Jan 27, 2008
On Jan 20, we went to this island near Singapore called Pulau Ubin. The word "Pulau" in malay apparently means Island and "Ubin" is Granite. It was organized by a group of students/alumni for exchange students. They announce and promote all their events through facebook and I guess it is working fairly well.. It forced everyone who doesn't have facebook to cave in and get an account; great advertising for facebook! They created an event for this and only 25 ppl were allowed.. But the interesting part was that those who said would show up on fb didnt show up and random ppl who never said anything in fb did. There were about 35 ppl and only about 2 group leaders.. They couldn't keep track of the people and overall, it was poorly organized. Nonetheless everyone saw all that there is to see in the island.
We had to rent a bike and the whole island is basically a trail and some
dilapidated houses (there was a village there, but I suppose only a few live there now). But it is a place to see for nature lovers and adventurers. You get to see all kinds of random animals and plants. Like very little crabs running around everywhere, a durian like fruit growing at the bottom of a tree, tadpoles, etc. We took the bike and went around the island until we got to this point where there is a beach, but we were not allowed to go there because people were doing some biological exploration there. It was more like a swamp with stagnant water with plants growing everywhere. But, it was sight for sore eyes.. fresh clean water everywhere and the other side was Malaysia! Some people even got a "Welcome to Malaysia" SMS on their phone.
I got lost on my way for a while and took this opportunity to just enjoy the view
while trying to find my way back to the group. Luckily I had a map and I was able to do that easily. But I went to this restaurant and they had some Mango dish. I bought it thinking it will be one of those things that you experience once in a lifetime and you only get it in that specific place or whatever. I was fairly disappointed because it was simply tofu and a salad. It was pretty bad actually and it was the worst $8 I've spent so far in Singapore. I finally found my way back to the group, and then headed back. We came back to mainland and went to a hawker centre for dinner (Hawker centres are everywhere in singapore. Its like a food court with all kinds of south-east asian food: Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Malay, Indian, etc. but not as posh or clean as a food court). You get nice big meals for as little as $2 and they are very good. So I ate even though I was full from the bad mango salad.. I was physically exhausted, i don't know why... People were pretty OK, I was fatigued for some reason. Thats when I realized that I'm pretty soft compared to most people. I couldn't take the heat, the humidity and biking for like 5 hours. Anyway, I was glad it was over and we came back home. There was nothing special about Pulau Ubin. Just a place to see if you're in Singapore for more than 2 weeks.
We had to rent a bike and the whole island is basically a trail and some
dilapidated houses (there was a village there, but I suppose only a few live there now). But it is a place to see for nature lovers and adventurers. You get to see all kinds of random animals and plants. Like very little crabs running around everywhere, a durian like fruit growing at the bottom of a tree, tadpoles, etc. We took the bike and went around the island until we got to this point where there is a beach, but we were not allowed to go there because people were doing some biological exploration there. It was more like a swamp with stagnant water with plants growing everywhere. But, it was sight for sore eyes.. fresh clean water everywhere and the other side was Malaysia! Some people even got a "Welcome to Malaysia" SMS on their phone.I got lost on my way for a while and took this opportunity to just enjoy the view
while trying to find my way back to the group. Luckily I had a map and I was able to do that easily. But I went to this restaurant and they had some Mango dish. I bought it thinking it will be one of those things that you experience once in a lifetime and you only get it in that specific place or whatever. I was fairly disappointed because it was simply tofu and a salad. It was pretty bad actually and it was the worst $8 I've spent so far in Singapore. I finally found my way back to the group, and then headed back. We came back to mainland and went to a hawker centre for dinner (Hawker centres are everywhere in singapore. Its like a food court with all kinds of south-east asian food: Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Malay, Indian, etc. but not as posh or clean as a food court). You get nice big meals for as little as $2 and they are very good. So I ate even though I was full from the bad mango salad.. I was physically exhausted, i don't know why... People were pretty OK, I was fatigued for some reason. Thats when I realized that I'm pretty soft compared to most people. I couldn't take the heat, the humidity and biking for like 5 hours. Anyway, I was glad it was over and we came back home. There was nothing special about Pulau Ubin. Just a place to see if you're in Singapore for more than 2 weeks.
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