Southerners in Singapore: Hiking the Tree Top at MacRitchie Reservoir

With Ella's cast officially removed last week and her ankle in a brace, we have been itching to get out and do some more exploring than we were able to do with her on crutches. This past weekend we decided to head out to MacRitchie Reservoir where there are lots of walking trails around the reservoir. In addition, there is a hike called the Tree Top Trail which takes you up into the forests and around part of the reservoir. It was an almost 10km walk through some different terrain so it took us a while but was lots of fun.

Of course, one of the highlights was crossing this 250 meter long free-standing suspension bridge 25 meters above the forest floor. It definitely swung some and there were lots of people on it so it was a little unnerving at first but the views were wonderful. Traffic can only go in one direction and there are rangers overseeing the safety of those crossing but I still wouldn't have wanted to linger too long on the bridge.

Us at the start of the bridge

Another highlight of the trip were the monkeys. While we know that there are monkeys around in Singapore, we had yet to have any sightings since we are right in the center of the city. MacRitchie is apparently full of monkeys so we were excited to see them. That being said, we had been warned that monkeys can be aggressive and to take care. And signs like this also made me a little nervous:

Well we were probably only a couple kilometers into our hike when ahead of us we saw a monkey on the fence along the side of the path. Approaching slowly, we then realized that it was a male monkey sitting on the fence and then a meter to his left, on the other side of the path, was the mother and a bunch of babies snacking at the base of a bush of some sort. While amazing to see, I didn't have any intention of walking between the two groups and getting attacked by crazy monkeys (it reminds me of scary movies I had seen growing up!). So we stood, took some pictures and waited to see what we should do. Luckily, along came another group of hikers who nonchalantly walked between the monkeys without much concern. Seemed like they knew what we were doing so we followed their example and continued on our hike. We ran into numerous other monkeys along the way and learned that the rangers are serious about eating carefully around them! Ella opened up a granola bar and it was like she had yelled "dinner time" in monkey language. Several monkeys all came running towards us and we immediately put the food away and walked quickly down the path!