prunus-petai trail @ macritchie

the 3km nature walk along the prunus-petai trail is a good introduction for any newcomer to walking/hiking at our nature reserves. the prunus and the petai trails are board walks.

the petai trail is actually a continuation of the prunus. you can finish your walk by taking the gravel track of the macritchie nature trail. when you come to the end of the petai trail, turn right onto the macritchie trail. taking the left will lead you to the jelutong trail and the tree-top walk.

the 3km walk is correctly graded an easy walk/hike, which can be completed within the hour. at the start of the board walk, you can feed the hundreds of tinfoil barbs in the reservoir. (they have now put up notices to advise people against feeding the fish.) there are so many of them that the crumbs disappear the moment they hit the water.

the tinfoil barb is a fish that is often available in pet shops and sold to the beginning aquarist but it is not the best choice for those beginning in the freshwater hobby. the tinfoil barb requires a very large tank, at least 284 litres because of its potential adult size of 32 cm.

they like to have lots of space for swimming and they are indeed fast swimmers. they also like to jump out of tanks that don't have tight fitting hoods. tin foil barbs will accept most fish food, including flakes, pellets, frozen and freeze-dried foods. they will also go after your live plants and any smaller fish if given the opportunity.

today, i came across a troop of monkeys playing in the shallows of the reservoir. some were on the board walk but a number of them went to play in the water. like playful children, they were having a splashing time in the water.

all along the two trails, there are information sign boards telling you more about the flora and fauna that you will see along the way.

whenever i go for my walk, i do not park my car in the macritchie car park as it is a hassle when you want to exit macritchie and get onto leonie road. i usually park my car along one of the roads in the westlake private housing estate or along the stretch of road leading to the little sisters of the poor.

upper boon keng/kallang bahru park connector \

the more parks i visit, the more appreciative i am of the work being done by national park board to make singapore a more liveable place for us. it is a pity that not as many singaporeans and other residents are taking advantage of the excellent facilities and amenities provided by national park board.

the upper boon keng and kallang bahru park seems under utilised and under visited in comparison with parks like bukit batok nature park and macritchie reservoir park. at eight in the morning, you find the odd joggers and isolated groups doing calisthenics type of exercises.

then there are residents who use the jogging or cycling track as a short cut to the bus stop or their work place. much unlike at bukit batok where you can hardly find a parking space at the car park - which has around 124 parking lots.

there are a few nice bridges here that span the river. along a certain stretch there are barbeque pits. rounding the bend, i came across this attractive chinese temple. it is called chwee kang beo (in hokkien) or shui jiang miao (in mandarin).

the water in the river is so clean that, on a warm day, you will be tempted to have a dip in it if bathing facilities are made available at the park. it is also teeming with fish. as you walk along the path beside the river, you will come across schools of fish. i saw a large fish - about half a metre long - swimming in the middle of the river. even the cat and the birds seem to know that there is food in the river.

disused quarry at bukit timah nature reserve

today, i parked my car outside the moe dairy farm adventure camp - the only moe camp of which i have not seen the inside - and walked the disused road. sometimes, i think, i tread without realizing the danger i may be getting myself into.

just like the kranji nature trail, this road was totally deserted. i did not meet a single soul along the entire walk. the walk took me to a disused granite quarry. the quarry was fenced up and the gate was padlocked. there were certain areas where the water appeared to be quite shallow.

however, it is quite difficult to tell just by looking. concrete steps and slopes have been constructed just outside the fence. i think this is to facilitate water overflowing from the pond. the water would cascade down the steps and flow down the slopes to the drains.

i took a different route to get back to the dairy farm campsite. i walked alongside the railway track and managed to get to railway mall.

since then i have gone back to this disused quarry a few times. i found out that the name for it is the singaore quarry. at the moment, some development is taking place here as the singapore quarry will become part of the dairy farm nature park. a platform is being built over the edge of the quarry pond.

chemperai-jering-lornie trails

today, walked the boardwalks of chemperai and jering trails and returned by way of the well-used lornie trail. the distance of this route is slightly longer than the prunus-petai boardwalk, about 4.8km.

this stretch hugs the water-edge all the way. however, it does not seem to be as popular as the prunus-petai trail. the chemperai trail is longer than the jering. along both walks, you will come across the tinfoil barbs; at chemperai, they are found near the start of the boardwalk while at jering, they are found at the end of it. in the shallows, i also saw a 45cm aruan -snakehead fish - swimming about nonchalantly, with no fear or regard for humans.

along the chemperai, there is a tree overhanging the water and they have modified the walk to accommodate this leaning tree. they have erected supports for the trunk of the tree and because it is so low, they have lowered the height of the boardwalk at this point.

somewhere, in between the two boardwalks, there is an old chinese tombstone built right at the water edge. some chinese characters carved on the vertical slab reveals the year of death as 1876 and the surname of the deceased as fan. it has been there for around 130 years.

bidadari christian & muslim/hindu cemeteries

under the 1998 master plan, the bidadari cemetery sites along upper serangoon road would be developed into high-density housing and was projected to yield about 12,000 public-housing dwelling units. there would be modem amenities and facilities to complement the housing, including a park and other open spaces. the bidadari cemeteries were opened in 1907.

"bidadari" was derived from the sanskrit word "widyadari"; meaning a nymph or fairy. these cemeteries are multi-ethnic and religious burial grounds where protestants, catholics, singhalese, hindus and muslims were buried. the cemeteries were officially closed in 1972. on the christian side, near the beautiful ornate gate at the central entrance, there once stood a small chapel where services were held. it was torn down in the 1980s.

today, all the graves have been exhumed. it is now an open park with the woodleigh mrt station saddling the one-time divide between the christian and muslim cemeteries. the authorities have left many of the trees in tact; you can see quite a number of elegant mature trees. there is also this interesting 'clump' where two different types of trees seem to have merged into one.

nature walk from rifle range rd to kg chantek

from rifle range road, there is a short walk, slightly more than 1km, through the quiet secondary forest to kampong chantek. there are fruit trees along this trail and so you have the nangka trail and the durian loop. there are other fruit trees although they do not have trails named after them - there are rambutans and star fruit trees.

the well-marked trail takes you through different terrains, including a meandering stream, before you re-appear at the end of jalan kampong chantek. here, you will come face to face with the fence that is the boundary of the murnane service reservoir.

for those who are more energetic and who have the time, there is a longer walk that will take you all the way to the tree-top walk at macritchie. from murnane to macritchie is a distance of more than 9 km. remember to factor in the return journey, so making it a 18km trek.

if you take the other trail, the kampong trail, it will lead you all the way to the visitor's centre at bukit timah nature reserve.

there is a car park at rifle range road where parking is free but the barrier is supposed to come down at 7.00 p.m. this means that if you reach the car-park after dark, you may have to leave the car there overnight.

during the durian season, you may sometimes see a personnel from nparks stationed near the trail. he s not there to stop you from picking the fallen fruit; he is there to ensure that durian hunters do not camp in the forest and light a smal fire to ward off the mosquitoes.

the boulders of punggol beach

punggol which is spelt “punggul” in malay refers to the action of hurling sticks at the branches of fruit trees to loosen the fruit from its stem. it also refers to a place where fruit and forest produce are sold wholesale.in the past, punggol was used for rubber planting, poultry farming and pig rearing until poultry and pig farming were phased out from the 1970’s.

punggol end was the place to go to for seafood in the past. there were a number of eateries near the end of the narrow, windy road where two bus services used to terminate. i think they are going to revive the past. i saw a ura signboard that says the area has been earmarked for food and beverage developments.

i was at punggol end for my morning walk. again, i seem to be venturing to places where others do not tread. at punggol beach, during the entire walk, i was the solitary walker. i did meet other people - three cleaners collecting wood pieces from the boulder-strewn beach and an angler trying his luck near the punggol river.the boulders are actually planted there. it is not like they came from that area. it is not like they have tumbled into the sea from somewhere nearby. you can see that some of them have been carefully (painstakingly) laid out to form a kind of platform or steps.

here is what someone, on the internet, speculated about the presence of such boulders:
why is punggol beach covered by boulders artificially? some years ago, there was news that an angler at punggol beach was trying to dig for worms to be used as fish baits. but instead he dug out a human skull. since then the government has paved the whole beach with many heavy boulders. this act is weird as the beauty of a sandy beach is fully covered. but it is suspected to be a purpose of stopping citizens from discovering more human remains from there.

dragonfly and green bottle fly

my interest in dragonflies was aroused when i saw the tiger dragonfly in victor's blog. before that i used to think that there were about two species of dragonflies in singapore. when i surfed the internet to find out more about dragonflies in s'pore, i was amazed to find out the range of wonderful species found in s'pore.

dragonflies are normally found near places where there is water. in my kampong, the dragonflies would be seen darting around near the monsoon drains. once in a while we would catch one but we usually released it because dragonflies are not much fun to play with.

the green bottle fly, like the blue bottle fly, was regarded as dirty and a nuisance. it was too big to be food for our fighting spiders, so we did not bother to catch or kill it.