24 April 2025
The only thing close to a hike
MacRitchie nature trail
I did not think there would be any more hiking on this trip, but then I woke up and decided to go and do the main thing that Singaporeans call a hike, the MacRitchie nature trail.
Most of it is a boardwalk, and it is through a jungle with the occasional view of a reservoir.
There is a part they call a tree top walk, but it is one small bridge and then some more boardwalk with stairs.
Surprisingly, parts of the walk feel remote, and I even was without phone coverage some of the time. The sections farthest from the start had very few people, but there was a risk of rain and it is a week day.
I will however, still put up the stats -
14.07km - I keep doing hikes just over 14km
3 hours 10 minutes - I did not go fast
784 calories burned - I was sweaty but not overly
227m vertical ascent - mainly the lookout tower
24k steps - there is a bit of a walk from the station to the trail start on top of that
I took the subway to Caldecott station, from there it is about a 20 minute walk to the starting point of the hike.
There is a big change room / toilet / shower setup with some vending machines and a weird cafe, but surprisingly no convenience store.
Today I will go all the way around the reservoir, and beyond.
It is also a canoe / kayak lake, a big inter school carnival was happening, I deliberately moved away before taking a photo of school kids... this is Singapore. Note the surveillance camera in this photo, there are hundreds of them!
Time to start the boardwalk walk, the floats in the lake are to separate fishing from rowing / kayaks.
The boardwalk was great quality, and never too busy.
There were a lot of monkeys, but dont mess around with them, and do not open anything food related near them, a hundred will appear.
Nice fake lake, I believe it was engineered in the 1860's.
After leaving the boardwalk, an actual trail, with a lot of crushed concrete and brick.
Every few hundred metres there is a little spot to sit, but be aware there are not many toilets.
Occasional bits of stairs.
This is the ranger station about half way around, and one of the only sets of toilets. The old folks here are basically fighting off monkeys while they try and eat their noodles.
At this point you make a choice, go along a bit of road to the one way only tree top walk, or go along a trail to bypass it. The road bit is only a few hundred metres.
Here is the start of the tree top walk, you can only go along this if you do this hike anti clockwise, there are guards.
The tree top walk, sponsored by HSBC, is a bit weird, here is the view.. of basically nothing.
After the little bridge, more stairs and monkeys.
The longest stretch of stairs is down hill.
Next up, an observation tower. Looks like a fire spotters tower in Australia, but you are allowed up this one.
Here is the view from the top, interesting cloud, it was about to get very dark, but never rained.
Bonus tower shot. I do not think many people bother going up the tower, it is a couple of hundred stairs to the top. There was no way I was going to miss out.
The next section had the best views, helped by the dark sky.
I was sure there was going to be a torrential down pour, but it never happened. By the way, there are 3 surveillance cameras in this photo, one in the lake floating (of which there are many) and two on the shore on the right. They have seen me urinating. I expect to be flogged soon.
Part of the hike is up against a golf course, no one walks, they all use a golf cart, lazy.
Photo of the day!
Last one of these with the dark middle of the day light.
And then.. I was back at the start, sweaty, but not soaked. So now that is probably the last 'hike' of this trip?