Long weekends are usually the perfect time for short vacations to nearby countries, but with border restrictions still in place around the world, that’s sadly not possible.
Instead, Singaporeans have been turning inwards and visiting attractions in our own country.
On Good Friday (2 Apr), Singapore residents who visited some nature trails in hopes of immersing themselves in greenery instead found themselves surrounded by fellow humans.
With safe distancing measures in place for about a year now, it must’ve been a rather long time since we last saw such large crowds.
By around 9.30am on Friday (2 Apr), large crowds had allegedly formed at the Green Corridor or Rail Corridor which reopened roughly a week ago.
The crowd was so severe that the entire pathway was essentially blocked off.
One netizen even joked that the entire Orchard Road crowd had decided to visit the nature trail on that day.
The Rail Corridor, however, wasn’t the only natural attraction in Singapore that saw a spike in the number of visitors on Good Friday.
Nearby at the MacRitchie Trail, similarly large crowds were also spotted.
Later in the evening, NParks issued an advisory on Facebook reminding visitors to adhere to safe distancing guidelines.
Such measures include:
NParks also took the opportunity to advise Singaporeans to check visitorship levels at the parks before heading down. They can do so by visiting NParks’ safe distancing portal.
According to the portal, the Upper Bukit Timah Truss Bridge – aka the Rail Corridor – saw high visitorship levels from 9am which tapered off at around 6pm.
Other nature parks in the area, such as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and Bukit Batok Nature Park also had high volumes of visitors — represented by the orange squares.
Even though the pandemic has inadvertently encouraged Singaporeans to look inwards for attractions, we should not do this at the expense of our safety.
With the Covid-19 pandemic still looming over us, perhaps it’s a good idea to check the visitorship levels before heading down to any of the nature reserves in order to avoid unnecessary crowding.
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Featured image adapted from Facebook.