memories from pulau ubin
Here I am, sipping morning coffee, contemplating on all the beautiful places we have visited before the Age of Quarantine. It is great to have gigabytes of memories and photos to flip through when the world goes crazy and shuts down. People often use the tabloid advice “eat, drink and wear your new clothes” which is kind of true, if only ‘drink’ gets substituted with ‘travel’ for health and wellbeing reasons.
Going a bit farther, I’d say drinking and traveling are both equally addictive and therefore we should consume with care, but this is another topic for another time. Now I am drifting off to those April days 3 years ago, when we first visited Pulau Ubin, the small humid magical island just minutes away from Singapore.
“Pulau Ubin” means “Granite Island” in Malay, probably because after some British people had “found” Singapore, they also found the rich granite deposits of the adjacent island where they built numerous granite quarries some of which present till this day but abandoned long ago.
Pulau Ubin takes a bright and solid place in my memory, mostly due to its means of transportation. We had to catch a ferry to get there (bumboat), and not only the old port was picturesque but the watercraft itself. Packed with local people, kids, live stock, luggage and a single cat, the port’s waiting room was very cosy.
Spending about 20 minutes there, being the only non-local humans, we then boarded a fragile vessel which looked suspicious but did a great job. The trip from Singapore to Pulau Ubin takes less than 15 minutes but the change in scenery measures in ages.
The time in Pulau Ubin has stopped a while ago, I’d say. No cars, no roads, no crowds and no concrete monsters, just wild nature. And bicycles of course, which one can rent upon arrival at some of the most vivid rent-a-bike counters in existence.
We chose to walk by foot on this hot and slightly rainy day, because walking is good and because we wanted nothing to distract us from the landscape and the flocks of birds and the hordes of monkeys. Crisscrossing pathways led us along incredibly tall trees, huge anthills, lakes with waterlilies, flower fields and thick mini-jungles.
I still can’t decide whether it was more hot than humid or vice versa but the hours we spent crisscrossing pathways in and out the forest were wet, oxygenated and rejuvenating. It’s funny how just one forest hour could infuse the human brain with an extra year of youth and happiness, yet people keep deforesting every step of their way…
All roads in Pulau Ubin lead to water so eventually the green walls disappeared and gave way to the mangrove shores and wetlands. If I am to choose between the seascape and the treescape of Pulau Ubin, I’d go with the latter, because it looks pure and untouched whereas its waters had obviously seen better days before.
After several kilometres and dynamic interaction with various flora and fauna including wild boars, we wrapped up our island escape and boarded another charming ferry on the way back to Singapore. I could hardly imagine places so close to one another yet so different, like Pulau Ubin and its shiny brother.
The island is sometimes called “the last kampong” (“kampong” means “traditional village”) and it indeed feels and looks so. There are just 38 permanent residents left on this 10km² piece of past, and one can only wonder if they are completely isolated or completely free.
