Cycling at Pulau Ubin

Saturday, 12 May 2007. For a different experience while we were in Singapore, Teck suggested that we go cycling at Pulau Ubin, a small island situated in the north east of Singapore, to the west of Pulau Tekong. The name Pulau Ubin means "Granite Island" in Malay language which probably explains why you can see so many abandoned granite quarries there. The island is known as "chioh sua" in Hokkien, which means "stone hill".

Nine of us agreed to go there. Teck, Dennis, Mike, Mr & Mrs Dung, Vivian, Sun Sun, Tika and myself. We assembled at Fraser’s lobby as early as 7.30 am and took two taxis to go to our meeting point with Teck at Tanah Merah MRT station. From there we took bus no. 2 to go to Changi Village Jetty to take a bumboat ride to go to Pulau Ubin. Before we actually boarded the bumboat, Teck took us to eat at the so-called the best Nasi Lemak in Singapore named International Nasi Lemak.The bumboat ride lasted not more than 10 minutes.

Immediately after we arrived at Pulau Ubin, we rented five bicycles, four 2-in-1 and 1 single. So our journey began. We have so much fun cycling around the island with so many 5 minutes break, (since everybody is not that fit) which includes a nice coconut drinking stop somewhere near one small village at the island.

Anyway, I have never thought that leisurely cycling like this will be this tiring. We were so exhausted and it was not even quarter of the island. Ha ha ha. Our adventure on the island was probably around 3 to 4 hours. We were glad we made this trip, managed to see so many greens, a very good change of view from the hustle and bustle of metropolitan Singapore.

We arrived back at Fraser around 3 pm. Drained, exhausted and sleepy but with sweet memories to smile about!