There’s a lot of green Singapore, the self-styled City in a Garden, but it’s a city all the same. After three weeks in wintery upstate New York and one week sweating in the city, a group of us decided to go for a hike to actually forget that we were in a city (and to reacclimatize to tropical heat).

We chose the Treetop Walk at MacRitchie Reservoir for this morning’s hike, which was swelteringly hot and really beautiful.

No city here, right?!

We exchanged road overpasses for a suspension bridge over a rainforest.

View from the bridge, with the reservoir and Singapore Island Country Club’s golf course in the distance:

City? What city?

A couple cool shots looking down off the bridge:

In addition to flora, we also saw quite a bit of fauna! Most of the monkeys scampered off through the trees as soon as they saw cameras, and one bounded straight towards my friend as she tried to get a picture with it. Another headed for a fellow hiker’s bag until other hikers’ yelling warned it off. This one, however, remained still enough and close enough for a quick photo:

We also met a lizard, a much easier photo subject:

All in all, it was a very serene way to spend a morning, and we even managed to beat the tropical downpour by about 20 minutes. I was also pleased to see the trails populated with families. In a city that is so connected to technology, so much so that it’s rare to see someone walking down a street without his or her face in a phone, it’s really important to get outside and spend a little time in the real world.

Happy trails!