Monday, January 29, 2007
Night Cycling -vvv

After a week of planning and three months of procrastination, we finally got around to going on a night cycling trip on Saturday night. I have never been night cycling before or cycled anywhere besides parks and void decks. In fact, I don't even recall the last time I cycled. But nevertheless, I had ambitious plans for this trip. Naturally, we never made the enormous loop that encompasses the central catchment area. However, I think we did pretty well for office workers on a first attempt.

After having dinner at Subway, we started off at East Coast Park around 10pm. Despite the cool weather, Shuquan changed into a singlet. Perhaps he's very proud of the 23SA crest.



We cycled eastwards along the park as far as we could. We then turned into Tanjong Rhu and continued in the same direction. Soon, we arrived at Kallang where the cheering from the National Stadium (Singapore vs Malaysia perhaps?) was competing with the cheering from the S.H.E. concert in the Indoor Stadium. It was all pretty loud. You can catch a free concert just by sitting outside the Indoor Stadium. Too bad no visual though.



We followed the parks along the edge of the Kallang River mouth and arrived at Chinatown around midnight. It seems we missed the opening event for the Chinese New Year markets. The stage crew were already packing up the equipment. I saw a nicely dressed couple talking to the crew, could be the emcees for the event.



It was raining a little, so we took a break and ate McDonald's apple pie while sitting on the steps at the entrance of the MRT station.



For the next leg of the journey, we planned to reach Bukit Timah via Grange Rd and the Botanic Gardens. This is what the gates of the Botanic Gardens look like at night. It's really creepy since there's absolutely no light inside. You can imagine the vines come alive if you walk any closer.



By the time we reached The Chinese High School, it was apparent that we would never make it back to East Coast for sunrise if we continued on the original ambitious plan. Our alternative was to head down to Holland Village for food instead of Bukit Timah. We went via the Namly area to Sixth Avenue. That's where important (or paranoid) people live because there was a Cisco guard at every junction.

We finally had some real food at Holland Village - prata and noodles. At a little past 3am, we started heading back to East Coast. We had to rush if we were to make it back for sunrise. To make matters worse, it started raining. Fortunately, we brought our Gore-Tex jackets, which are probably the most useful among the free things you get from the army.



The route back was simple. From Holland Village to Buona Vista, then along the MRT tracks to Queenstown. Follow the Alexandra Canal/Singapore River to downtown. Water break at MICA, then along Victoria Street up to Kallang. We had some food at Old Airport Road, then down to East Coast Park all the way back to the start point. We arrived just before 7am. No much of a sunrise though, it was rather cloudy.

Below is the route traced out on Google Earth. It covers a distance of at least 45km, perhaps 48km if we include the detours and various obstacles caused by the construction works all over the island.

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Yiheng made 9:26 PM

2 Comments:

very COOL!!! never tried night cycling before
By  Anonymous, at 11:24 PM  

Hi, I have just moved to Singapore and am living at queesnway. Im trying to work out whether you can cycle down Alexandra Canal all the way to Boat Quay. I saw in your blog, which was a very good read, that you cycled on it for a bit. Is the whole canal accessible.

I enjoyed reading your biking experiences, I will try it one day I am sure!

If you could email me on tommyhc12@yahoo.com it would be much appreciated!
By  Anonymous, at 2:19 PM  

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