Pulau Ubin - Saturday, August 18, 2007

6.15am - get awake, take a shower, drying and still feeling wet, rush-breakfast
7.05am - running to the MRT Woodlands
8.25am - meeting a bunch of Swiss people and some HSG-affiliated internationals at Tanah Merah MRT station.

WHY all this? --> the rainforest on the original Pulau Ubin awaits me!

Pulau Ubin is a small Singaporean Island just north of Changi village and near Malaysia. There are a lot of swampy quarries (i.e. ponds, sometimes fenced off, so that they can keep their natural state; sometimes seemingly turned into fish-breeding centers). Further, you get to know how Singapore must have looked before Western civilization hit it. There are a bunch of remote cabins and sometimes you wonder whether you're visiting a ghost village amidst a forest.

You get there by boat (2$ per person if the boat is full, i.e. 24 bucks a boat). After having landed there, we had lunch under umbrellas and plastic protection while a heavy rainstorm hit the island. I learnt, that a popular Chinese curse is "tamade" (=shit) and talked about other peculiarities in life.

After a while, we took off by bike. At first, they seemed to be stylish, with full suspension. But, presumably nobody did ever add some lubricants to the chain and gears... not to mention the suspension fork itself which threatened to break apart at the next road bump... but you get a lot more fun with quirky bikes rather than with none - even though your back is brownish due to the muddy road and the splashes.


We experienced the Mangroves at the eastern edge of the island, with perfect sight on changi airport. A modern waterbridge funnels you around the well preserved seaside. A visitor's kiosk provides you with a map of this nature reserve.

Later on, we criss-crossed the island, until we were exhausted. But the famous German Girl shrine could not be found (there is no accurate island-wide map...).

After the journey, probably muddier as even the road.