MacRitchie Tree Top Walk

Tuesday we went hiking! Singapore has some pretty good hiking trails. I like their website's slogan is let's make Singapore our garden. I really like that. We hiked the MacRitchie Tree Tops. The hike takes you through the jungle till you climb up till a 250m long suspension bridge that goes through the tree tops. It is the highest point in the nature reserve. I have seen a lot of friend's pictures and it looked amazing. So this has been on our list for a month now.

Lyndon wanted to do it on his last day off for Chinese New Year so we cabbed it up there (I find it hilarious that we took a cab to go hiking. City folks here). The website said that if you started at this one point it would only take you 45 minutes to an hour. Well what they meant was that it will take you that long to get to the actual trail from that point. So what we thought was going to be a one hour hike turned into a three hour hike. We ended up hiking about 10km.

Roots. I told the kids to look at the roost, and Henry asked where the rooster was. Ironically we saw one on our way back down the trail.

The beginning of our hike. We had no idea was in store for us. 

Welcome to the jungle! Think Guns n Roses.

It's a tree star.

The kids did really well. Henry had to be carried about half the way, but that is to be expected when you are two. It was totally worth the hike to walk along the tree tops. It was pretty spectacular. We were 25m above the ground! The kids regained all their walking and running "powers" as they call it, when we were on the bridge. They thought it was pretty cool to be up in the trees like the monkeys.

Yup, the monkeys. Long tailed macaques to be exact. They roam wild and free in the jungle here. We saw a lot. It was really cool when we saw the first few. We were hiking up to the trail head and we looked up and three were just meandering down the guard rail on the trail path. Then once we got to the trail head we saw a couple of more. As we hiked on we saw a lot more, even some baby ones. We did not take any food because we did not want to relive the squirrel monkey experience. That did not stop them from trying to see if we had any in our diaper bag. They did not jump on us, but we had to let them know not to mess with us. It's a lot freakier shooing a monkey away than a squirrel. We had two cases where we had to shoo them away. The first one, a monkey had gotten a hold of someone's juice box and was licking it. We stopped to watch them up close with another couple. Then when the monkey was done it jumped off the fence and started getting really close to us, checking us out to see if we had any food. It followed us a little bit, but left us alone. Thank goodness. If it had come after us I was going to have to go momma bear on it. Then when we were done with our hike waiting for our taxi in the parking lot, a whole troop of monkeys came over. We had set our diaper and camera bag down because ya know, we had just hiked a 10k and carried two kids for most of the way. One monkey tried to steal our camera bag. I had to show it who was boss and we ran for the cab. I never thought I would be freaked out by a monkey. It was really cool to see, but they are wild animals and you have to be careful.

Boy, stick, and monkey. 

They would not be our kids if they did not stop and dig in the ground. 

Here comes another monkey.

He really wanted his picture taken with a monkey.

Baby monkeys!

Their running "powers" were in full force on the bridge. They loved it! I thought we all might be a little more nervous, but no one had a problem. Even when Lyndon was making the bridge shake the kids were fine. 

My sweet husband. I love you Lyndon!

And my favorite boy in the world. I love you Henry! (I have three favorite boys).

Look out below! 250m Above the forest floor. 

We were worn out and starving when we were done, but everyone said it was fun. Cosette said her favorite part was filling up our water bottles (what?). She says the funniest things. I kept asking her like really your favorite part was filling up the water bottles and going to the bathroom? She said yeah, to each their own. Henry liked the monkeys. He was very excited about them. And of course they both liked being way up high in the sky. It was really cool. More hiking is in our future, but hopefully shorter ones. Knowing us, we miss the fine print sometimes, it will be longer than we expect.