The Chinese New Year holidays this year offered a rare long holiday as it fell on Thursday and Friday (7th, 8th Feb). And it so happened that both Nirva and I had no plans to go anywhere, and most of our friends were out of town on holiday. So the two of us decided to go to this small island near the mainland of Singapore known as Pulau Ubin (shown circled in the map). Both of us had been wanting to go there for a while and this was occasion parfait.
So we set out at 9 am on the morning of 7th Feb, taking with us bottles of water and food in our backpacks since we planned to come back only around 4 pm. Pulau Ubin is a cycling/walking haven and we planned to cycle around the islands, so we had to be well stocked up with water. The weather outlook for the day was sunny with lots of wind. Our first destination was the Changi Point Ferry Terminal from where we can take a $2.00 per person 10-minute bumboat ride to Pulau Ubin. Luckily Bus No. 2 went all the way from the bus station near our house to the ferry terminal thereby simplifying matters.
The bus ride itself was a revelation to us because we went through parts of Singapore that both of us had never been to. It took us about 45 minutes to reach the Changi Point bus terminal. We decided to have breakfast at the hawker centre there before catching the bumboat. Since it was CNY, very few stalls were open and we had to queue up at a roti-prata stall for 15 minutes to get food. Having washed down 2 egg pratas with a glass of Teh-Ci, we proceeded to the Ferry Terminal nearby to line up for the bumboat.
Again, owing to CNY, there were many people going to the islands nearby. But we got lucky once again...the bumboat can accommodate a maximum of 12 people and it so happened that the bumboat that was leaving was short of 2 passengers. When the boat captain asked for 2 more people to join, we put our hands up quickly since rest of the people were in their own large groups and wanted to travel together.The bumboat ride was quite something, for me at least. The waves were high since it was around 11:00am and the boat really rocked. The 10 minute ride seemed like 1/2 an hour to me. But it was very scenic as well.I secretly wished that on the way back it would be low tide and a relatively smoother ride-:)
And so we set foot on the island of Pulau Ubin. After a quick photo-op, we proceeded to the rather small visitor center to grab a map of the island. The island looked quite conquerable to us and we decide to head towards the bicycle rental shops ahead of us to grab our bicycles for the day. We were stopped in our tracks by the owner of the first bicycle rental itself...he advertised his bike prices as the lowest we could find on that island (not that we had 100s of choices), and gave me some mercedes-honda analogy when I asked for specific bikes. We tried out a couple of "hondas" which were going at $12 for the whole day. Nirva was not too happy initially, more so with the haggling of the rental owner than with the bike itself. But soon we found bikes to our liking and paid the 24 dollars.I am not sure if this really was the cheapest available, but we did not want to delay our bike hike any more. We were all excited and revved up to discover the island.
The owner had suggested to us the route to take and the recommended spots. We had read online that Chek Jawa wetlands (eastern tip of the island) were a must-see and so we decided to head towards that direction. The entire bike trail was composed of roads as well as dirt paths, and was hilly. With the sun hunkering down on us and the humidity in the air, it soon became quite hard to cycle up and down the hilly roads. We finally reached the point where we had to drop off our bikes and continue on foot to the Chek Jawa wetlands.
After anchoring our bikes to the bicycle stands, we started on our walk and within 2 minutes arrived at the Chek Jawa visitor centre. A sign on the board there informed us that the day's lowest tide would be at 6:28pm. Chek Jawa wetlands are the best to see when the tide is low because it is then when one can see all the marine flora and fauna in its full glory. We decided that since we had already reached the area, we would go ahead with touring the wetlands, but we made a mental note to come back to the area around 4pm or so to get a better view when the tide is falling. Looking for a WC before embarking on our walk, we saw a house-like structure overlooking the ocean. The scenes from there and from the jetty behind it were breathtaking. We really had a fun time there admiring the beauty of the place, although the sun was really baking us by then since it was noon already.
There were two different boardwalks around the Chek Jawa wetlands - Coastal and Mangrove. We decided to walk both since they were just over a kilometer. Once again, the scenery was absolutely fantastic. The mangrove trees all around the wetlands were beautiful to look at and admire. The coastal boardwalk led into the mangrove one and we saw some cool natural growth - we saw a tree which was 40% submerged in water and it looked something out of the ordinary. And we also spotted this flowing sheet of green algae near the beach at one point - it looked as if a green plastic sheet was spread across the area. We also encountered some marine life unique to Chek Jawa wetlands. All in all we had a great time going around the wetlands and decided to have lunch at the visitor centre there, before heading back to grab our bikes.
Mind you, the sun was at its strongest throughout our biking and walking and we had grown increasingly tired. After lunch, we had to spend some time fixing Nirva's bike since the chain had come off the axle. My hands were covered completely with black grease and I had to spend 15 minutes trying to get rid of all that muck. We finally set off again and to our dismay discovered that the path back was really very ragged and rough, making cycling almost impossible. To make matters worse, it was mostly uphill, so we ended up pushing our bikes up the dirt path. It took us a good 20 minutes to cover the dirt road before we could start biking again. We decided to go to a beach nearby but it turned out it was nothing much and we turned back again. We had decided to visit the western part of the island but the heat had made us really exhausted and we decided to call it a day. We biked back to the rental shop to drop of our bikes and then we headed towards the jetty to take the ferry back to mainland Singapore. We may have spent only 4 hours at Pulau Ubin, but we had fun. We knew we were going back with fond memories of the beautiful scenery on the island and vowed to return some day to view the wetlands during low tide.
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