How to experience Singapore's wild side

There aren’t many occasions when I’ve had to slam on the brakes of my bike to avoid cycling over a sunbathing monitor lizard, but that’s precisely what happened earlier this year during my pedal along the Rail Corridor, a forest-lined hiking and cycling path that streaks across Singapore and is a brilliant example of the city-state’s penchant for preserving vast tracts of wilderness where you’d least expect them.

The 24km route was clearly a hit with the Lycra-clad locals who sped past me, but it serves another purpose, too. The trail weaves past countless nature reserves and parks, allowing Singapore’s wildlife to move between these spaces. Flying lemurs and bulbuls (mohican-sporting songbirds) have all been spotted here, drawn partly by the rewilding project that has lined the route with native species of plants. My favourite was the Malayan ixora, with its dazzlingly bright orange flowers, which provides a source of food to butterflies, birds and caterpillars.

The Rail Corridor sits in the footprint of a railway line that once shuttled goods to Malaysia. Restoration work on a short, final stretch will soon be complete, while echoes of its past still scatter the route. One reminder of its history was the Bukit Timah station, built in the 1930s and recently restored (complete with its original rust-red roof tiles) and transformed into a visitor centre and café.

The wild side of Singapore

My monitor lizard sighting wasn’t simply a lucky break, either – I never had to venture far from Singapore’s skyscraper-filled centre to see the island’s wildlife. Outside Gardens by the Bay, close to Singapore’s marina, I noticed a family of otters peering up at me from the undergrowth. Otters have long thrived here, and back in March, guards outside Singapore’s presidential palace were seen stopping traffic so that a family of ten could dash across a four-lane motorway.

In Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, which was established in 1883 and was one of Singapore’s first forest reserves, I watched pangolins (so rare elsewhere that once, when I spotted one in Zambia, my safari guide burst into tears) scramble out of sight. In Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve I watched snakes and macaques and spent hours gazing at its wildlife from lakeside hides. I was slightly unnerved by the signs reminding visitors how to behave if they stumbled across a crocodile (in summary: back away slowly), although – thankfully – they stayed out of sight.

Whenever I needed to brave the neon-drenched chaos of Orchard Road, I timed my visit for around 4pm, when thousands of myna birds settled into the trees for the night, filling the air with their high-pitched calls. Orchard Road earned its name because there was once a nutmeg orchard there. Today, the nutmeg trees might be gone but there was still plenty of greenery: vertical gardens exploded from the sides of office buildings and flowering shrubs added splashes of colour while making Singapore’s infamously hot, sticky humidity slightly more bearable.

Explosions of greenery

In Singapore, there’s clearly an awareness than plant power goes well beyond the vegetation’s ability to sequester carbon. Today, it has over 300 parks and nature reserves. Its fauna includes 80 mammal species, 300 native bird species and 110 reptile species, and its flora includes sprawling mangrove forests, countless orchid species and numerous pockets of primary forest – pretty impressive for a country that is slightly smaller than the city of Memphis, Tennessee.

These explosions of greenery aren’t just restricted to nature reserves, either. At the Marina Bay Sands hotel, where 700 rooftop trees help to reduce solar heat gain, I signed up for the property’s fantastic sustainability tour, visiting the sprawling herb garden and discovering that there’s more to many of the hotel’s sculptures than first meets the eye. I learned that the ‘Tipping Wall’, an enormous water feature designed by American environmental artist Ned Kahn (you’ll find it near the base of Tower Three), is actually the façade of a cooling tower, and that the 10,000 hinged metal channels help capture and recirculate rainwater. My own hotel was the Oasia Hotel Downtown, where I lounged in the open-air gardens found on multiple levels and watched the insects, birds and squirrels drawn here by the climbing plants that covered (and cooled) the building’s exterior.

I was also lucky enough to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the rooftop of the Parkroyal Collection Marina Bay, where 210 glinting solar panels generate more than 350kwh of electricity daily. Its rooftop garden – one of the largest in Singapore – is open to the public, and there’s no shortage of green measures inside the hotel, either; its 2,400 plants and trees improve air quality and its in-room drinking-water taps eliminate the need for bottled water.

Thankfully, water isn’t something in short supply here, and that’s largely due to the Marina Barrage, a dam that spans the 350m-wide Marina Channel and creates a huge freshwater reservoir. Today, it’s not just a source of drinking water but a popular kayaking and dragon-boating spot; although, for me, the highlight was the dam’s headquarters – its green rooftop became my go-to picnicking spot.

Inside the building I found a sustainability gallery focusing on everything from the potential of reduced-vehicle roads to interactive exhibits about the Singapore Green Plan 2030. This ambitious plan’s goal includes a 30% reduction in the amount of waste sent to landfill by 2030, and the ‘greening’ of 80% of Singapore’s buildings, in line with the Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark ratings scheme.

Another exhibit focused its gaze on Singapore’s first so-called Forest Town, an urban area that is currently under construction, where pedestrians and cyclists – rather than cars – will take priority. This forest town, otherwise known as Tengah, will have 42,000 homes divided into residential districts, all of which will share the same characteristics: plenty of greenery, an abundance of smart technology and community-centric green spaces. Roads will be mostly underground and residents will be encouraged to rely on public transport, or use bikes and footpaths for travelling shorter distances. There will be forests and lakes alongside tactically planted greenery – species selected for their ability to block out traffic noise, aid air flow and provide shade. Rain gardens won’t just attract dragonflies and amphibians, but will also store rainwater.

Excelling in sustainability

It’s all wonderfully innovative, but that’s where Singapore excels. Another of the sustainability gallery’s exhibits focused on the CleanTech Park in the Jurong Innovation District, an eco-business park that is also a living lab for companies keen to test green tech, and also includes ponds that handle stormwater runoff and greenery chosen for its ability to maximise airflow. At its heart is the Jurong Eco-Garden, which has 300 species of flora and fauna. It’s not just a place for workers to take some time out, either – bird-spotting groups come here to observe species such as the cherry-red crimson sunbird and the rare chestnut-bellied malkoha.

The sustainability gallery is a reminder that cleaner air and cleaner cars are clearly key to the government’s plan to get more people walking and cycling. In 2019, Singapore became the first Southeast Asian country to tax carbon emissions. It’s also one of the most expensive places to own a vehicle. Drivers require a Certificate of Entitlement (COE), which starts at around £53,000 and lasts for ten years. Renewal costs even more, so most drivers replace their cars with newer, greener models that incur lower COE costs.

Don’t get me wrong – there were still plenty of cars on Singapore’s streets, although rush hour was definitely a world away from the belching, gridlocked chaos that snarls the streets of cities such as Bangkok and Mumbai. I’ve cycled in Vietnam, India, Tanzania and the USA, and Singapore is the place where I felt safest in the saddle. When I was cycling, buses would give me a polite double-toot to warn me of their presence before swinging out into the road to give me a wide berth. Pavements have also been designed with built-in ramps that make it easy to wheel your bike off the tarmac.

It was clear that more people are taking to the saddle too, and not just on paths like the Rail Corridor but on the sprawling network of bicycle routes that fan out from Singapore’s centre. One of my favourites was the Park Connector network, an island-wide, 300km web of cycling and walking routes connecting Singapore’s parks and nature reserves.

Later this year I’ll be returning to Singapore, where I look forward to, once again, soaking up the soundtrack of myna birds on Orchard Road, (cautiously) searching for crocs in the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve and weaving around the monitor lizards that meander along the Rail Corridor. Suddenly the herons on my regular bike route – a path that snakes alongside the Basingstoke canal – look rather plain. 

Travel information for Singapore

Getting there: Return flights from London Heathrow to Singapore with Singapore Airlines take around 13 hours.

Getting around: Singapore has a modern, fast MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) railway system. Purchase a Singapore Tourist Pass (STP) and you’ll get unlimited travel for one, two or three days.

When to go: Singapore’s proximity to the equator means it’s hot and humid throughout the year. The humidity is at its lowest between February and April, although if you’re keen to avoid the crowds, head there between July and November. Annual events include the Singapore Grand Prix, which is one of the busiest times of the year.

Where to saddle up: Singapore has several app-based bicycle sharing schemes, but the most popular is SG Bike, which has a fleet of thousands of bicycles, including mountain bikes, bikes with baby-seat attachments and children’s bikes.

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