Mac Ritchie's adventure
It was a crisp breezy Sunday, perfect weather for treking.. I've had gathered information from website so I told the cabbie to bring us to the Venus Drive car park for the shortest distant to the tree top walk. Planned to complete the walk in one and a half hour, top, so we could move from MacRitchie to the Marmalade for brunch with Pak and her family...
I was not familiar with this park (visited once 3 years ago).. so I had no idea that the car park the cabbie dropped us was not the one i asked for!!! on top of that, i found the map provided at this park is somehow misleading, we decided to take the route that marked on the map as the right one, but when we checked the next map en route it tuned out that the path we 'd taken was the left one that we didn't intend to..
Just after 10 minutes walk i realized the biggest mistake, we weren't dressed for the occasion!!! the ground was muddy and rockily slippery while we were in the casual gear ready to go to fancy brunch in town!!!
we walked and walked and walked.. uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill and a short road, uphill-downhill.. now a path along side a golf course!??!.. looked like it was not gonna end!!!
At the end of the golf course sidewalk, we came across a tall wooden tower.. curiously we took the stairs up..and up ..continued up...up...up....up..up..how tall is this tower by the way?!..
finally...
Voila!
HEAR NO EVIL! (don't say we have to resume the walking now)
SAY NO EVIL! (I am starving, i couldn't walk even a step farther now)
Nok said the magic word to encourage me.. think of how much calories we burnt and how much food we would deserve to eat after we're done with this! that cheered me up hugely! Let's go, comrades!
A while after we came down from the tower, we found the next map and saw there are 2 trails toward the tree top walk, so we decided to take the easier to walk 'pedaling trail' and took on without hesitation..
only to discover when we were more than halfway through..
that this trail is strictly the 'exit' and the only way to reach the tree top walk is the difficult muddy-rocky-uphilly one!!! why wouldn't the previous groups of people walking their way out past us bother to tell us any earlier?!?!
after that we made a couple more of wrong turns trying to find a shortcut back to the right trail.. unfortunately we didn't manage to find one, learnt that the hard way..
Alas,
After almost 3 hours of walking, a couple of detours and a couple of losts... finally we made it to the 'right' entrance to tree top walk!!! Nok was obviously happy in her sleep walking at this time ;)
Take a deep breath...And this is what we were after, fabulous view!
final door exiting from tree top walk
After the treetop we now had to figure our way back to civilization, but I needed to stop at the next ranger station (actually it's the only station we saw) to use the washroom.. guess what next in store for us!.. i came out of the WC to a thunderstorming pouring rain..oh, so that's why the weather was so cool in the morning!
we stuck there for an hour or so..Nok had to catch a flight at 5pm so when the rain gentled down enough to see the path we took off.. another long walk until we managed to hitchike (i couldn't believe we had a chance to do that in SG, this's the coolest tourist experience i've ever have in this island!) on a pickup truck to the main road..
Next challenge was trying to flag a cab, besides the obvious eliminating factor that we were rain soaking wet another obstruction was bad timing - all the cabs passing by were heading to their shift changing. At the end we had to cross the road (jaywalked) and took the first bus that came along, it was# 167 and I recalled seeing this bus in city area so I held on until the bus turned to Tekka market.. oh no, another wrong turn for the day! hopped off the bus and crossed another street to finally get on a cab home.. we had to really rush now to get Nok on her plane!
I was not familiar with this park (visited once 3 years ago).. so I had no idea that the car park the cabbie dropped us was not the one i asked for!!! on top of that, i found the map provided at this park is somehow misleading, we decided to take the route that marked on the map as the right one, but when we checked the next map en route it tuned out that the path we 'd taken was the left one that we didn't intend to..
Just after 10 minutes walk i realized the biggest mistake, we weren't dressed for the occasion!!! the ground was muddy and rockily slippery while we were in the casual gear ready to go to fancy brunch in town!!!
we walked and walked and walked.. uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill and a short road, uphill-downhill.. now a path along side a golf course!??!.. looked like it was not gonna end!!!
At the end of the golf course sidewalk, we came across a tall wooden tower.. curiously we took the stairs up..and up ..continued up...up...up....up..up..how tall is this tower by the way?!..
finally...
Voila!
HEAR NO EVIL! (don't say we have to resume the walking now)
SAY NO EVIL! (I am starving, i couldn't walk even a step farther now)
Nok said the magic word to encourage me.. think of how much calories we burnt and how much food we would deserve to eat after we're done with this! that cheered me up hugely! Let's go, comrades!
A while after we came down from the tower, we found the next map and saw there are 2 trails toward the tree top walk, so we decided to take the easier to walk 'pedaling trail' and took on without hesitation..
only to discover when we were more than halfway through..
that this trail is strictly the 'exit' and the only way to reach the tree top walk is the difficult muddy-rocky-uphilly one!!! why wouldn't the previous groups of people walking their way out past us bother to tell us any earlier?!?!
after that we made a couple more of wrong turns trying to find a shortcut back to the right trail.. unfortunately we didn't manage to find one, learnt that the hard way..
Alas,
After almost 3 hours of walking, a couple of detours and a couple of losts... finally we made it to the 'right' entrance to tree top walk!!! Nok was obviously happy in her sleep walking at this time ;)
Take a deep breath...And this is what we were after, fabulous view!
final door exiting from tree top walk
After the treetop we now had to figure our way back to civilization, but I needed to stop at the next ranger station (actually it's the only station we saw) to use the washroom.. guess what next in store for us!.. i came out of the WC to a thunderstorming pouring rain..oh, so that's why the weather was so cool in the morning!
we stuck there for an hour or so..Nok had to catch a flight at 5pm so when the rain gentled down enough to see the path we took off.. another long walk until we managed to hitchike (i couldn't believe we had a chance to do that in SG, this's the coolest tourist experience i've ever have in this island!) on a pickup truck to the main road..
Next challenge was trying to flag a cab, besides the obvious eliminating factor that we were rain soaking wet another obstruction was bad timing - all the cabs passing by were heading to their shift changing. At the end we had to cross the road (jaywalked) and took the first bus that came along, it was# 167 and I recalled seeing this bus in city area so I held on until the bus turned to Tekka market.. oh no, another wrong turn for the day! hopped off the bus and crossed another street to finally get on a cab home.. we had to really rush now to get Nok on her plane!
posted by linktwice @ 6:08 PM
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