Actual Jungle, Not Urban Jungle
Saturday night was a quiet one. My definition of quiet involves accidently drinking two bottles of Chanti at the authentic Italian round the corner, being plied with a complimentary glass of desert wine by Marco (the owner) and then two gin and tonics outside the Fashion Bar. Please note it has taken us two weeks for colonial-style, open air, late night gin consumption. We held off as long as we could.
Sunday morning involved poached eggs, slight hangovers and plotting of future travel and more immediate activities with Jane. It was decided to venture into the primitive centre of Singapore that very afternoon, to take a peek into it’s pre Raffles past as a rainforest island at the tip of Malaysia. There is a national park surrounding Singpore’s highest peak, Bukit Timah, standing a mighty 160 metres above sea-level. So, on with the crampons, pack supplies onto the mule’s (read my) back and time to go and play with Jo and Jane’s new toys.
As we arrived in the cab, monkeys were swarming the car park looking for food to eat, vehicles to use as their own personal playgrounds and ticks on each other. An early opportunity to test out the cameras, the monkeys were not bothered by our presence or persistent clicking.
We ventured up into the park proper (in search of ‘anteaters’ according to my ‘expert’ naturalist other half) we were slightly dismayed at what appeared to be a full-on concrete road up the mountain. Furthering our dismay was the onslaught of multiple locals walking backwards down the road toward us, barely looking where they were going. Not exactly sure what began the backward phenomenon. A method of controlling the speed of descent? Showing respect to the god of the mountain? Or simply a way to confuse the expats? I tried it – didn’t seem like much fun.
We soon left the concreted road, in search of paths less travelled by reversing Asians, to look for more animals and interesting tree trunks to photograph. The ‘Jungle Fall’ path led to one of the least impressive waterfalls ever seen and the ‘Dairy Farm’ path showed a distinct lack of wild jungle Friesians perched in the tree tops. Overcoming our disappointment we marched in the oppressive heat, occasionally stopping a while to perspire delicately after climbing or descending yet another steep incline.
Despite being off the beaten track somewhat we were regularly assaulted by oncoming locals in inadvertently retro tennis shirts. They would bowl along the middle of the narrow path with little regard to your presence and a determined ‘I’m exercising’ expression, whilst occasionally spitting dramatically into the jungle.
Additionally a second intrepid school of wanderer would be using ski-poles to help them maintain their balance on the tricky terrain. Thankfully our ice axes and crampons, along with our newly discovered backwards-walking techniques, kept us glued to the mountainous terrain. Which is useful when you’re being rugby tackled by sweaty Singaporean mountain runners.
We got some cool photos of a lizard who joined us for a rest halfway round and more monkey-based fun once we’d returned to the car park (the most obvious monkey habitat). You can see all the photos of Bukit Timah on Flickr (including some from featured photographer Jane Mackridge), as there’s only a select a few of the 60-odd in the ‘photostream’ on the right of this site.
Andy 5 February 2007
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Wonderful photos!!
Wendy Harvey # Feb 6