“I don’t want to be touched by nature” (aka Did you see or touch any monkeys?)

Today after a slowish start to the day, we came up with a stellar plan. Walk to Arab Street – have a look around, visit Cat Cafe Meomi, maybe have some lunch then head off in to the the northern parklands and see some nature and rainforest. We were *just* about to set off, when it started bucketing with rain. We have been lucky on this trip – hardly any rain. Although at times we would’ve liked some. Last time we were here, it rained on cue every day around 5pm. So we can’t complain too much about todays rain – but there was also some thunder which didn’t bode well for our planned nature walk.

Anyway, we waited a while and then decided to brave the rain. It’s like 30 degrees c out there anyway, so what’s a little rain? It was about a 15 min walk to our destination- we planned to get to the cat cafe on opening at 11am. So….imagine our disappointment on arriving there to see it all locked up and looking like it had been abandoned. Google insisted it was open, but it was not open. Oh well. No cats for you.

We had a wander around instead and walked down the very popular with Instagram types Haji Lane. We stopped in a few cute shops.

By now it was nearing lunchtime and we walked past a Vietnamese restaurant called Mrs Pho that looked good, so we went in for some lunch. We shared a very delicious Banh Mi and some other snacks things. The food is delivered by robot cat. Well, to most people anyway. We just got ours delivered the good olde fashioned way.

Robot cat server (Last seen in Graz, Austria)

After lunch we had a bit more of wander around the area. All the restaurants around here looked really good, but how much food can we eat? The weather was still inclement, and as we were nearby, we decided to just check to see if maybe the Cat cafe was actually open.

Much to our excitement (ok, I admit, it was mostly my excitement) the roller door was up and the Cat cafe was in action. We went in to check out the situation- I think we were the first customers of the day – and decided to go in and see the cuties. The cats (7 in total) were all very cute and relatively active and interacting with us. Buu, the orange munchkin with short legs and George the British Shorthair were probably my favorites, but they were all super cute.

We stuck around there for about an hour. It’s always nice to spend time with cats. The place got pretty busy by the time we left.

The weather looked like it was clearing, but first we needed a coffee at Arabica, because their coffee is delicious and there was a store nearby.

Then we wandered up to Bugis Station, caught the MRT to Newton Station and jumped on a bus bound for Central Catchment Nature Reserve. We had no idea what to expect, but we had been promised monkeys and squirrels. 🙊 🐿️

We started our walk through the park with the aim to get to the tree top walk which was about 3km away. Not so bad we reckon….oh, but yes, that’s right…the humidity. Anyway within about 5 minutes of our walk we saw a bunch of monkeys hanging out in a tree. Monkeys spotted: ✔️

It was so green and lush and foresty here. Really very different to home.

We rounded a corner to go up a pathway…and there were a bunch of monkeys sitting on the path, hanging out and giving us evil looks. Now, when one passes monkeys you are not meant to make eye contact with them – but let me tell you, this is very difficult!! We were also warned on signs at the start of the park to not carry any food or plastic bags because the monkeys WILL steal it. We snuck by the monkeys carefully.

We continued on our merry way – the tree top walk closed at 5pm, so we had a schedule to keep! We looked for squirrels on the “squirrel trail” but didn’t see any, though luckily we saw some later on. Apparently there are wild boar in here too – but we didn’t come across any.

We made it to the tree top walk with 15 minutes to spare, drenched in sweat. It was a little scary up on the walk, but the views were spectacular.

Steve conquers his fear of heights (for now)

It doesn’t look that impressive but it was

When we made it to the other side of the walk a little sit down and a sip of water was in order. And this is where the scary thing happens. As I was perched on a seat, trying to cool down and rehydrate, I suddenly felt something touch my arm. I leapt to my feet and see this HUUUUGGGEEE gross orange caterpillar thing on my leg!!! I start screaming “get it off me!!” But Steve doesn’t want to touch it,meanwhile it’s crawling further and further up my leg (at waist height now) it was quite traumatic. Eventually it was flicked off on to ground with my phone. I know you’re all laughing at me right now, but the thing was huge, and yuck, I’m having flashbacks just thinking about it now. It prompted me to say “I don’t want to be touched by nature”. Later on, when everyone calmed down a bit, we thought we should have probably taken a photo of it, but at the time, I just wanted to get away from it. Eeeww.

I guess it looked a bit like this but much much bigger (stock photo)

So, crisis over, we had to continue back out of the park, which was another 3km or so. It was a pretty cool walk and we came across another massive family of monkeys. Baby monkeys and all. My photos of them aren’t very good though.

We were almost out of the park when we saw this guy jumping through the trees.

By now it was about 6pm ish and we were staring to think about dinner. We caught the bus back to Newton and went and checked out nearby Newton Food market. We ate here back in 2015 and it was one of our favorite places, but unfortunately times change, renovations get done and places feature on TV and the internet. It sadly did not look great anymore and only seemed to sell the basic tourist staples. Shame, as it used to be great. We headed back to the food hall at Orchard because those Szechuan noodles are damn addictive. Although I ended up getting roast pork and duck. Steve got the noodles.