Today I woke up in time to take advantage of the free breakfast offered at my ghetto hostel. The breakfast wasn’t too ghetto – toast, scrambled eggs, hot dog wieners, tomato, carrots, pineapple.

After breakfast I got myself ready, loaded up on water and juice, and caught a bus to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Singapore is one of only two cities in the world (Rio de Janeiro being the other) to have within its confines primary rainforest, and it’s a damn fine rainforest if you ask me.

I spent just under four hours hiking the trails, taking innumerable photos, and sweating, sweating, sweating, drinking and drinking, drinking. I didn’t see all the creatures I had hoped to see – saw no flying lemurs, no tarapins, no frogs, and no pitcher plants (the ones that fill with water and catch bugs, also used by frogs to harbour tadpoles, which mature inside).

I was sad there were no monkeys either, until I arrived back at the entrance/exit to find hundreds of them had arrived. I started taking photos but my battery died after only 3 or 4, and having travelled all this way I decided to give in to consumerism and buy a disposable camera, with which I took 24 photos in under 5 minutes. If they turn out, I’ll scan them all in New Zealand and post a small selection.

Monkeys are cool.

I also got scared shitless by a large black snake that suddenly slithered in front of me – well it was already in front of me and slithered away in fright. It was 4-5 feet long, and about 1.5 inches in diameter, black all along it’s body. There are over 100 varieties of snake in Singapore, 28 of which live only in the Nature Reserves. A number of them are venomous.

I may be able to connect my laptop to the internet tomorrow or the next day at a friend’s house here, in which case I will do my best to upload some photos of my trip so far.