Riding Through Pulau Ubin

The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine. ~John Howard

It was a beautiful Saturday morning when we packed some final list for our one day visit to Island “Pulau Ubin” [Meaning - Island of Granite Stones in Malay], one of the closely located Islands of Singapore. We were very excited as the main activity on the island was Bicycle Riding, kept wondering what took me so long to take this trip

We reached the pier around 10:00 AM, there were small bumboats which carried fixed number of passengers on each trip. Though the boats bore a Vintage look and old but they were well maintained and one needs to pay a small amount to travel across. Travel time is 20 to 30 minutes from Singapore Changi Point Ferry Terminal.

Once we arrived, it was a delight to see bicycle renting shops all over the place and few eateries.  We managed to find one and yeah these we cycles with gear J and thus started our tour of the island.

It was thrilling to check the map and deciding the route, pit stops etc. as this was sort of a bicycle adventure J for us. Roads throughout the island were well maintained and we managed to get lost for few minutes just rambling around.

First half of the journey did tier us out as the weather was too sunny and we were sweating which forced us to take few stops more than expected. To our good luck and surprise we found a shop selling tender coconut this was very much welcome and required at that moment.

It was the lush green everywhere which helped us with cool air whenever we pushed for speed. This reminded me of school days when we used to race for speed. After riding for around 2 hours we settled down in a shelter to have lunch, which we had carried from home.

We saw lot of bikers considering it was a weekend. Generally all riders carried food along with them since you hit the road one can’t find any restaurants or fast food centres. Which in a way is good as it gives a feel of adventure or else it will be another ride in concrete jungle.

Once we regained strength, we started searching for a place called “Chek Java Wetlands”. It’s a place with marine life and plantations. We spotted some wild bores J and two of them managed to steal food packs from parked bicycles.

One of the amazing views was from the guest house which is still under construction and a bridge which allows you to walk towards the ocean, we were fortunate enough to experience the thunderstorm and rain during our visit, we could even see the Singapore main land covered with rain.  It was a beautiful view and soon the rain followed here too.

It was around 4:30 PM when we started our ride back to pier. Even though we were completely stressed the ride was a lot of fun, as we encountered downhill rides on few occasions we took the speed to full throttle [well almost J ] and were also cautious at the same time as road was wet due to heavy rain.

We travelled a total of 15km within the island and every centimetre was WORTH IT.