Crocodiles, birds, snakes: Singapore’s Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve is worth visiting when the travel bubble with Hong Kong opens up
- Visitors to the reserve are asked to keep away from the water because of crocodiles, says its director, but ‘people often don’t believe us’
- The species-rich mudflats, mangroves, tidal ponds and coastal forests feel very distant from the streets and malls the city state is known for
The air is heavy and still, the only movement the aerobatics of a lone bat finishing its night’s hunt. Across the strait, the lights of the condominiums in Johor Baharu, Malaysia, glitter, while the silhouette of the Eagle Point hide looms out of the predawn light, seeming to hover over the water.
The silence is shattered by the jarring squawks of a white-bellied sea eagle, an early bird heading out to catch fish for breakfast. The noise seems to act as an alarm call: an unseen woodpecker unleashes a series of rat-a-tat-tats; a striated heron sporting a black cap and grey wings peers into the water; a stork-billed kingfisher flashes past in a blur of red, orange and blue.
Stepping off the coastal boardwalk, we find ourselves surrounded by the overhanging sea hibiscus that crowds the path, which divides the mangrove swamps from the sea. Rustles, pops and croaks reach us from the undergrowth – a tangle of roots and pyramids of mud (the work of mangrove lobsters) – hinting at the rich biodiversity concealed within.
“I always bring visitors here, to show them that you don’t have to go overseas, to places like Taman Negara [in Malaysia],” says retiree James Ho, who stops to chat as we admire a spider’s web hanging across the coastal trail. “It’s just as beautiful and rich in wildlife here.”