Whoa, today was a great day. Went to King Albert Park in the morning to meet up with the guys from SAC for the Choo Choo Trek at about 8am. Met Dun xin at the Mac and we chatted abit. He was talking of getting a Deiner boots online from US but the price is a bit High. haha! Any way, we started off with a briefing from Ho Ee Kid, the trek leader. After the briefing, we started to walk to the trek entrance where we would bash our way through the trek and walk. It was nice to bash the way in, very interesting. Once I was off the beaten trek, my Becker came out. haha! Saw DX's blade, it's more of a combat knife then a survival knife. Rather intereting I would say. Lighter then mine too. As we walked on, we got onto the trek proper at the railway. The funny thing was that there was also a owner who had brought along his dog to walk with us. Well, little did he know how difficult it was a walk. hha.
We bashed through the forestation which was lined with pepper plants, Topioca plants and many others. There were also lots of bamboo like plants with spikes on them. Rather sharp their spikes. Well, we moved on and we encounted our first mud walk. It was very muddy as it had rained the previous day. Was about ankle deep. As the rest came upon the mud, we slowed down. There's a small child who was infront got stuck in the mud as he was wearing sandals for this hike. As he lift his feet up with much strength, and the help of another adult, I could see that his leg is clog full of mud. What a sceen. Think they did not expect this to happen to them. haha! We carried on walking for about 1 hour before we came to the first tunnel. This tunnel was quite wet and with lots of mud as the water and mud were all stuck in it and could not be drained out naturally due to the plants that grew around it. All of us managed to walk through it. Very intereting. But the only part I regretted for the tunnel is that I did not bring along a torch light for this trip. hmm, luckily DX had his Surefire to count on.
We walked on for another 30mins before reaching our first short stop, bridge over a inner road along Clementi. It was quite rusted with visible building cracks on the walls of the pillar. We walked further on and came upon the famous bridge that Kelly Poon filmed in her MV. Interstingly, the group took lots of pics at this bridge, so Did I. We rested for about 15mins before carrying on walking. By now, it was about 11am. We carried on walking further and came upon a chinese temple. To my amasement, all the building and the small farm are all on Malaysian land. I also reliased that they burned the paper-back egg tray to ward off mosquitos. It was rather interesting to see that there were still people living in "kumpongs". There was even a pond, a well and small plantations here and there, growing some plants that they would harvest to eat or sell. Underneath the land that they plant, there was a power line running made by the Singapore Government. Guess the people would'nt want to dig there to get electricuted. haha!
We carried on walking on and walked out onto a tarmack/walkway along a river that runs under the MRT tracks that are from Clementi to Juriong East interchange. We walked on to the end and Ee Kid informed us that this is the last place where we could exit the track. If not, it's about a 30 to 40 minute hike further down the trek to go into the second tunnel. Most carried on, only some went home. At this point, the old man with the dog had gone. I think that he might have gone home thinking that it was just not the type of trail he had imagined it had be.
We walked along a small stream up to the second tunnel. This time, the tunnel is even more muddy and wet. The depth of the mud was about knee height. As I did not want to get my boot's interior wet, I climbed on the top and walked on the main road. My mum and another two guys followed us . We crossed a main road and met up with them at the back. As we were walking, the heavens began to cry., Well, at this point of time, we quickly moved to a HDB flat near by and sat down. This was the end of today's hike!~ haha~
WE ate lunch there and bid farewell to our hiking mates. Over all, this trek is very interesing with lots of sight and sounds to enjoy. If you've been to this trek, any other trek in Singapore would be viewed as not as tough as this.
Hope I can have another opportunity to hike this trek again.
spoke at : 9:23 PM
