Pulau Ubin

Last weekend we went to Pulau Ubin with friends.

Pulau Ubin is a small island situated in North East of Singapore near to the west of Pulau Tekong. It is an undeveloped land of Singapore. When I was still working in NUS, I heard about the staff from Raffle Museum discovered rare species of marine creatures at Chek Jawa, in my mind Pulau Ubin is fill with large piece of wetland or mangroves. Actually it is not totally right. Pulau Ubin is a village, with no single bank can be found at their town area. In the town area, there are many bicycle renting shops and a few eating places.

We took boat from Changi Point ferry terminal, the type of small fishing bum boat that can carried 12 person from Singapore mainland to Pulau Ubin jetty. After reaching Pulau Ubin, the transportation is mainly by walking, pedaling on a bicycle or by using so call "taxi" (a small van), through mostly the rustic rocky road. If you are looking for a high class resort or hotel, Pulau Ubin is not the place to go.

Celestial Resort is the place to stay and the facilities has nothing to boast on. It just simple and not really clean...lot of lizard poos. Like a life in kampung (village), no swimming pool, no gym. The sign on the main entrance spelled out "Main gate close at 9 pm". Actually, you can't see anything on the road after the sun go down (about 7pm) and most of the road is without road light!

I have not on a bicycle for more than a decade, lucky me that there is someone to pedal for me on a two person bicycle. WT carried Gabriel on a safe "basket seat" with seat belt on. This is important because of the rocky road. WT's bicycle nearly slided down when pushing it up hill and thank God Gabriel was protected by the double layers basket and didn't fall out. Pedaling on bicycle is fun, no heavy traffic and just a few time passing by a taxi.

We went to the Wetland more than 3 km from the town. It took us about 4 hours thro and flow. We managed to walk on the boardwalk at Chek Jawa and see the mangroves. However, high tide in the afternoon is not a good timing to see corals and sea stars. Attached the Wild Singapore web page for your information  http://www.wildsingapore.com/places/cj.htm 

The highlight of the trip?!

We see the wild boars or wild pigs. They were in a family of seven! Two big wild boars and five small babies! and....our bicycles were attacked by them because of WT placed a pack of unfinished fried rice in front of his bicycle. When we came back from the mangroves boardwalk, we saw the bicycle was topper, its chain was out of place and the front metal basket was broken.  

I think the kids will carry this memory for a long long time :)