Asia Holiday 2013, August 13 (Blue Orchard)

The last day in Singapore, I planned to start with a hike through MacRitchie Reservoir Park. It was a little way outside the city, and not right near a train station, so it was going to be a little difficult to get to as the area wasn't on any of the maps I had. I wrote down some rough intructions and took three trains to get as close as I could, then set out on foot. I was pretty sure I was going in the right direction, but there were no signs, so I just had to keep going and hope. Only when I made it to the entrance did the first sign show up, useless by that point...

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS.

MacRitchie Reservoir Park.

There was a bit of light rain but not too bad, although it did make the trail a little bit wet, muddy and slippery. A couple of trees had come down near the start of the path which I had to climb under too. Along the path there was an occasional marker every 500 metres, but otherwise the directions were very sketchy. Things like no sign posts when you reach an intersection point, having to walk out onto a street and then back onto a path, signs not pointing in a direction correlating to either path option. By luck I made it to the Ranger station and then up to the HSBC Tree Top Walk. I found out it is closed on Monday, so it was very lucky I had to change my schedule around! The tree top walk was the highlight of the hike, and worth all the uphill trekking, it was so far above the trees and a little bit unsettling.

Beware of falling fallen trees.

No turning back now (the signs emphasise this greatly).

A view from the top.

The track then loops around back to the Ranger station. I had only seen about two other groups of people in the previous hour, but now there was all these army recruits hanging out on the track. They appeared to have guns and be doing some sort of training. A few times I spotted these guys off the track hidden in the trees, kind of weird.

Coming back to where I started the directions were even more sparse, and since it's about 5km each way it's impossible to remember all the terrain and directions. I made it to a familiar point about halfway back, then saw a sign for trail exit, so went that way. Turned out it was a second exit from the park, so I had to turn back and added another 2km to the total. I decided to jog the rest of the way to make up time, which was a bit challenging with the humidity. The total time for the hike was 2 hours 10 minutes, for 13 kilometres. It sounds pretty slow, but it is hard work.

Should have read the sign.

I took the train back as far as Orchard Road aka Shopping Centre Road - as if there wasn't enough in other parts of the city. Most of the shopping centres are connected to each other underground, probably equal parts due to outside weather, outside traffic and wanting to keep you shopping. It's almost impossible to find an actual exit because of this, and like being in a casino you start craving real sunlight after a while.

I checked a couple of Nike stores in ION Orchard and Wheelock Place - there's basically an identical set of stores in every shopping mall so there was no shortage of Nike stores. They all had the same price for running clothes, like $55 fpr a shirt and $65 for shorts. My knee was killing me again so I had to find somewhere to stop for lunch. Wisma Atria had a good generic food court but it was packed out at 1:30pm. It's not much fun to buy yourself a hot meal then spent the next 15 minutes juggling a tray and trying to find a table, so I gave that whole thing a miss. The next mall was Ngee Ann City where the main tenant is Takashimaya department store. They had a food court in the basement instead, and since the Indian place was the first with a vegetarian option I just grabbed the naan set.

The third most important meal of the day.

I went across the road to Paragon which was super high end and then Lucky Plaza next to it was really low end, I'm not sure how the two exist on the same street, when the customer base would be so different. I stopped in at Istana Park on the way back to the hotel, it was just a small park with nothing memorable. And that was the end of my Singapore holiday.

Paragon on Orchard Road.

$7 flavoured milk.

Summary

• 8/10

Good

• Good parks and open space in the city
• Good public transportation
• Lots of babkery shops
• People speak English
• Plenty of shopping malls
• Two dollar notes (with comparable exchange rate)
• Weather was generally good

Bad

• Not a huge range of vegetarian options
• Opening time for shops could be earlier
• Pedestrian crossings take forever
• Shops prices are the same as Australia, maybe a bit more expensive
• The Adidas race failure

Missed Out (Planned)

• Botanic Gardens
• East Coast Park & Stadium
• Night at Esplanades and Helix Bridge
• Sands Sky Park
• Singapore Flyer

Missed Out (Unplanned)

• F1 Pit Building (not sure what it was)

STEP-O-METER: 38817 steps