Southern Ridges [Singapore 2018]

If there’s anything that can almost be considered hiking in Singapore, this might be it. The Southern Ridges is a trail along the – get ready for this – south ridge of Singapore that connects Mount Faber Park to Kent Ridge Park. In between are the Henderson Waves bridge, Telok Blangah Hill Park, Alexandra Arch, and HortPark. After spending the morning at the Botanic Garden with my aunt and cousin’s kids, my mother and I met up with my father at Vivo City for lunch (duck), then started our trek along the Southern Ridges at the Marang Trail at the Mount Faber end and made it to HortPark before going to visit my grandmother and convening with another aunt for dinner. Tired yet? This was day 4 and I had also already seen both grandmothers, met a niece and nephew for the first time, gone to church, met up with family friends for lunch, and survived enjoyed a family reunion with almost all the grandmothers/aunts/uncles/cousins/nephews on my father’s side.

Back to the Southern Ridges. If you didn’t know, Singapore is located one degree north of the equator. It is hot. And humid. Which means that many people prefer the air-conditioned confines of the indoors. I prefer anything that involves a bit of dirt and sweat. The first part of our journey, the Marang Trail, is partially wooded and takes you up to Mount Faber, a whole 106 m high. At the top of Mount Faber, there’s a restaurant/gift shop, you can take the cable car to Sentosa, and you get some nice views of the Singapore architecture.

View from Mount Faber

A walk across Mount Faber Park leads you to the next attraction along the Southern Ridges, the Henderson Waves bridge. The bridge spans Henderson Road and looks wavy, hence the Henderson Waves. The bridge itself (sadly) doesn’t go up and down, but the sides are waves. See below.

Henderson Waves bridge

On the other side of the bridge are the Hilltop and Forest Walks through Telok Blangah Hill Park. According to Wikipedia, Telok Blangah Hill is the original name of Mount Faber, and is Malay for “cooking pot bay,” because the nearby harbor was a – prepare yourselves – bay that was shaped like a cooking pot. The Forest Walk is cool because it’s elevated so you get to walk ~20 feet above the ground through the treetops.

Forest Walk

The Forest Walk leads to Alexandra Arch, a less cool bridge than the Henderson Waves, and HortPark. HortPark is a kind of horticultural center where people can go to buy gardening supplies and see a bunch of themed gardens. And with that, we made our way to my grandmother and on to dinner. Stay tuned for the next multiple-attraction day. Spoiler alert: most days were multiple-attraction days.