Cycling at Pulau Ubin

Yong Liang and I made our way to Pulau Ubin on Friday. The weather was awesome while we were on the bus to Changi Village. We were rather quiet on the bumboat over to Ubin because its engines were freaking noisy and we had to shout to be heard. Saw Tekong, which I'm glad never to have to set foot in again, and the SAF chalet, which from photos I've spied is awesome but almost impossible to book.

We went to rent our bikes and they were $8 instead of the usual $5. Apparently they were new mountain bikes which arrived that day! They were really good. Also, YL is damn good at cycling. We reached Chek Jawa in about 10 minutes.

We climbed the tower and the view was great, but dark clouds began to gather.







It's rather different from the last time I went, which was rather sunny. This time round, it was also high tide so we didn't see any crabs.



We did see many mudskippers though! They were all over the place.







I enjoyed the long walk on the platform. It was windy and it didn't look as optimistic as we felt. When we came out from Chek Jawa and unlocked our bikes, it started to rain. We considered cycling in the rain but decided to take shelter instead.





We waited there for more than an hour! In the meantime, we killed tonnes of mosquitoes and YL shared his expertise on bicycles. When the rain cleared, we raced back to somewhere near Meeting Point 1 where the bike rental shops were. After two coconuts and cleverly using the lockers at the Information Kiosk, we headed out again, this time to an insane bicycle track located on the west side of the island.

Ketam Mountain Bike Park was insane. I've been to Ubin so many times I didn't realise that there were still many places for me to discover! The Bike Park consisted of exciting trails and there was this crazy S-shaped undulating track called the Dirt skills park. YL handled it like a pro, while I got stuck at certain places. There was once that I fell off the bicycle and into the grass!

There is a reason why I didn't bring my camera along! I can't find much information about the place online, but if you're interested you could take a look at this. When I find a good way to secure my camera on myself, I'd definitely go in and take a couple of pictures.

We went on to explore and there was this "playground" for bikes where you could cycle onto a see-saw device and stuff like that. Those were really a bit too difficult for us to handle! The Blue routes were easy while the rest led us into thick forestation. The track was ridiculously steep and it was muddy. We pushed our bikes up and down again. It seemed impossible to cycle!

All the while it was drizzling on and off and the track had great big puddles. By the time we made our way back we were drenched and ridiculously dirty.



We got the bicycle uncle to hose us, cleaned up and had dinner there after that.

After the whole thing I realised how much I enjoyed cycling and that cycling in the rain was nothing new. I still remember one of my night cycling trips with Jie Yu where it started raining and we were thoroughly drenched and shivering while cycling back from City Hall through Little India to Serangoon.

I was on a high for the longest time from this great adventure, but I think I'll be hiding indoors from the rain for awhile! And I look like I've been through a wrestling match. Exaggerating, but well, I never had that many bruises from cycling, ever!