Swaggerpuff's Adventure to the Lalang Field

Just a few days ago, on 26 February, I went on a short adventure with my two good friends from Poly, Hannah and Jonathan. We started it off by visiting Jonathan at his chalet looking place all the way at Loyang and ended it off with a belated birthday surprise for Hannah. 

When I say chalet looking, I really mean the East Coast Park kind of chalet. Every inch of it just looked like a chalet. We had popiahs at his place and chilled for about two hours before we left. And it was around this time where we started planning for the surprise (a little impromptu, I know). Jonathan brought us to this mini mart located in the middle of the chalet looking apartments and I was in charge of buying the birthday card without letting Hannah know. The mini mart auntie was kind enough to offer me a permanent marker to write the message on the card, but I didn't have the time for it, so I just bought the card and stuffed it into my bag. Jonathan, on the other hand, distracted Hannah by acting all fascinated with the mini mart and bought a root beer (which he kind of did an advertisement with). 

"Root beer, it just doesn't taste as nice when it's not glass bottled"

It really looks like an old school advertisement. 

Hannah inserted a 50 cents coin for Jonathan to ride that horsey and it ended up killing his butt for a good two minutes because of the bump at the back. So, after all that nonsense, we departed for Hannah's place at Hougang. Her mum made us mushroom soup and gave us bread to eat with. Jonathan brought chips from his place (which we couldn't finish) and surprisingly, it tasted really good when dipped into the mushroom soup. You guys should totally try it.

We then left for the Lalang field, which is somewhere at Tebing Lane (nearest LRT: Riviera), and along Punggol Waterway. Although Punggol Waterway is just opposite Hannah's place, we made the smart decision to take the MRT/LRT to Riviera, or we would have to walk for 5 kilometers. But that didn't make things any better. We were using all three of our phones with Google Maps to try and search for the exact location but to no avail. Even the directory had no information about this Lalang field. Therefore, we did the most logical thing - walk in the direction where the gigantic bridge is at. And after an hour of endless walking and attempts to take selfies of ourselves walking, we arrived at the famous Lalang field.

The gigantic bridge

The lalang field

It was... disappointing. I was expecting tall lalangs and lots and lots of it, only to be greeted with a sparse amount of lalangs that were only half our height. We followed the man-made pathway made by dozens who had came before us and were pricked by all the grass. Jonathan and I made the smart decision to wear jeans so we weren't pricked at our legs. Just kidding, we wore jeans because we were visiting Hannah's place and her mum. But it was still fortunate for us. Hannah, on the other hand had to suffer a lot because of the short romper she was wearing. But even with all the bad points of the lalang field, we still took some photos.

We left the lalang field to go to the bridge because we kept getting pricked left and right, and because the bridge looked much cooler. Jonathan went really near the river/reservoir/dam/lake/ocean (ah whatever) and we freaked out because we thought he was going to fall in. We spent quite a lot of time on the bridge taking photos and selfies. Apparently, this place is a cyclist spot. Every few minutes, we would have to stick to the side because there were cyclists coming through and we didn't want to get run over. Jonathan freaked us out for a second time when he put his phone on the selfie stick and lowered it beside the bridge to get a shot of a spiderweb. My legs literally turned to jelly at that foolish moment of his that I dropped to the floor.

Here's me jumping on the bridge

When we finally crossed the bridge, Hannah suggested we do a vlog and Jonathan volunteered to use his phone. So we placed his phone on Hannah's selfie stick and started vlogging as we crossed the bridge and back into the lalang field. Hannah's love for vlogging was showed as she was clearly enjoying herself as she talked to the phone screen, while everyone judged us as we walked by. After 20 minutes of vlogging (mostly by Hannah), we sat down at a bench to wait for the sunset and to check the video. To our amusement, there was no audio at all because we plugged the audio jack of the selfie stick into Jonathan's phone. It was really hilarious.

We learned from our mistake and unplugged the audio jack before vlogging again, because this will all become good memories 10 or 100 years down the road. We managed to catch the sunset, but we could hardly see anything. There were a bunch of buildings in our way which prevented us from seeing much. But we got another 20 minutes worth of video footage before Jonathan's phone ran out of battery. (Watch the video here!)

You're most probably wondering now, what about our impromptu and belated birthday surprise for Hannah? Well, while we were taking the train back from Punggol at around 7.30 PM, Jonathan and I were texting each other even though we were sitting beside each other. We came up with a flawless plan: I would alight with them at Hougang on the pretext that I was accompanying Jonathan for dinner and one of us would go and buy the cake. Hannah went with us to Hougang Mall because she wanted to get a drink, so I got Jonathan to go buy the cake as he got his "dinner" while I accompanied Hannah until he came back. Flawless.

It was flawless until Jonathan came back. Hannah knew immediately that he bought a cake because of the box it came in and Jonathan tried to convince her that it was just a bun. It didn't work, obviously. So we just sang her a happy birthday song in front of Starbucks (really loudly) while Hannah tried to shush us. We ended it off by writing the card in front of her (since we had no time to do so), gave it to her and did an introduction video for our vlog.

The mango cake we bought her (Photo credits: Hannah)

And the card we got her (Photo credits: Hannah)

Well, that sort of sums up our Swaggerpuff adventure. Till our next adventure.

The End.