The Far East Coasters: Pulau Ubin Adventures

Little known fact- Singapore is not just one island- there are actually quite a few little islands that surround the main Island that we live on, and some, like Pulau Ubin, are even inhabited. The thing to do in Ubin is rent a bike and pedal around the island while enjoying a welcome respite from city life. We like bikes. We like nature. So this has been on our to-do list for 8 months now. Work has finallllly let up a bit for both of us, so we jumped on the chance to spend a Saturday out of town.

Our trip started with a very long cab ride, past the Changi airport, to the Changi Jetty, which was a surprisingly nice building. The boats however were.... not so nice.

As we passed this lovely yacht on the way down the jetty to our yet-to-be-seen boat, I think "man, look at that crappy old boat, wonder what those things are used for"

Turns out it and its ilk are used for ferry boats to Ubin. This was our fancy water transport.

It was however a HUGE step up from the "boat" we took back from the island later in the day....

Luckily the boat ride is all of 5 minutes, and you can always see land, so I figured my swimming skills were strong enough to avoid death should the boat go down.

We arrived in Ubin, ready to see out rental bikes.

Picking out Bikes- Take 1

The village is bike-rental city. Seriously, bikes everywhere.

Dave turned my offer to ride a tandem bike down, again. He is no fun.

Bike fail. It is possible to ride with out gears, but turns out it is impossible to ride when part of the gear wedges itself in the spokes. Luckily we were not too far out.

Picking out bikes- Take 2.

We learned out lesson and gave our bikes a little test run before heading out to the wilderness.

I wasn't sure I really needed a basket, but it turned out to be critical in transporting our very important supplies.

OK. Not totally sure what this is telling us.....

Enjoying the view.

This was the beach of napping puppies.

This is Dave telling me to stop taking pictures of napping puppies and get back on my bike.

Our map of the island suffered a bit of an accident in my basket. It would seem that the ice cold Tiger beers may have inadvertently gotten it a bit wet... opps. Good thing its a small island.

We stopped in a little hut to enjoy our Tiger Beers and the jungle, and the sounds of the oncoming rainstorm. It was great, almost like being back on the front porch at Bradley watching a thunderstorm come in off the Atlantic. I love the sound of rain. What I don't love is the sound of 20 people yelling in Chinese at each other after they invaded our peaceful hut to wait out the rain. Being stuck in a tiny shelter in a down pour with teenage Singaporeans must be one of the inner rings of hell.

As a reward for surviving the rain storm with out killing any locals, and not dying on the muddy gravel roads, we treated ourself to a feast. It was delicious! Dave at that entire plate of friend sesame chicken all by himself. This might explain why it is 8:00pm and he is still not hungry for dinner....