Welcome to the Jungle

Went on a nature hike today through a string of parks called the southern ridges.  I started at the Harborfront station (which is, of course, under a mall).  And got a quick glimpse across the water at Sentosa Island.  Kind of a close-to-home resort destination. (Well, my home anyway).

 Round the other side of the mall were these awesome kid cars.

 But then cross the street, and you have stairs ascending up into jungle canopy.  This is the way up to Mt. Faber.  Not a giant mountain, but way to big to call a hill.

 There is actually an arial tramway from Sentosa Island to the top of the mountain.   But I went up the hard way (or the cheap way, as I was looking at it).  The building in this picture is huge, it will keep showing up in later  pictures.

 There were signs saying "Do not feed the monkeys." Alas, I never saw any.  But a huge variety of giant trees, palm trees.  There are even a few types of conifer that can take the heat.

 And you could catch a few peeks of cityscape between breaks in the trees.

 Judging by this picture, I must have been about 30 stories up or so.

 A good view of the tramway.  It has a stop inside the top of that big building, which is over the train station and the mall there.  Then it passes on through to Sentosa Island.

 This is part of the planned landscaping around the lookout at the top of the mountain.  The lookout has arrows pointing in the direction of major Asian cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Bangkok.

 That building starts to look like a space station as we start to see it from other angles.

 These are orchids.  Only one is blooming.

 ..And it didn't really look much like the one in the picture on the sign.

 Definitely had a problem with the either the sky being overdeveloped, or the greenery being too dark.  These trees had a lovely dappled canopy, though.  And they were huge.

 Up to this point, I was just walking along paths along the side of the road.  But as I went west they did some interesting things to really get you up into the trees.  This is Henderson Wave Bridge.  The arches between the support piers have been turned into more of a sine wave shape, that curves up over the bridge to give you a bit of much needed shade up there.  I'm sure the engineering of it is fascinating.

 Looking down at the roadway underneath.  We are way up from there.  There is the strange building again, and it gets weirder looking from each new angle.

 After the bridge there is a bit more roadside path, but then I came to a metal walkway that lifts you back up into the forest canopy. I think it is called the forest walk.

 Pictures really don't do justice to how big these trees are.

 There is another bridge that is apparently cool at night because it is lit up with colored LEDs.  But I like these trees you can see while standing on the tree, because of there crazy wide canopy.

 Tall palm, standing all alone.

 A little hard to make out, but this tree is covered in purple flowers.

 Luckily I took a close up, and you can actually see the bridge I was talking about a little earlier (with the LEDs)

 This palm has some sort of black berry-like fruit.

 On the other side of that bridge was a group of formal gardens, I guess none of the gardens impressed me enough to pull out the camera, except for the one with an aquarium.  This fish would turn around and stare at me wherever I stood.

 I still haven't learned the names of most of the trees in Singapore, but now I can identify this one.  A rubber tree!

 As it got late in the evening, National Day celebrations began, including the flying of giant flags from their military helicopters.  I completely failed to get a good picture.  You can just make out one to the left of the crazy building.

 And the dang camera app closed itself before letting me take a picture, so the flag was just starting to leave my view by the time I took this one.

There are three helicopters, the one in front is pulling the flag.  There is a weight hanging off the bottom of the flag to help it not be completely wound up by the wind.  The other two helicopters are flying escort.  There were at least three teams of these guys flying around.

And later, from a different part of town, I got to see the fireworks.  The casino in the background was awesome, because the fireworks would reflect sparkling light off the glass windows.