Conquering the Kent Ridge Park

Woke up this Sunday morning, fresh and awake. Made up my mind to conquer the Southern Ridges. Though I would like to leave earlier, just couldn't wake up that early. It took quite a while for me to convince Mum that I was going for just a walk. Alone! Sigh!The winding road to Kent Ridge Park was a challenge to me. Have never attempt to drive at such winding road before. But the feeling of seeing the body of water near the peak of the hill is worth it. I could see Keppel Shipyard from here!

Saw a spider spanning it's web. Didn't realise that it could be this big. Time for this city girl to get in touch with nature. Sunday morning is the time for families outing. All those who were here came from Mount Faber. Guess they all wanted to explore the Southern Ridges. Intsead of going straight for HortPark, I went searching for the area where, according to the National Park Board website, is a site for fishes and turtles. And yes, I still want to go and see turtles lay eggs in Malaysia. My obsession with turtles came into full bloom when I saw the turtle surface for air in Kusu Island. But I couldn't find the pond which the website wrote about.

Walking along, I came to this track that brought back Melbourne Memories. It certainly resembled the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, except the weather. Perhaps next time, I should go there earlier. Maybe I shouldn't strap up my left knee either. It turned out to be redundant as this route, I think, should be graded easy. Arriving at the entrance of the canopy walk, I was glad that I need not walk 4km before reaching there. This was turning out to be a walk in the park. Easy!! Probably a bit too easy.

The view from the bridge wasn't that fantastic though. Maybe you take some, you lose some. Walking in, I passby some people, most probably businessmen, talking. They were so loud that they disturbed the natural surroundings. Not that the kids weren't noisy. But they were extremely loud, comparing their work and talking shop. Please! Leave your work behind, can't you just enjoy the nature for a couple of hours? Overtaking them, I came across a directory that had "Reflections at Bukit Chandu".

This place turned out to be a museum. Undecided whether I should visit this place or not, I just wondered into the garden of the place. There were a lot of people taking a breather there. How come we never had this sort of outing when we were younger? Dad could have given us plenty of history lessons. Since my main purpose was to visit HortPark, I decided to give this place a miss and put it in my "To Visit" list. The list is getting longer. Good or bad??

Later, I noticed an uncle concentrating on taking a photo near a bench. Quietly, I walked over and realised that he was trying to captured the picture of a bird. Was quite a pretty bird, and it became the two of us trying to snap some good photographs of the bird. Then more and more people joined us, which prompted me to just walked away. The bird will probably fly away soon. Exiting Reflections at Bukit Chandu, I came into the carpark and thought the route to HortPark is probably down the road. But after walking for five minutes, it doesn't seems right. So I went back to the road sign and reconsider my options. Then I realised, I had to walk down a winding slope before I would reach HortPark. The thought of walking back up has already begun to haunt me. But HortPark was the destination, so I marched on.

The Greenhouses came into view first. A lot of people were trying to get into them. But I doubt so they can do that. As the frequent opening and closing of the doors will affect the temperature in the greenhouses which will in turn affect the growth of the plants inside. There are certainly a lot of pretty flowers inside. There are showrooms on how to incoporate greenery into one's home, be it HDB flats or private houses. With the swarms of people coming in and out of the showroom, I decided to give the showrooms a miss and proceed to the numerous themed landscaped gardens instead.

Among the many themes, the spice garden is my favourite. Though, it turned out that this was NOT one of the theme. It's a corner to showcase some of the spices growth in Asia. But I thought, it can be a theme garden. Just grow them in your garden, make it into Spice Garden. Maybe one day I can do that, and do a Jamie Oliver! Hahah!

Strolling around, the sun soon rose to a height that the heat was no longer bearable for me. So I turned back and took another route back. There were more and more peole coming through, and kids were happily chasing one another at the playground. I wondered into this patch of garden that where there were sunflowers (my favourite) and many tiny yellow colour flowers that I like. The winding route up turned out to be not much of a challenge, and I was already starting the make plans for my second visit.