Monkeys, MacRitchie Park and the Tree Top Walk

Today we went for a hike. A long hike. Ok, so it was longer than long. This is not for the casual hiker. It is over rough terrain, tons of stairs, and roughly 8.5-9.5 miles. That depends on whose pedometer you look at. I tell him I have to work twice as hard as he does, but he just looks at me with a blank stare. I don't think he believes me.


We started out with a picnic lunch and lots of water. Thank God for that – we needed every drop of it. At the very beginning of the hike, we saw a pack of monkeys and just stood in disbelief. They were everywhere; in every tree, playing on the ground, chasing each other, sitting on boulders, in the path, hanging out above us – eying us for a little treat. Everywhere we looked, there was a monkey. Big ones, little ones, medium sized ones and teeny baby ones. They were adorable!

There are a lot of monkeys in this picture - did you find them?

The forest was full of monkeys - we figured there were at least 40 in this one spot.

We did not give them a treat. We had been warned of the fines of doing so and we are not getting fined in Singapore. God knows what the fine – or prosecution - would be, remember the ‘high court’? I don't break laws.

We walked on a nice quiet path:

We climbed steps:

We went down steps;

We went up steps:

We found the Tree Top Walk. Our kids will never believe I walked across this and didn’t crawl:

But here is proof:

Look below me! Do you see the tree tops? Yes, *I* took this picture!

We both did made the trip across, and he did not have to push me, hold my hand or even pull me :-)

Then we went down steps:

And went down more steps:

We found a tower:

Of COURSE, he said we had to climb it.

Our kids would never believe I took this picture either - but I did :-)

And we had to go down those steps:

We saw some interesting trees:

Some beautiful flowers:

and some turtles who looked like they were fighting and had a mediator between them:

We found some BIG leaves and took a picture for Aedan, Marcus and pR:

And there were monkeys:

Some even smiled for the pictures:

Do you think it was a smile?

One was a bit peeved we didn’t have anything for him:

We went down board walk; SURELY we were coming to an end:

or not:

Finally, after 8 long, relaxing, wonderful hours, we found the end of the trail. Now for the taxi. Ha! That is another story. But we found the Post (office) and a potty at the end of the trail.

Remember all that water we drank?