A trip to Bukit Timah Hill
Sunny accompanied me today to Sim Lim Tower to get my Microsoft Small Business Server sold. (Finally got rid of this software from my room!) He really had lots of difficulty walking in his blue-trail slippers. The amazing thing is how he managed to wear so long despite the total depletion of the friction on his slippers.
Anyway we went down to Bukit Timah Hill for the first time. There was a junction at the bottom of the hill; we had a choice then, either go by the left or go up straight and he saw the road sign on the left "Hindele Walk". The name says walk, so he thought that should be this route.. So we took that route and ended up in a dead end, watching monkeys swinging around playing with each other and Sunny got freaked out when the monkeys squeaked. The dead end actually has a train rail-way track.
We walked back to the junction and walked up straight. The information counter is there, so we took some brochures and bought ourself a Bukit Timah Hill Souvenir Book. Then we started the walk with 2 different roles: I am the noob topo (the 1 who reads the map and reports the current location) and Sunny, the noob tourist cum photographer.
We spent the next 30mins trying to get to the peak of the hill using the fastest and shortest way but we got ourselves in an almost-endless high-levelled (each step of the stair is like raising up half of your leg because the height is around our knee level) stairs. Climbing those stairs were definitely challenging; but its the fastest way; it took us about 5minutes to instantly reach the peak of the hill. After reaching the peak, I suggested Sunny to MMS the picture to Patricia who have always wanted to come with us but unable to because she’s got to work.
There was nothing that was viewable from the top of the hill, so we walked down and try to get ourselves some view into the Quarry. As told by Sunny, a Quarry is like a small reservoir with fake mountains surronding it. There were 2 quarries on the hill, but they were very much inaccessible at any time because the area is restricted and protected. We did managed to get a close view of 1 of the quarry:
And I spotted this greeny thing that refuses to move while Sunny was taking picture of the Quarry.
Right after this, due to my incompetency of topo reading, I read the wrong track on the map and got ourselves in the middle of a jungle where everything starts to get wrong altough we still see humans walking around us. As we walk, the time seems to move faster and before I know, Sunny alerted me that the sky was getting dark, the claps of the thunder was getting louder and I was really nervous, trying to get out of there, get back into the main route as soon as possible. You wouldn’t realise how dangerous it was when you know that there’re monkeys swinging above you making noises and bushes shaking here and there as though there was something there. I made large steps in order to fastern my pace and finally, when we reached the main route, we rejoiced happily in the downpour and walked down slowly.. barefooted and soaked.
We went onto the bus 67, drenched and shivering in that cold for an hour and a half until we finally reach Tampines Street 11.