Singapore Summer #1

The rambutan tree in our garden is too high for anyone apart from our hairy, long tailed friends to enjoy it's delights. Luckily there is another tree just down the road. 

It's low hanging fruit might look unripe, but the yellow ones are perfectly edible. Maybe not as sweet as farm grown varieties, yet surprisingly tart and refreshing in this hot weather. 

Our very own safari lodge

When we just moved into our new jungle house, the first thing the kids did, was organise an expedition. Armed with hats, backpacks, water bottles and a self drawn map, they safari'd through the garden. When they returned I asked what they had seen, and the answer was a very disappointed: 'Just a squirrel. Oh, and some birds.' 

Not much later I heard screaming from the kitchen, and I still regret I did not have a camera ready to snap the grinning macaque that sat in the middle of the kitchen table, dextrously peeling the skin of a banana he just pilfered from the fruitbowl I had naively placed in front of an open window.

The macaques were only the beginning. One day Indah came running, pointing excitedly at what she described as 'a tree-hugging rabbit'.  I immediately knew what she meant: this must be one of the flying lemurs that our area is known for. Flying lemurs have large skin flaps between neck, arms and legs, allowing them to glide through the air like a flying cloth, sailing from tree to tree. Once we were lucky enough to spot a whole family, and on the picture below a trained eye might spot he baby in the top left skin fold of the upper lemur. 

Some animals, like our lemurs, are highly cuddly, others are just plain beautiful. Like this white throated kingfisher that got stuck in our living room, and tried to seek refuge on a matching turquoise painting.  

Or the fluffy caterpillar that we don't mind offering our palm leaves to. 

 

Some visitors we have come to regard as good friends, like this tree frog, that we have affectionately named Kermit, who likes to live in our beanbag.

  

The most illustrious of our guests must have been the pangolin mother and child we found napping in our drain one morning. This friendly, scaly anteater is an endangered species, and not a sight we will easily forget. 

For convenience's sake we name all our amphibians Kermit, and this guy lives under the outdoor sofa, and the slightly grumpy face below was due to the fact that he was disturbed from his slumber by Indah, who moved the roof of his house for mopping the floor. 

Less popular is our Jungle Fowl rooster, a rather pretty cocky fellow with colourful feathers, who likes to wake us up very early in the morning with his cheery cock-a-doodle-doo. Roel has threatened to turn him into cock-au-vin more than once, only to be stopped by the knowledge that, although increasingly easily seen in Singapore, this wild ancestor of our domesticated chicken is in fact a protected species. 

This, for Singapore modest sized, monitor lizard of around a meter long frequents our garden increasingly. It's sneaky silent crawl allows it to sneak in unobserved, until his presence is found out by the Myna birds, who will try to scare it away with loud squealing twittering. 

Often we are enchanted by the lovely song of the bulbul, so we were excited when a pair of them started to build a nest in our lipstick palm. For days we followed them packing leaves, sticks, and a strip of discarded snake skin into a small bowl. Not much later we saw the hardworking bird fly back and forth with food, filling the mouths of his demanding offspring. Then, this morning, disaster stroke. I saw the macaque strolling close to the tree, but it was not until he leapt up in one big jump that my heart stopped: the babies! I ran towards him, shooing, but it was too late. The rascal swiftly climbed to the top of the tree, a fistful of grey fluff in his fist. Nature at it's cruelest, and the incident left me with a bad taste in my mouth all morning. 

This picture, although not technically taken in our garden but just down the road, is remarkably deceptive. The fern in the middle is in fact well over a meter wide, making this python roughly four meters long and as thick as my thigh. Since I was within inches of stepping on it, I still check under my bed, every night. Just in case. 

And, of course, there are all the animals I did not get a picture of. It was way too dark, that one time that Indah was afraid there was a burglar in the bushes, and she was very relieved when our flashlight proved it in fact to be 'just' a large wild boar. 

There are all the birds, the yellow orioles, the scarlet sunbirds, the fluttering butterflies big as my hand, the woodpeckers, the omnipresent Myna birds. The numerous ants, termites, mosquitos and, before I forget, the 30 cm long giant centipede that once scampered over my foot. I was too busy screaming to think of camera's that night. 

I also never got a shot of any of those slender squirrels and tree shrews that jump around our trees so abundantly that we hardly even notice them. Not because they are so fast and agile, although they are, but because I never tried. It makes me realise how spoiled we are, here in our very own private safari lodge.  

I spy, with my spiky eye

When you walk past the stretch of jungle at the beginning of our lane you can smell it. The king of fruits. Loved and hated by many for its distinct flavour. Sweet, pungent, creamy, fragrant. Overpowering. To us, the scent of durian smelt like an expedition. From the street we could not only smell, but also see the fruit, deep in the wood, a tantalising fifty meters high. Looking at our flip-flopped feet, and the snake-infested, bushy undergrowth, we realised our expedition was ill prepared. We searched the ground for fallings of the rambutan tree next to the road instead, but the monkeys had left us only shells. 

Then we spotted them, further down the road, in solid boots and gloves: durian pickers. They were loading their catch in the back of their truck, and we rushed over for a look and a chat. The durian pickers told us that the best trees were deep down in the darker jungle. And, that there was an old man sitting there, guarding his favourite tree, waiting for the fruit to fall.

I pointed at our shoddy footwear, and told them I was afraid to go in. It didn’t seem safe. ‘I wouldn’t want one of those heavy, spiky things falling on my kids heads,’ I shrugged. 
The pickers laughed. ‘No,’ one of them assured me, ‘that won’t happen. You see, durians have eyes. They see. And they aim.’
I smiled too. ‘So do they aim to hit my kids, or to miss?’
He laughed again. ‘No, they aim to miss.’
‘But the snakes won’t,’ his mate added. ‘Don’t go in. Here.’ 
He rummaged through their catch, and handed me a pristine specimen.

We thanked the pickers warmly, and on the way home the durian’s spikes pricked painful red holes in the palms of my hands. 

One needs to get past all its clever defences before the fleshy delights of the durian can be savoured. First, the smell. The smell of a fresh, uncut durian has no equal. Buildings have said to be evacuated, just because someone smuggled in a durian - a gas leak was suspected. 

The durian reeks so persistent that is not allowed to take the fruit in buses, subways or even taxi’s. When our own car stank for days, Roel forbade me to transport the fruit there as well. 

Those who have accepted the smell, and smuggled the forbidden fruit home, have to put up with the next defence: the thorns that cover it’s round surface can make nasty cuts, and only a strong knife can cleave the thick skin. Only after all that has been overcome, the king of fruits will divulge its creamy rewards.

Durian flesh is, to put it mildly, an acquired taste. Me? I love it. There is a film of me, maybe six years old, savouring the fruit eagerly, and ever since I have been hooked. My family is not yet convinced. The next day, when we eat the velvety, fragrant flesh of the fresh forest fruit, Roel admits: it is not too bad. Actually, it is almost pleasant. And yes, I can quote him on that.

On safari

‘Mama,’ Tijm calls. ‘We are going on safari.’
His rug sack is ready. The binoculars are in, the book of plants, some biscuits. From the handle bar of his scooter the tent dangles.
‘Come on,’ he calls, scooting on.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask.
‘Exploring,’ he answers. ‘To find the waterfall.’
Just before the bridge we turn left, into the wilderness, and the mud.
Tijm gets his binoculars. He peers over the water, then at me.
‘Mama, you are very small. You are very far away.’
‘You need to turn it around,’ I point out. ‘What is far will become big and close.’
‘No,’ he yells. ‘It is right like this. Look, everything looks far away now.’
What can I say? In Dutch we call binoculars “far-looker”. So I nod.
Satisfied, Tijm looks around him. He spots something, far away, next to his foot.
Little flowers, like stars. We look them up in his book of plants.
Linde laughs at the name, speenkruid.
‘For Jasmijn,’ she grins, as speen means dummy.
She has found something too. Little brown balls, in the muddy water.
‘Frogspawn,’ Tijm tells us. ‘We must to take some home. Then we can make frogs. Just like at school.’
‘Maybe on the way back,’ I answer. ‘We haven’t found the waterfall yet.’
‘O. Yes,’ says Tijm and pulls Linde’s hand. I follow, drudgingly, with the buggy through the mud. Tijm and Linde run over the narrow sluice. The buggy won’t fit.
‘Mama,’ Tijm points at a wobbly bridge. ‘That is for you.’
Step by step I stagger over the boards. We have to, as we must find the waterfall. Tijm and Linde found it already. The water swishes over the stones, foaming, and roaring softly. Tijm climbs down, onto the stepping-stones.
Linde reaches out, ‘Mama, help.’
I help her over and look back, to the heavy buggy, and suddenly I do not know how to do this. Yet I do it. I step back, get Jasmijn and park her, behind a fence, as far away from the water as I can.
‘Tijm,’ I order, ‘watch your sister. Make sure she does not get near the water.’
As fast as I can I hop back, from stone to stone, looking back over my shoulder, to fetch the empty buggy. On the way back I look at my feet for just a moment, and when I look back up Linde and Jasmijn are in a tree. Jasmijn is nowhere.
My heart stops and I jump on land.
‘Where is Jasmijn?’ I scream, ‘you were watching her!’
‘There,’ Tijm points, calmly.
A bit further down I see Jasmijn’s back disappear into the park. Safely at the field we put up the tent, eat biscuits and pick flowers for our tea. Jasmijn keeps running away and on the way home Tijm falls in the rivers while scooping up frogspawn.
With wet wellies he screams the whole way home.
‘Mama,’ he yells.
‘Stop it,’ I grumble, ‘are you a tough explorer?’
‘But mama, there is a frog in my wellie.’
We poor it out, not once, not twice, but three times, until we are home and ready for bath.

On my facebook page you can find pictures of our exciting trip!