Won't you take me to Monkeytown?

Cheesy, I know, but so appropriate...

Today Whitney and I decided to explore an area called Bukit Timah. First we had lunch at this great cafe where I had an omelet with chorizo and capsicum (aka bell peppers). I had a hard time deciding between the omelet and New Zealand pike cakes (which are apparently similar to pancakes), until the server - upon my request for a recommendation between the two - basically said avoid the pike cakes if you're on any kind of diet. I'm not, actually, thank you very much (and to be fair she didn't mean anything by it) but I took that to mean they are really quite bad for you if they're worse than chorizo and eggs. Anyway...delicious.

After brunch we checked out this place called Beauty World Center, which supposedly harkens back to shopping in Singapore about 40-50 years ago. If it doesn't look that exciting in this photo, that's because it wasn't. However, I did buy a really cute ceramic pot for just SGD$5.

I don't think our expectations for Beauty World Center were high, but even so they were not met, so we continued over to Bukit Timah Reserve. Before we had even reached the parking lot, Whitney saw the first monkey. Then we saw another, and another. They were everywhere, see?

After I took loads of photos of monkeys, we decided to take this little trail towards a quarry and reservoir. We were both in casual cotton dresses and sandals so we thought we'd take it easy. Well, the map had no scale on it and the location looked far away, but in reality it took us 5-10 minutes to get there and that's all. So we decided to take the path up to Singapore's highest peak, Bukit Timah, which is a mere 156 meters (532 feet). Doesn't sound like much but the first part of the hike up there was a 45-degree hill that rivals Pacific Heights, followed by a shortcut of stairs that would make Rocky proud. Sorry no photos of us together. We were ridiculously hot by the time we reached the top. Whitney said we looked like we'd just taken a bikram class and neither of us was in the mood to be photographed!

Though we were literally at the top of the island, we were disappointed in the sheltered view (above). According to both of our tour books, "the number of plant species in the reserve exceeds the number on the whole of North America." That seems awfully hard to believe, doesn't it?!

Not to be outdone by the monkeys, we also saw a few lizards. In reality this one was probably about 2-feet in length. The funny thing about the Bukit Timah Reserve is that Whitney and I had set out to explore some "off the beaten path" places in Singapore, but we were on a paved path the entire time!

Just as we were leaving, all these monkeys rushed the road. There were at least 15-20 of them, and neither of us had seen anything like it. It was as if someone dumped a bag of candy out on the road and they were all rushing to get to it, but we never figured out what really motivated them.

After Bukit Timah Reserve, we walked around the area a bit more. There are some really nice homes in the area, so there were a few high-end shops to match. After some window shopping, we met Josh for a glass of wine near their place to wrap up yet another great day.