Life as we don't know it

A break from all this concrete

Sunday, November 18, 2012 @ 10:09 PM PERMALINK

We actually went to Ubin months ago. I was just going through my drafts and realised that I didn't post this. So here it is!

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In bid to do more healthy activities, we celebrated the last week of Abby's sabbatical by going cycling at Ubin.

It's been so long since any of us have been to Ubin and rather surprisingly, it was quite hard to find detailed information about bicycle rental on the Internet.

Eitherway, if you ever intend to go, here is some information.

The bicycle rental shops open at 8am so feel free to go as early as you like. Bumboats cost $3.50 each way from the Changi Ferry Terminal and the boat captain will generally wait until there are 10-12 people to depart.

We decided to go for lunch at Lagoon before we headed to Ubin. No pictures of the food cause I accidentally deleted them.

There are two ferries. One goes to Pulau Ubin and the other goes to Malaysia. We waited about 20 minutes, hoping for people to come so that we could set off. While 20 minutes really isn't too long a wait, if you are super impatient, just go with a large group of people and you'll be more or less set to go.

I really wonder about the guys that drive the bumboats. Business must be quite slow and there are quite a few of them. They seem to have worked out some kind of schedule on who takes the passengers over because there is no jostling for the crowd but it is hard to see how they could make any money out of it.

The site you set off from is probably the most developed bit of the island. After that, it all starts to really look like Singapore in the sixties. We got our bicycles from the first people that approached us (probably a mistake) and paid $6 for the day.

Our trusty steeds.

I'm not sure if these stalls are ever opened. Perhaps on the weekends.

This drinks stall was too adorable. Look at that mural. It also sells homemade insect repellant. Which is something else you may want to consider bringing with you.

We rode around pretty aimlessly at first cause our rental bikes couldn't deal with the stone trails and the gears seemed to have a mind of their own. We were searching for the quarry that I remembered seeing in Secondary School.

We came across a mysterious pathway up a slope and after a group of people came down and said something about the view, I insisted that we had to trek up. Abby was in slippers but we still made it.

This was the view we were rewarded with. 7 years ago, I swear the water was more blue and there was no barrier preventing you from getting to close to the edge. Eitherway, it is still a welcome sight from all the concrete we usually see.

Pit Stop. We called Berns from here and Abby made me listen to some song by G-dragon.

This is the view you get from the top. Can you make out the control tower?

After we trekked down from the lookout, we rode around some more. We came across a huge lily pond and some houses. We also had to cycle past a couple of old graveyards. The graveyards are actually marked out with signs so you know when you are passing them, a little creepy.

Back at the jetty. It's really fun how the island is still a throw-back to our past but there are still signs of technology. For example, did you see that Facebook Like sign?

We stopped by a coffee shop to get some water and its walls were covered in old photos of Ubin. There was such a diverse range of wildlife there. Apparently, there were even elephants!

We were pretty lucky that day, the weather was great, we found the quarry and we even saw a hornbill. It was a cheeky fellow though, it jumped quickly from branch to branch and seemed as if it knew exactly where to go to further obscure itself from our view and fade into the fauna.

We didn't actually go very far on our bicycles even though we were exhausted at the end of the day. I'd love to have gone to see Chek Jawa but by the time we got to that end of the island, it was already past 5pm.

I'm not sure how sustainable Ubin really is nor am I sure how many people still live on the island. I do hope that as long as they are happy there that it doesn't change.

Labels: local adventure