Singapore is actually made up of a number of islands, however most of them are small and mostly undeveloped. The largest of these is
Pulau Ubin, to the north-east of the main island of Singapore in the channel that separates SG from Malaysia. It is partially developed with fish farms and orchards, but is predominately a recreational getaway from the urban environment.
You get there via bumboat from a ferry terminal near the airport. There are no tickets or reservations, you just show up and as soon as there are 12 people waiting the next captain in the queue waves you all onto his boat and sets off.
At Ubin you unload on a jetty that leads into the main town, and are immediately beset by bicycle rental hawkers.
We had originally planned on walking to the nature preserve at
Chek Jawa and then taking a taxi back, but Elizabeth convinced us to rent some bikes with kid seats and explore the island that way. There are some mountain bike trails on the island, and you can bring your own bike on the bumboat if you don't want to trust the dodgy rentals. As we weren't planning on doing any extreme sports they were perfectly fine. The island's a little hilly, but nothing the bottom gears couldn't handle. This was actually the first bike with gears that Eldest had ever ridden, as it turned out. She got the hang of it pretty quick.
The biking was pretty great. We were there on a Saturday with beautiful weather, and still had stretches with no one else in sight. The roads are all well-maintained for the minibus taxis and maintenance vehicles, so it's a smooth ride through the jungle under a thick canopy. It's about 3km to the Chek Jawa visitor center where we parked our bikes and hiked the boardwalk on foot.
The first stop was a lookout tower where you could see the mangrove forest, coastal area, Malaysia, and a wide array of cargo ships, tankers, floating oil platforms, sailboats, barges and tug boats, floating fish farms, and fishing boats plying the Johor Strait.
The rest of the hike was just above the mud and water level of the mangrove forest, since we were there right around high tide. We saw mudskippers and craps, and towering mounds of mud that were apparently the tailings from burrowing
mud lobsters.
We eventually came out onto the coastal boardwalk. At low-tide there's a rocky shore full of tidal pools visible, but we'll have to come back to see it. As it was, it made a beautiful place to park ourselves in a rain/sun shelter and eat our lunch.
After lunch we went back up to the visitor center and checked out the interpretive center, which was a restored tudor-style building from the 30's that a British official had used as a weekend retreat. We had some cold drinks out of a vending machine, and we read the warning signs about what to do if you encounter a wild boar (found this one from elsewhere in SG on google):
Back at the bikes, I was looking at a map while Elizabeth got the kids packed up when lo and behold a large boar ambled right past!
...heading straight for the bike parking. After snapping the picture I called out to Elizabeth to watch out for the pig. Which walked right up to her. To her credit, Elizabeth followed the instructions to the letter, staying calm, getting Danger Monkey out of the bike seat, and backing away from the boar. The boar then climbed up on the bike frame, pushed the bike over, grabbed the backpack out of the front basket with it's teeth, and shuffled off into the underbrush.
I did _not_ follow the instructions, and chased after it into the jungle. I was able to get this picture which looks like the basis of a cryptozoological conspiracy theory:
...in which you can sort of make out the wild boar tearing my backpack apart like it was made of tissue paper. I followed it shouting and throwing sticks along with two other gentlemen, but the boar knew who was in charge. It continued to tear apart the backpack while shuffling out of reach (which was fine with me, considering how much damage it was able to do to the relatively durable backpack in a short amount of time). Eventually the backpack suffered enough damage that it started leaking contents that I cared about (umbrellas, Nalgene, diaper pad & supplies), which I was able to collect while still giving slow chase. Eventually I had collected enough of our belongings that the risk/reward equation tilted in favor of "stop chasing the pig with razor sharp teeth". The helpful strangers were all about continuing the "fight", but I told them "It's alright. The pig won this one." I think the pig scored two granola bars.
As we were packing up and getting ready to head out the rest of the hog family ambled across the road, including about a dozen baby pigs, but by that point we were ready to get out of there. We biked away to check out a campsite with Danger Monkey signing "Piggy" and "Backpack" over and over. This was probably the high point of her week.
We biked to a campsite on the northern coast of the island, and Eldest and I followed sketchy hand-written signs to a gentleman in a run-down homestead selling cold drinks out of coolers. On the way back with her 7-up and a big bottle of water a lizard jumped out of a tree onto her leg! It scampered down her leg and up a nearby tree, leaving her pretty freaked out. Here's the offender:
It was about 8-10 inches long. Some sort of iguana, maybe?
After we guzzled our water we biked back to town, returned the rental bikes, and hiked a "sensory trail" that we saw on the map. It turned out the highlight was a small secluded beach (no pictures, sorry) where we could play in tidepools and watch airplanes landing at Changi airport and boats of all sizes going past. We finally hiked back to the pier and took a boat back to the "mainland".
After getting back we visited a nearby brewery to have some salty snacks and rehydrate. It was a pretty cool place, and the beer was pretty good and not that expensive, by Singapore standards.
We also got revenge on the pig. Or at least, a pig.
