Pulau Ubin

Bumboats

Pulau Ubin, or Granite Island, is a small island off the coast of Singapore shaped like a boomerang. They say that, because of the fact that no new buildings are placed on this island (and thus the kampongs remained), the island looks (more) like Malaysia. The island is covered with rain forests and here and there a small hut. Only at the jetty, the only way of entering the island is namely by boat, there is some commercial stuff going on. To get to the island I had to go to Changi Village Ferry Point, where as much as two different destinations are served, somewhere in Malysia and Pulau Ubun. The boats used are bumboats, from which I have attached a picture, and the journey to the island takes about 10 minutes.

For my adventure on Pulau Ubin, I rented a mountain bike as the distance between the jetty and some interesting places were at least 3 kilometers, and the jetty is located at the center of the island.
The first place I went was Chek Jawa Wetlands, which is a mangrove on Pulau Ubin maintained by the Singaporean Government. The ecosystem over there is heavily influenced by the tide. Therefore I had chosen a day on which the tide was extremely low, while later in the afternoon the tide was high. No... not like the song. (^ o ^)
After arriving at the wetlands I had three choices, either go to the mangrove, take the coastal boardwalk or go to the viewing point. Exactly in the order mentioned I spent my time at the wetlands.

The mangrove at the wetlands, was one which was almost completely dry when there is a low tide, making it possible to see mudskippers, mudcrabs and mudlobsters, although the latter one is almost never spotted. In the mangrove a boardwalk was present to be able to walk through it during low and high tide. Also a big observation tower was present which gave a spectacular overview of the shore, Singapore and Malaysia (if it was Malaysia, it could also have been Singapore or Indonesia).

Observation tower

Mangrove, at the moment of low tide

The coastal boardwalk was just a pathway which went around the island a bit off coast. Although maybe not that spectacular, the view was great.

Coastal boardwalk

The viewing point was a just a small pier, which brought you at most 10 meters off coast. From the viewing point one could see the much smaller island Pulau Sekudu, or Frog Island. The name has to do with the local legend regarding the two (well officially three) islands.

The rest of the day I spend my day cycling around the island, and of course returning to the wetlands at high tide. I have encountered not that many animals as I hoped for, although I have seen wild monkeys and one snake. And the most bounty like thing I did on the island was drinking from a coconut! I think this will be enough to give you all the idea how my day has been.