a bit disappointing.  While there were some neat plants, and the forest was thick in some areas, it was clearly a secondary growth forest.  That means that at some point it had been cut or burned down, and has since grown back, which meant that most of the trees very fairly young and small, and there was a more limited breadth of flora and fauna.  Despite all of the signs warning me not to feed the monkeys, I did not see a single one, or any animals, for that matter.  All in all, though, it was a good hike, though it was more humid than I ever thought possible.

The path down into the jungle.

More stairs! These weren't bad at all, as the whole hike was fairly short.

This is the lame road that most of the people took.

They really don't want you to feed the monkeys. On the drive in there was an entire billboard that said, "Please don’t feed the monkeys, they have enough food in the forest."

The entrance to the reserve.

When I finished my hike at the reserve, I walked across the street and grabbed a cab to the Singapore Botanical Gardens.  These gardens were once considered the best in the British Empire, and they were definitely interesting.  I would describe them as similar to Duke Gardens, only bigger and with crazier plants.  There weren’t tons of flowers, but there were such interesting plants as red bamboo, trees whose leaves looked like cacti, and some kind of vine that grew on top of covered sidewalks.  Their roots hung down like strings, and you had to walk through them to continue.  I liked that the gardens were broken up into different biomes.  There was a jungle section, several areas of one type of plant, and a couple of other areas, which added to the diversity as I walked around.

Walking through the jungle area of the botanical gardens.

These flowers were about as tall as full grown corn stalks.

Is there a botanical garden that doesn't have a gazebo?

Some pretty ordinary flowers

Looking out of the gazebo.

I got my own picture by setting my camera on my bag and turning on the timer.

Very jungley

The Singapore Botanic Gardens

After the gardens, I walked down the road to Orchard Road, where I found a late lunch in one of the malls.  After lunch, I headed back to the hotel and caught Greg just as he was walking out to his last meeting.  I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on my blog and pictures.  When Greg returned, we took a quick swim in the pool, just so we could go up to the edge of the building.  The pool was very slyly designed, so that from the deck it looks like the pool goes right up to the edge of the building, but when you get out there, there is actually an overflow canal for the water, and a walkway a little below that.  Regardless, it would not be too hard to jump out of the pool all the way to the ground.  We then went down to Clarke Quay for dinner.  Apparently, in the Queen’s English, “quay” is pronounced “key,” which explains why no one understand when I said “kway.”  This area is along one of the rivers that goes through the city, and has many restaurants right on the waterfront.  It cooled off nicely for the evening, so we were able to sit down by the river, eating “Mexican” food, which was certainly an interesting experience.

It had just gotten dark as we were heading back to the hotel, and the lit up Marina Bay area looked awesome, so we stopped early and took some pictures.  As we got some shots, an elaborate light show started, involving the hotel, mall, and other nearby buildings.  From across the water, the show was very cool, with all sorts of spotlights going every which way, and even some flaming boats in the water.  It was just luck that we saw it, as we had no idea that happened.

The lightshow at Marina Bay, from across the bay.