Exploring Bukit Batok Nature Park and Checkpoint 2 of the Coast-to-Coast Trail

Last Updated on April 7, 2024 by Adam Watts

Singapore’s coast-to-coast trail is a 36km route from (almost) one side of Singapore to another. Today we’re covering checkpoint 2, the 2km from Bukit Batok Nature Park to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. If you missed the start of the journey, catch up here!

Bukit Batok Nature Park

Checkpoint 2 of the coast-to-coast trail is right outside Bukit Batok Nature Park so if you’re just interested in the trail itself, skip to the next section for details on how to get to checkpoint 3.

For those interested in exploring everything along the route, let’s venture into the nature park itself, starting with the bathroom facilities:

Look at them nestled in the forest there, how cute.

Now you’ve freshened up, it’s time to review the park’s rules. There are no fewer than 18 things that will get you fined, so grab a notebook and pen and get studying:

Most of these are standard and are easy to adhere to – no littering, great; no feeding wild animals, sure, makes sense; but no washing of cars? How can I come to a nature park and not wash my car, who do they think I am?

Once you’ve memorized everything you’re not allowed to do, you can start heading into the park itself.

My visit was a Saturday afternoon and it was relatively busy; not quite enough people to feel crowded, but getting there. If it was a bus, it’d be standing room only.

After a short walk along a wide, shaded forest trail, you’ll come to the quarry, the star attraction of Bukit Batok Nature Park. For a place perfect for relaxing it’s surprisingly short on benches, shaded areas and other reasons to sit and enjoy the moment. You can spot turtles and birds and other wildlife around the quarry area though.

The quarry might give its name to the Bukit Batok area, since “bukit” in Malay means “hill” and “batok” means cough, and the blasting of the granite quarry sounded like the hills were “coughing”.

That’s my favourite explanation of the name, but there are others, the most tenuous and boring being that the hills were of solid granite and thus called “batu”, the Malay term for “stone”, which was mispronounced as “bato” and then “batok”.

The article linked above pointedly ends the section on naming with “these explanations are difficult to verify” so like my favourite classes at school, there are no right answers; any half-baked idea you can scribble down in the final ten minutes of the exam is good enough.

Etymology lesson over, let’s get back to the fun stuff. MONKEYS!

There are a lot of monkeys in Bukit Batok Nature Park, as there are in many parks and open spaces across Singapore. But perhaps even more so than other places on the island, the monkeys here are especially chill with humans.

“Excuse me, sir, very sorry to bother you, but I’ll be real cute for a photo if you ‘accidentally’ drop your sandwich.”

“No, I’m very sorry Mister Monkey, rule #89 specifically says no littering and rule #145 says no feeding of wild animals.”

But I’m sure the animals are well-fed enough, by rule-breaking humans, careless humans, or from the forest itself.

Bukit Batok Nature Park initially didn’t seem like a particularly big place and after seeing the main highlight of the quarry I thought I was pretty much done, but there were signs to a World War II memorial I followed, thinking it’d be a quick jaunt and back to the entrance.

Appearances can be deceiving.

The trail I followed curved around and back and inside out and outside in until my sense of direction became worse than my fashion sense.

Eventually I stumbled across the memorial, which was disappointingly – and misleadingly – just a big plaque saying what used to exist here.

Built during the Japanese occupation of Singapore during World War II, initially the memorial was constructed for Japanese soldiers who had died in battle, then after pleas from Allied POWs, an additional memorial cross was built to commemorate dead Allied soldiers. By the end of the war both memorials were destroyed – further reading here for those interested.

The memorial plaque is at the top of a hill leading down and away from Bukit Batok Nature Park, and is the route we’ll take to the next checkpoint of the Coast-to-Coast trail.

Checkpoint 2: Bukit Batok Nature Park to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve

Leaving Bukit Batok Nature Park you’ll soon find yourself back on the coast-to-coast trail route, and these familiar signs:

As you can see with some basic math, Bukit Batok Nature Park to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve is less than a 2km walk, so this is one of the shorter checkpoints.

The route is very simple and is pretty much just two roads. This is the main intersection outside of Bukit Batok Nature Park where you’ll need to make sure you go the right way – cross to the other side, where the red doors of the old Bukit Timah fire station are, then follow the road to the right.