Took a Walk..

Decided to take a walk yesterday.. yet another recce trip and this time I covered an area that I’ve always wanted to go to. Quite nice.. still as scenic as ever..

Ok let’s see.. there was the packing that began just after lunch.. didn’t bring too much. Just some basic stuff and about 3 litres of water (which I later regretted) . hah. Anyway, I’m not complaining la, I’d rather have an excess than a lack of water..

some of the stuff I brought along.. well, you DON’T exactly need some of the stuff; you can even go in empty handed, but just in case.. u know, like if u found some BIGFOOT prints and decide to follow it.. =P

Went in by the same route again.. nothing much. Saw some tortoise or turtles.. wateva. Reptiles ya. But no monitor lizards.. beeps was hoping to find one too but we didn’t see any.. and it’s MONITOR LIZARD, not KOMODO DRAGON (I’d be freaked out if it was). The route in was scenic as always, pass the golf course with ppl teeing off and the nice reservoir to accompany you.. nice and refreshing, it’s always nice to take a walk away from all the cars and buses, ppl and all the work. This trip’s quite different too though, beeps was with me and it became more like an educational trip kinda thing.. identifying everything from wild berries to wild ginger and tapioca and sniffing out little trails here and there.. =)


TOP: Meet Uncle Vern.
BOTTOM: The dark thing in the middle is a wild berry. It looks butt ugly, but it’s nice and sweet. Managed to convince beeps to eat some.. oh and if you’re gonna try some urself, chew it in the back of ur mouth.. (think purple lips and teeth)

Stopped at the usual place (area b on the map) to heat up a snack and then left it there to keep warm while we went on around the area. There was quite a few places that I managed to cover the previous time I went there in December, so now I thot I’d go to the other places that I wanted to.. and well, pretty much drag beeps along. Hah. It was raining in the morning, so everything was wet, thankfully there’s always solid fuel.. something you’d probably trade blood for in Brunei.. and thankfully there’s not too many ppl. The last time beeps went to the Tree Top Trail, it was some weekend and she said there were lotsa ppl, I agree.. so here’s a tip, go on a weekday, there’s much much lesser ppl. And stay clear of the evenings too, that’s when the joggers and mosquitoes start to come out. =)

Somewhere near area b on the map. This place has changed so much since the first time I’ve been here, which has got to be like a good 10 years ago. The stream wasn’t so wide, there was no bridge and there wasn’t this board-walk thing..

Next up was to go venture further up north, to one of the fingers of the Lower Pierce Reservoir (area a on the map). Samuel brought me in there once, like maybe 10 years ago, on the first trip that I went there.. I remembered it to be scenic and true enough; it pretty much stayed the same. There was this unique stairway thing which led up to the reservoir, really interesting design, sorta came across to me like a ‘stairway to heaven’ sorta thing.. right. Anyway, the view there’s fantastic. It’s one of the rare places where you don’t really find any buildings in the background.. so you can just take in the whole scene and just drift away, forgetting all the buses, schoolwork, stupid quizzes, deadlines for reports.. ya.. u get the point.


That’s the stairway thing.. unique design.. it turns out that the teeth-like things helped to trap the leaves and twigs.. ingenious idea.. simple solutions to big problems..

Taking it all in..

Oh, and the really interesting thing was that, there was this little spur line thing that I tried to climb; I wanted to skirt and follow around the edge of the water just to see what’s on the other side.. on the map it shows that the view would probably be much nicer.. so anyway, it got too overcrowded with thorns and I decided not to drag my poor sister along with me (joel, if you’re reading this, we’ve gotta try it someday, seriously). And that’s when we realized that there seemed to be this abandoned road inside the bushes.. sorta reminds me of the silly essays I’d write in sec 4 but that’s another story.. we took a closer look around and lo and behold, what seemed to be like a hollowed-out tree turned out to be some i-got-no-idea-how-old-it-is lamppost. All rotted and rusty.. and looking up you can still make out the shape of the lamp.. how cool is that la.. so we braved the bushes and mud and got onto that road, only to find it leading up to some back entrance of an army camp. I did a quick check and found out that the restricted area is mainly covered by 2 facilities, the Ammunition Command Camp 1 and the Advance Materials Engineering Pte Ltd.. hmm.. So typically, yes, the stupid ideas of the gah-men doing secret testing and experimenting with the monkeys and water came into mind.. but I shall just stop here *gulp*


LEFT: That’s the lamppost, look closer and you’ll see that there are 2 wires running in them.
RIGHT: That’s the top of the lamppost, you can still see the area where the bulb should be in..

So much for a trip, we decided to head out to Thomson Road (area c on the map). They’ve built this nice new trail, I think it’s called the Venus Trail or something.. it leads out all the way to Thomson. Really useful and I only found out about it on my previous trip.. well, then again, it has been 3 years since I last went in, thanks to the army which put me off the whole forest thing for a while.. anyway, caught some pretty nice views on the way out too..



I’m looking forward to the next trip, and beeps brought up something interesting. You see there are 2 ways to traverse in there: main tracks and tiny little jungle trails (think minor bashing).. the common folk would take the main tracks, these are the huge ones that ppl jog on and you pretty much won’t get lost.. the more adventurous well.. might be interested in snooping around and seeing where that tiny trail leads too.. (my bet is that it’ll probably lead to some SISPEC or OCS or RGR checkpoint, I’ve found some).. my point is, if anyone.. ANYONE is interested in the latter, let me know. I’d like a companion to check it out with.. =)

I FOUND YOU !!!