Starting in Kent Ridge Park
The Port of Singapore, Kent Ridge Park.
Canopy Walk, Kent Ridge Park.
Hort Park
Alexandra Arch.
Alexandra Technopark
Rainforest walk, Southern Ridges
Henderson Wave Bridge. July 2016
[from FB post: July 9, 2021]
- feeling pissed off.
July 9, 2016 · Shared with Your friends
Phone in a bag of rice overnight -- no success. Off to a repair shop. Not fun....
[from FB post: later the same day]
- feeling relieved. July 9, 2016 · Shared with Your friends About USD 25 later... And my phone is working again. Lessons learned. Don't get stuck in the rain with your phone in your pocket and listen to your instincts about choices...
Hard lessons learned in the rainforest
As Singapore developed and used more of its land, it also preserved more of it. A series of forested hills (ridges) on the southern end of the island that ended with Mt Faber, the tallest natural point in the Lion City, had escaped development and were government-owned
green spaces. Later, they were declared parks and trails were cut through them with connecting bridges so that people could enjoy a leisurely walk of a few kilometers through the rainforest and its canopy. That was wonderous - a forested greenness still existed within modern Singapore, even as the city bustled a couple of hundred meters away.
The Southern Ridges Walk started at Kent Ridge Park. I took a bus down Buena Vista Road from the MRT and alighted at Science Park Drive. I walked a bit through a high tech office complex and found the entrance to Kent Ridge. There was a brightly painted set of stairs in front of me - it was literally "follow the yellow brick road". The trail went up and down, through forest and meadow, across highway bridges, and via metal canopy walks. It was a fascinating series of pathways that ended at Mt Faber and the Harbourfront.
In the middle of the walk there was an urban agricultural research center, Hort Park, that had greenhouses and some interesting architecture. It fit into the forest-walk theme nicely and I noted they had plants for sale (which I filed away for later use). I made it all the way to the Henderson Wave Bridge, which had recently been completed and was being touted as a tourist attraction with great fanfare. Undoubtedly, it had cost a lot of money to design and build a footbridge that connected the Southern Ridges with Mt Faber high above Henderson Road. I found it just "OK"; nevertheless, I appreciated Singapore's effort to create this trail in the face of the development pressure to urbanize every bit of space possible on that small island.
From the Mt Faber side, I turned around and headed back to Hort Park where I was to meet my old friend, HL, for lunch. Singapore was about to do something it was famous for - rain. I mean a total, black-clouded sky downpour. I saw it coming and I was certain I would make it to the meeting point before it started, but alas, halfway there the heavens opened and I got soaked. There was absolutely no shelter even under huge old rainforest giants. My phone got soaked too. Luckily, I managed to meet HL in spite of my phone issue and we found that the place he wanted to go had been closed for over a year. Needless to say I was not pleased because I was soaked, my phone was broken, and THEN I found the "remote" place I had walked to was no longer was in business. UGH.
I returned to C&C's house in Bukit Timah, dried myself off, and put the still-damp phone in a bag of rice overnight in hopes it would dry out. Well, I woke up to my phone being a brick. I hoofed it down to Little India and, with the help of a friend, found a phone repair shop. They told me to return later that evening. I did and much to my relief, the phone was working again. That was my first experience of losing phone access in this "modern age" and I was shocked at how much I had come to depend on it. Unfortunately, since that time, it has worsened, not only for me, but for everyone. I hate to be so dependent on a single piece of technology.
Lessons learned? Always take an umbrella in Singapore when walking where there is no shelter (after all those years in and out of the place, you'd think I would have known). Make sure to verify hard-to-get-to places are actually still in business before venturing to them. Always keep a backup of phone contacts because even though my phone was recovered, my biggest concern was losing all my phone numbers and starting from scratch (although with cloud-based technology, this becomes less of a concern).
Defeated by rain in one of the world's most high-tech cities (in a rain forest) - maybe I was unprepared because of the implausibility?
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