Hiking - My First Urbex Experience

Good Morning Blog,

Have you heard of the word "Urbex"? Based on Wikipedia, Urban exploration (often shortened as UE, urbex and sometimes known as roof-and-tunnel hacking) is the exploration of manmade structures, usually abandoned ruins or hidden components of the manmade environment. Photography and historical interest/documentation are heavily featured in the hobby and it sometimes involves trespassing onto private property. Sounds like I have been doing that myself, LOL! So it won't be my first urbex today but it will be my first official urbex which leads by others.

There was this lady, MLyan, who is into Urbex who I knew from a hiking FB group and she knows many unusual locations in SG.

She introduced me to her group for today urbex; visiting places where I don't and won't know its existence. great that I can explore newer places and know some new friends.

Woke up earlier like 6am to prepare...

Thanks goodness, the morning weather was good.

I decided to dress a top than meet newer friends in trisuit... Who knows it might become my future hiking attire sooner.

Oh dear... I missed a bus...

First time meeting new friends and late is not a good behaviour...

Since I was at the early stage, informing them that I will be late is the only polite way than keeping quiet.

Good morning Mr Sun, join me on this urbex trip? :) Yes, Mr Sun, I am as excited as you are too.

Let's hurry up to reach the meeting place.

It seemed like Miss Sky is busy painting so she won't be joining us on this trip.

Anyway, after meeting up with the urbex group which was led by MLyan together with her Husband Rah, and other members like Eu, WS and LS. They seemed to know one another quite well and my introverted feeling started to flood! I was trying to manage myself... and keep myself approachable.

Our first place - An old water storage built long time ago, located behind old B G canteen.

You will find many erected chimneys from the ground; which I thought it is a street lamp in the past.

Besides those chimneys, there is something concealed in the brushes.

LS, WS and Ni3 (who just joined us for a short while) entered the small structure carefully because this place is owned/watched by an owner nearby.

Looking at the tentacles-like plant, my wild imagination started to load... But needed to control.

Ni3 and WS were discussing how to get down... Oh man, this small room is filled with a lot of debris and it is a mosquitoes prison!

LC had already gone down and as I checked closely... There is no stairs at all!

And to get down, you need to grab this thin rusty metal pole like a rope and step onto the wall to get down there...

It looks like around 2m in height, and I know that only metal connector is trying to survive there by holding that thin pole; I doubt it can handle our weight, pulling strength from adults like us for too long...

So I chose to chicken out and admired the plants outside to let my imagination flowed.

Appreciated the beautiful vein on the leaves.

It seemed like mosquitoes really love my meaty legs... lucky I am used to it.

Since we couldn't explore how the water storage looked inside, we decided to explore other place nearby...

Hmmm... Looked like an empty house in front of us with a warning sign.

Besides that empty house, is an air base. My first time seeing such a small airplane up closed.

Hamilton Place — Old Colonial Houses

Let's get close and personal with this house. You can read more about this area here, great documentary.

Unique feature about this Old Colonial House is these stilts to keep the whole house above the ground.

Like a Malay House or Malay Kampong house. (wikipedia) The main characteristic of a typical Malay kampung house is its on stilts or piles - to avoid wild animals and floods, to deter thieves, and for added ventilation.

It stretches all the way until the end (you don't say)

I wondered that are they planning to construct this place and make it safe to resident? Hope they can preserve this place for its historical value.

Like a prison here

Beautiful place - how I wish that I owned this place and to think deeply... once you were gone, this house won't be belong to me and will pass down someone else.

Just stilts

Here is the only entrance into the house.

Nice! The security here is amazing. Only one entrance/exit, thieves need to be creative to get into this house from exterior.

The vintage tiles layout is well-preserved.

The steel window looked familiar.

Let's go up and explore the area

Ooooo! A wide opening of space! I can grow a lot of plants here!!!

Back to my senses, I believe here must be a living room and it will be a living room filled with plants! LOL!

Anyway, lets explore other rooms.

YES! MORE PLANTS SPACE!

(Thanks WS and MLyan) Oops! They caught me imagining and lucky I posed right in time.

What a long and empty corridor, just like my flat corridor.

This place is clean and empty without any leftover or furniture.

They really cleaned and cleared up the whole place!

Aww... I see plants everywhere in this place!

Set up air con and light, and grow exotic plants like treasure.

All I got is...

Back to reality... it is just an empty space which won't belong to me.

This place is not safe to stay because the wood started to decay

The place got creepier when light does not shine to.

Best to stay at the light side

Hmmm... it started to get so quiet... I can hear... nothing.

LOL! The group had exited this house to elsewhere. No wonder this place got so quiet.

There is another small house beside this large house.

Looks like it is a kitchen.

Beside the kitchen, here looks like a servant room.

They also have another cooking area for bigger wok.

The team was waiting for me here

Unique tree which brings instagram-worth shots.

Oh man! I will love to take more pictures here but have to move on to the next.

Next one was special! This is Gibraltar Crescent Bunker!

It is so well hidden, you might have passed this area a few times without knowing its existence until you peeked in!

There are a lot of broken glasses on the forest ground

Check out the roots of this plant as it is taking over this bunker

Amazing place...

Checking around this bunker...

There is only one entrance for this bunker, if it was consumed by the root, it will be troublesome.

let me show you what is inside

OOPS! This place was so dark.

Thanks WS for lilting the place with his torch

The door starts to corrode and this place is numbered.

Small storage in this bunker which was used for storage for someone who does not own this bunker... I will like to have a small space like this for myself XD

I will just treat it a photo session today and return.

After the first bunker or I will say storeroom, the next one was the true bunker - Cyprus Crescent Bunker. This bunker doesn't have or we don't know its name, so I just named it as that.

oooo There is a rusty metal stair here to get down.

WS started to climb down to lilt the bunker inside.

(Thanks Mlyan) Now it is my turn. Smile as much as I can... who knows what is inside. Will there be an real alien to capture me?

Can you see the toilet bowl here?

Just looked how dark this place is...

While WS was using his torch to lilt up the area, I quickly snapped a picture of how this bunker looked like.

I looked up and noticed another stair and this should be the entrance and it was locked, and this stair looked like the main door and the opened one was a backdoor.

As I looked down from the locked entrance, this place looks like a bath room

If I am alone, it will be challenging and scary if you don't lilt up this place.

I felt embarrassed to get the guys to help me to take pictures of this stupid nerd.

I suggested to them to shine the torch from the back to create a back light to the guys and (Thanks Ern and JS) I got my pictures snapped together behind and in front of me.

Definitely better than what I can take for myself.

But I will try my best to take pictures for myself.

(Thanks Ra) let's have a group photo :)

We closed the bunk and moved on to the next one nearby which is quite decent one.

Malta Crescent Bunker - Just a typical bunker which gave everyone a short break

Looked like it becomes trash dumping ground

If one can own this bunker, it can become something better than trash dumping place.

I feel you bunker. I will just appreciate you as what you are.

After a good break for everyone, we took a long stroll to our next and last destination - Old Nelson Road Bunker. This bomb shelter is located in Old Admiralty House area which is still under development. We found our way to get near to that shelter... shhh...

This shelter has a proper opening

It seemed like a usual storage basement unlike other bunkers

But the wooden cover started to weaken and caused a lot of debris

But it can be a once time shoot here and thanks Nylan (right image) snapped a pic of me.

Or maybe two times perhaps, Cheers to Nylan for being cool to take pictures for me.

Let's explore the right side of the bunker after I stepped from the stair

Hmm... I wondered is there another entrance to somewhere? Hmmm... Nope. Just debris.

Wow! This is one of the cleanest rooms which I had ever seen so far.

Ooooo! Did you notice the classic light bulb here? Not sure whether it will still light up or not.

Let's exit the cleanest bunker room and...

Compared to my height here, I am short shxt so any tall person like WS (he is nearly 1.8m) will have to bend down while walking within this shelter.

Okay! Left side, let's go!

This side of the ceiling supporting pillar showed crack, so it is...

...dangerous and risky to stay here too long

This lane is a toilet area and finally a brighter area to see how the classic toilet will look like.

This fan was left hanging there... I hope it didn't injure anyone in the past and future.

The lighting was perfect for some epic shot and Thanks Ra secretly snapped me while taking my own pictures. Hahaha, secret reveal. LOL!

Time to go back right? Guys

Nope! They wanted to explore this Old Admiralty House!

Shall we continue some more? :)

I tried to google more info on this

And realised that it was so beautiful in the past, you can check on this link and link for more detail.

From the link, it mentioned it will be converted into a library! :D I will come back to have a good look at this place with newer pictures.

The tall ceiling, French door and window, and even the arc made this place looked so classic

Feeling totally peaceful exploring this place

Each window looks like a painting, don't you think so?

There are many empty rooms that roughly looked the same.

And my photographer-camera started to feel exhausted so I will have to be selective.

This was my last photo taken before my photographer-camera knocked out. Thank you for taking many pictures today, you deserve a good rest.

(Thanks WC) At least, we had a group to end our urbex day. :)

Thank you, everyone, for making this trip a relaxed one, I know you guys didn't comment openly to me for behaving or looking weird. But I treasured the whole trip together and hope for more urbex trips. I heard Nylan is planning to bring us for more. Can't wait! Anyway, I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do. Time to rest...

Jeff