Last Sunday we took a walk/hike along the southern ridges here in Singapore.  There are actually a bunch of trails that all connect to form a long path (about 6 miles) through the southern ridges.  Before we left we packed a lunch and some water so we could stop and have a picnic along the way.  The whole trip took us about 5 hours, but we also took our time and enjoyed.  It could easily be done in half the time or even quicker.  We took the bus to Vivocity, which is a mall that is also the gateway to Sentosa Island (a resort island that belongs to Singapore).  Across the street from Vivocity is the start of the Marang trail and our trek.


This is the beginning of the Marang trail.  The Marang trail heads up Mount Faber and at the top you can ride the cable cars to Sentosa or you can just be treated to views like this.


You can see the city way in the background and in front you can see a bunch of different apartment buildings or HDB’s as they are called here.  Sorry I can’t remember at the moment what HDB stands for.  I just know they are apartments built by the government.  So they are the lower end of the living spectrum here.  Next is condos (which are similar, but nicer and with more amenities) and then landed homes (like what we are used to in San Diego).

 

In the picture above you can see the previously mentioned cable cars.  We also ran into this old Danish church along the Marang trail.

 

Ronna told me that it was built for the shippers a long time ago.  Singapore has a huge shipping port.  In fact I think I heard last time I was hear that it is the largest shipping port in the world or the busiest.  Something like that.  So this church was built for the Danish shippers that would frequent the port.  Just after the church I was informed that I missed seeing the merlion which is Singapore’s mascot.  A merlion is a mythical creature that has the head of a lion and the bottom of a fish.  Kind of like a mermaid, but lion instead of human.  This was extremely funny to me because when I first came to Singapore 2 months ago Ronna took me all around the city looking for the merlion that is in the city.  She was having trouble finding it and we must have walked circles all morning.  So when she finally found it, the merlion was under renovation and could not be seen.  So she tells me that she saw the other merlion in Singapore just a bit earlier in our trek and then it made sense why she had said what I thought was a random comment.  But I didn’t want to turn around because we would have lost about 20 minutes and had to go uphill and we were only about 1/3 of the way through, but have taken about 1 and a half hours already.  Plus it was hot.  So I just thought it was funny that knowing our history with the merlion that she didn’t mention seeing it until after we were long gone.  Of course I had o give her a hard time about it and I am still doing so right now by blogging this.  Anyways after the Marang trail we reached Henderson Waves (a bridge that connects one trail to the next.

 

On the bridge we ran into these guys.

 

There was a couple standing and talking about 20 feet in front of the monkeys.  They were so busy talking that they did not see the monkeys approaching.  I told Ronna to look at the couple and then all of a sudden the monkeys where right next to them and the guy just about jumped off the bridge.  We were laughing so hard.  I probably should have warned him, but that was so much better.  I also knew that nothing was going to happen to them.   Here we are at Forest Walk.

 

Forest Walk is another trail that is on the walkways you can see in the background and it just zigzags through a section of forest.  After Forest Walk was Alexandra Arch which is a bridge that connects another 2 trails.

 

You have probably noticed they used the same theme as Henderson Waves.  Then we came across Hort Park which is a horticulture art garden.  Here is Ronna at the koi pond.

 

Finally we reached Canopy Walk and the last section of our walk.

 

As you can see it is called Canopy Walk because it is a walkway up in the canopy of a forest.  A canopy is the top layer of vegetation in a forest (the highest layer of plant life in a forest).  Here is the view along Canopy Walk.

 

The entire walk was beautiful and we had a great day.  As I said earlier we took our time and stopped along the way to eat snacks of fresh fruit and sandwiches.  At the end we just went to the nearest bus stop and rode the bus home.