
Well, I can tell you immediately that bird-watching is not my thing. I do not understand folks that come with cameras with massive telephoto lenses and sit for hours in little shacks by the marshland to get a photo of a bird. Admittedly, they showed me some photos, and they were stunning. But I just don't have the patience.
Thankfully though, there were a lot of other animals that totally fascinated me. Monitor lizards for one. We saw several, a few that just lazily crossed our path, and many more that were on the edge of the waterways or swimming further down the stream. They're so elegant when they swim, with their legs neatly tucked besides them for maximum hydrodynamics … while their tail propels them forward.
And then there were these crazy fish … that just kept jumping out of the water. I'm not sure if they were eating bugs buzzing right above the surface or if they were showing off to us. In any case, we were amazed at how high they could jump.
Crustaceans. I call them crabs! Did you know they hang out in mangroves, positioned just ever so slightly above the water line on tree trunks? As we were walking down a boardwalk over a mangrove park, I looked down towards the water … and there they were. Hundreds of them. Never seen them hang out on roots. Tanning?! Fascinating!
Sungei Bulah Wetland Reserve is as far as we can go from our home and still be in Singapore. I checked on Google Maps and it's exactly 34 km by road from our home, at the very north-western side of the island, right opposite to Johor Bahru in Malaysia, which you can see across the strait. The Wetland Reserves are a calm oasis within the city state. A wonderful place for a walk in a natural surrounding (as natural as it will get in Singapore), surrounded by peace and quiet. From the top of the lookout tower, looking towards the horizon, we nearly saw no signs of civilization. Trees, waterways, marshland … and OK, some telecommunications towers in the distance. But pretty good for urban Singapore :-)
To get there we drove up Bukit Timah Expressway, past the Kranji Industrial Park and all the abandoned army camps, when suddenly we were in a traffic jam on a wide road heading past the park. We thought it was a bit odd, so we asked the cab driver how come so much traffic here on a Saturday morning. He said we were crossing the railroad and that the road was very narrow going over the tracks. Although where we were, the road seemed to be very wide.
This is what you have to understand. The one railroad track that runs through Singapore from Tanjong Pagar station in the south and then across the island and into Malaysia, actually belongs to Malaysia. The land is owned by Malaysia as is the actual rail-track. So if you're walking on the rail tracks in Singapore, you're technically in Malaysia. Leftover problems from before 1965, when Singapore was still part of Malaysia. Anyhow, because the road that crosses the train tracks is actually owned by Malaysia, they have for obvious reasons never bothered to expand it to accommodate the large road that leads to and fro and thus every day it creates a bottle-neck! Politics!!
The good news is that a few months ago, Malaysia and Singapore came to an agreement, and the rail-road track and the surrounding land will shortly be reclaimed by Singapore and the Tanjong Pagar railway station moved to Woodlands. Hopefully that will solve the bottleneck problem on this road passing by the Kranji Industrial Park.
When you go back home, make sure you take Lim Chu Kang Road, which will take you past the fascinating Muslim, Chinese and Christian cemeteries … all side-by-side. We may feud during our lifetime, but we all end up lying next to each other. Loved the symbolism.