Park hopping

Green corridor, the base of the former Malaysian (KTM) railroad that used to run from Tanjong Pagar railway station in South of Singapore to Woodland checkpoint in North, is one of the few wild natural spaces for trail running and bicycling in Singapore that is not manicured and overly controlled. Besides Kranji farms, it is one of the few places where one can feel being almost in the countryside, away from noisy traffic. Thus, it was our number one choice to go trail running. However, the government has plans to revamp the corridor and make it to another man-made park with paved paths, artificial trees, and edutainment kiosks, and what have you — it is already more groomed than it used to be three years ago.

The revamp plan also includes construction of public toilets along the route, part of which I agree on. Currently, there are few entry and exit points — understandably during the KTM operations one wanted to keep public away from the railroad tracks — so access to public toilets is somewhat inconvenient.

There are no drinking water fountains either, but some occasional leaks at underpasses come in handy for washing soiled bikes or shoes, since muddy the trail was in some places.

Lunch time traffic at Buona Vista interchange.

Less colorful housing estates in Commonwealth and Queenstown. We were a bit surprised, and disappointed, how white and gray had taken over also the public housing estates; supposedly being more elegant, these colors are usually associated with new condos, whereas HDB flats tend to sport more colorful, but still tasty, schemes. We particularly liked how good care Singaporeans took of their public housing, even the older ones.

Colors still prevail at 55 & 56 Commonwealth drive.

Sungei Buloh wetland reserve was our next destination. We took the MRT to Kranji station and were met with hundreds and hundreds of people at the bus terminal. We could not believe that so many people were planning to go to Sungei Buloh on that Saturday morning. We asked, and they were not; they were queueing for a bus to Malaysia. I bet the last one got on the bus at sunset.

We waited for the bus 925 to take us to the wetland reserve. When boarding we asked the driver, just to be sure, if the bus was going there. He said no. So, we asked, which bus does. He did not know. We did not believe him.

We did not wait for the next 925 but took the first taxi instead. The grumpy driver (we already knew that taxis don’t want to go to the wetland since it is difficult to get a return ride from there) dropped us off sooner than we though at a brand new visitor center. For a while we were completely lost. The visitor center, as we remembered it, was deep in the shades of a rain forest, but this was in a very open area in the middle of a marsh. We felt sad that they had bulldozed all the trees to make space for this fancy new center with modern restrooms and a restaurant (which was closed). After consulting the map very carefully, we realized that this visitor center was a completely new development, and the old center was 1.3 kilometers away, and renamed “Wetland Centre”.

We took the coastal trail to the Wetland Centre, and even saw an estuarine crocodile on our way.

Several observation pods have been constructed throughout the new extension of the wetland reserve — this particular one was in the mudskipper pond.

This is the old visitor center, exactly how we remember it. Shady and cool.

A lazy monitor lizard. I wonder if there are any other kind.

Bukit Brown, is not really a park, but an old cemetary that used to be the largest Chinese cemetary outside of mainland China and also the last resting place of many significant figures in Singapore’s history. But now it is being actively distroyed by a new highway construction, a number of graves already having been exhumed.

Before reaching the cemetary we took a quick stroll across the Botanic Gardens.

Bukit Brown was tranquil as soon as we got far enough from the bulldozers. The only people we saw were foreign workers having lunch around a plastic table they had put up on one of the grave sites.

We just strolled around until we spotted a sign directing to the grave of Chew Boon Lay. It took a bit of a crawl in the overgrown forest to find it. And why Boon Lay’s grave was of interest? It was one of the names we recognized; there is an MRT station and a street named after him (Jalan Boon Lay) in Eastern Singapore. Wikipedia tells us that he (b. 1851 or 1852, China – d. June 2, 1933, Singapore) was one of Singapore pioneers and a successful businessman.

This was actually our last day in Singapore. From Bukit Brown we walked to MacRitchie reservoir visitor center, washed our feet, and took a bus to Tiong Bahru. After packing and having dinner we headed to the airport. As always, everything worked perfectly at Changi airport, and ten minutes past midnight we took off to our current home.