Green. Very Green.
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A couple of years ago, I had bought a book on the events that befell the Little Red Dot in the immediate aftermath on WWII, when the Japanese withdrew in 1945. I learnt that 2 shrines to remember the war dead had been built, one in Bukit Batok, and the other at Macritchie Reservoir. A visit was made to the site at Bukit Batok was eventually made.
Because of the remote location of Syonan Jinja, few are actually willing to venture into the forest to see what remains of that shrine today, having apparently been leveled to the ground when the British returned. Nonetheless, a quick browse through the world wide web revealed that there have been a number of successful attempts by members of the public to find this National Heritage site. But it took a couple of years before I could myself, find a good opportunity to attempt what appeared to be a journey fraught with significant hazards. For starters, the trip itself was delayed for a week because it had rained 2 days before the original date, and for caution's sake, and for a less miserable time on the muddy banks and undergrowth, we decided to make do with the delay. Fortunately, the hot weather persisted through the week and we eventually went ahead with the preparation and planning.
With the help of maps such as this, found on the various blogs, we eventually decided to start our journey from the North-eastern reaches of the reservoir, from Upper Thomson Rd, and then follow the established trails till we were nearly directly north of Syonan Jinja, at the ranger station, a journey of nearly half an hour. Once we were there, we took a short break, and then left the trail and entered the forest.
That was at 11am, but because of the forest canopy, the journey was to remain fairly cool throughout, though we still sweated buckets as we attempted to jump "hurdles" and do the "limbo dance" inside.
Here's what at stake as we did all kinds of twisting and turning through the undergrowth whilst constantly checking our bearing on the compass to prevent ourselves from getting lost as we tried to follow the faint trail left from others before us, although at times there were multiple branches from the main route....if there were any at all. Our compass was our only sure guide within the forest and if it gone haywire at any point, we would have gotten well and truly lost.
The pictures of some of the fearsome spikes do little justice to what we really faced. Much of the vegetation had spikes of all varieties you could fathom. Those with pictures taken, were those that looked the most impressive. Some of the others had barely visible spikes but covered the entirety of the plant, with one only figuring this painful reality out when he reaches for the branch innocently.....ouch! Others had hooks and claws to ensnare the unaware, who would then have to painstakingly release himself from the plant.....only to be entangled again when the breeze blew another piece of garment close to the plant, or simply because he had to walk past the plant (or crawl / jump / bend over).
We came across our first pitcher plants some way into the forest, under a log and went: awwwww.....so cute. A closer inspection revealed more SPIKES. Yup, that's how prevalent spikes were. It was just surreal for us, who were to endure more stabs and scratches through the journey.
But who said that the forest doesn't have an actual cute side to it?
Springing from the floor of the forest, grew this young sapling, which would probably one day grow to the height of its surrounding brethren. Without spikes too I hope.
Just in case we needed to find our way back from the way we came, we decided to use a ball of raffia string to mark our path as went along. But with the dense plant growth all around us, we wondered if we could even find these marked trees if we needed to. Laying a trail proved somewhat time-consuming as well, and when we soon found plastic bags tied to trees in the same fashion by others, we stopped doing that near the site.
The expedition partner "wading" through the extremely thick undergrowth. Thankfully this did not happen too often. One never knows what creature is lurking within there in fact.
3 hours into the bashing and wondering aloud if we had gotten lost, we eventually reached an important checkpoint known to those who had gone before us: The abandoned pump-house. There was a pump next to this shelter, where water apparently gushed out from a pipe. We were near the shrine by now and the trail was to become very clear from here as all previous paths converged.
Just beyond the pump-house laid Macritchie Reservoir right before us. The supposed location of Syonan Jinja is seen in this picture here, but obviously well-hidden within the forest. More bashing to come.
And then it happened. All of a sudden, we stumbled upon a very short flight of worn-out concrete steps. At first, we wondered if this was it. We had known that the shrine had a flight of stairs built leading up to it, but this was too short to be the one we had seen in pictures. Nonetheless, we decided to climb upon the steps first just to check it out. And then, it REALLY HAPPENED.
Hidden beyond the vegetation, laid a very long flight of steps. We had been trekking through what was essentially undulating terrain, and to see concrete steps upon steps amongst the greenery quite took our breath away. More flights of steps were revealed and we climbed for quite a long bit. In fact, somewhat more than I had expected.
And finally, we reached the top.
As per what others before us discovered, the place had really been leveled to the ground. All that was essentially left of the site, was this stone basin that was said to have been a purification tub located at the entrance and supposedly carved from an actual granite boulder there. And ruins. And many holes. Some of the smaller holes appeared to have been for the foundations for a small shelter for the tub. Other bigger holes appeared to have been intentionally dug by others and one even went directly under the tub! Perhaps there were diggers looking for the legendary Yamashita's Gold after all. There were signs of many visits by people. In addition to plastic bags indicating the entrances and exits from the site, there was a badly corrugated hammer head and a nail placed on a piece of ruin. And a picture of the Buddha under a tree. Hmmmmm.
It looked too contrived to have been left behind unintentionally and we thought best not to touch anything here. After all, this place deserved respect for all that it represented of our past.
To our surprise, we found even more steps just beyond the tub, which had a stone wall behind it, which we had assumed to be just a retaining wall. We climbed it and here we found absolutely nothing. Only the occasional broken pieces of concrete scattered at the foot of the steps. But we had little doubt that this area was once the main complex, and the purification tub with its shelter, marked the entrance to the shrine. This shot taken from the top of the wall, gives an idea of what 50+ years have done to this place as the jungle reclaimed the area.
The stone basin was itself teeming with life. And most intriguingly, even this brown toad had spines! We took a short 15 minutes break there as we took in the noises of nature. I did not take any picture of what we would see facing the river, because all we would see was just vegetation. But when it was still standing, and before it became overgrown, the shrine would have faced the reservoir, with its back facing a small hill, with green vegetation all around it. A very good feng-shui location indeed with all the serenity the world could offer.
We came back the way we came from, back to the pump-house where we could see CIVILISATION. Unfortunately, there wasn't a way to cross this very narrow section of the reservoir. Except this way, which this angmoh guy was standing on (picture not mine)
The thought of having to endure another 3 hours of ow-ow-ow-ing through the undergrowth compelled us to try to find a way across the "bridge". We made it half-way across, before we got stuck in the middle. We then spent 45 minutes trying in vain to use our rafia string to try to use floating debris to create a make-shift bridge. In the end, yours truly nearly fell into the water, which turned out to be far deeper than expected (the stick in the picture disappeared completely into the water when we threw it in!), and the attempt was abandoned. ))= Plenty of visitors and tourists stood by the other side, watching us, but nobody attempted to help us. They couldn't in any case despite being only some 10-15m from the shore.
We knew that this area we were staring at was probably a swamp, due to the suspicious lack of tall trees. But then, we still didn't want to be scratched and poked to bits by very painful spikes. So we took our chance with the swamp to heard south to Lornie Rd. Despite making a very big loop through the forest (so big that the compass had to be used to guide us, and enduring more spikes) to try to get as far as possible from the reservoir to try to get to firmer ground, the going still proved extremely tough. Please don't ask why no pictures were taken then, we were really fighting to prevent ourselves from having to really wallow in the swamp. The grass was immensely tall and hid soft mud spots where we least expected. And we nearly had to turn back at the end of the swamp, where the vegetation was so unbelievably thick that absolutely no path could be carved with out little swiss army knife. Only sheer will and the watch that showed 4 30PM, saw us through that extremely difficult last part of the journey, where we could hear the welcoming sound of vehicles. And we eventually emerged on a boardwalk.
The last picture here, was also the last picture taken for the day. That was where we emerged from, showing the immensely tall vegetation and the path we literally had to create and bash through. It had taken us nearly 2 hours to cross the swamp, but we made it at last. Thankfully, because we had decided to wait for the week-long sun-baking period, the worst we got was water right up to the shin. It could probably have been far worse if it had rained before that.
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i remember my BMT section commander walk into a hugeass tangle of spikes in the dark.. and when we went back to company line, we realised he was covered in blood..
guy was given 3 days MC and a crapload of assorted creams + tetanus shot for that
at least you guys saw the the spikes and avoided it
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Adventure!!!!!!!
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I chatted with a avid jogger/hiker while eating at the cafeteria before the trip.
He mentioned that the trails connect all the way through Bukit Timah as well, till Mandai and the zoo.
That I didn't know....
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Talking abt adventure, I'm still struggle to find time to go keppal bay...
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Originally posted by SBS2601D:
I chatted with a avid jogger/hiker while eating at the cafeteria before the trip.
He mentioned that the trails connect all the way through Bukit Timah as well, till Mandai and the zoo.
That I didn't know....
I did the MacRitchie to Bukit Timah trail before. It goes alongside Rifle Range Road for part of the way.
It was quite straightforward. It was just long. Something like 16 clicks, if memory recalls.
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oh 2601, shall we go keppal bay take foto someday???
(actually problem is I dunno how to navigate there
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Keppel Bay?
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or watever it is called... there's some sort of pathway from labrador MRT...
dang, I can navigate extremely well on foot on a concrete jungle but not on other jungles...
