{ story.summary|safe|escape }
As we pedal along a web of gently undulating paved roads and gravel tracks, we pass plantations of durian, jackfruit and sweet bananas, as well as ponds matted with lazily floating lilies. Nature is treating me well this morning until, suddenly, my guide and cycling buddy, Toon Hee, brakes, points and mutters, “Wild boar! Wild boar!”
A barrel of muscle and dark hair, the pig is lurking about 10-metres from us. He glances our way, then moves into the forest. We inch closer and peek around tree trunks, watching as it gnaws on a fallen coconut. When I try to take a photo, Toon Hee warns that the boar may charge. ”Get ready to ride,” he says.
With no natural predators, apart from the odd reticulated python, wild boars are abundant on Pulau Ubin, one of 62 satellite islands off mainland Singapore. Ubin is home to about 100 people, who earn a living from fishing, farming, snack stalls and hiring bicycles to tourists. Not that Ubin is ‘touristy’ – at least not on weekdays.
“Weekends are busy, everyone is on bikes,” says Bert Choo, the sales manager at Celestial Ubin Beach Resort, an island hideaway. “But it’s still so relaxed here. I tell mainland Singaporeans, ‘If you come over, expect something completely different. Don’t clock-watch or get impatient. You need to switch over to Ubin time’.”
Ubin is a 10-minute ”bumboat” (water taxi) ride from the Changi Point Ferry Terminal. Island bike riding can take you past tiny kampungs (villages) that are home to Singaporeans of Chinese and Malay descent. Stretching about eight kilometres east to west and about two kilometres at its widest point, Ubin can easily be covered by bicycle in half a day via its interlocking roads and tracks. And while it may not feel like 21st-century Singapore, the island’s signposts are as detailed as the ones on the mainland.
We next stop on Ubin’s south-easterly tip at a mock-Tudor timber-framed cottage built in the 1930s as a holiday retreat for then-colonial Singapore’s chief British surveyor Langdon Williams. The building is now a visitor’s centre for Tanjong Chek Jawa, a 100-hectare wildlife-rich network of tidal wetlands. While walking its palm-shaded boardwalk, we glimpse crabs, shrimps and salamanders among the mangroves. Later, from the top of a nearby seven-storey viewing tower, we scout the forest canopy for birdlife. Collared kingfishers, oriental pied hornbills and white-bellied seagulls, as well as long-tailed monkeys, have been spotted here. But the only winged object I see from this peaceful spot is a plane rising from Changi Airport, across the water. Back at ground level, we watch yellow-beaked myna birds bobbing by the sea.
Ubin Town itself comprises few shops, restaurants and Chinese temples. And although many visitors return to the mainland in the afternoon, camping is available on the island, and the Celestial’s restaurant, Heron’s Corner, serves seafood feasts and ice-cool beers.
When I return to the mainland, I check into The Sultan, a new 64-room hotel in the heart of Kampung Glam. Housed in a row of former shophouses near the gold-domed Sultan mosque, the hotel becomes my base from which to explore other Singapore islands. Next up, St John’s Island. A short ferry from Marina South Pier, St John’s Island was once a quarantine site, then a prison. Now it’s a prime place for picnicking. As with Ubin, the island is crowded only at weekend.
St John’s is linked by a causeway to Lazaru Island, an even more placid place which boasts white-sand bays and calm emerald waters. A pebble’s throw from Lazarus – and short boat ride from St John’s – is Kusu Island. It spiritual vibe courses through this island: atop a hillock are kramats (shrines) to Malay saints and, on the waterfront, the Da Bo Gong Temple houses Taoist deities. The island is packed during the temple’s annual pilgrimage season, in 2013 taking place from October 15 to November 13. In Chinese, Kusu means ”tortoise” and, according to legend, the island was created by a magical tortoise who saved shipwrecked sailors. After watching actual tortoises swim and frolic in a pool-filled refuge, I pass the island’s swimming and snorkelling lagoons and head for the picnic benches.
From here, picnikers can see freighters at sea waiting to enter the world’s busiest port, and look at the mainland’s skyline as it shimmers in the sun.
The writer was a guest of the Singapore Tourist Board
Trip Notes
Getting there
Singapore Airlines flies daily from Sydney and Melbourne to Singapore. See singaporeair.com
* For Pulau Ubin, 12-seater boats leave Changi Point Ferry Terminal when full; SGD$2.50 each way. For St John’s and Kusu islands, it’s $15 for a day travel ticket. Boats leave from Marina South Pier at 10am and 2pm weekdays, more often at weekends. See islandcruise.com.sg
* Kusu is one of the stops made by a Cheng Ho boat cruise, in a photogenic Ming Dynasty-style vessel. See watertours.com.sg
Staying there
*The Celestial Ubin Beach Resort has rooms from SGD $168 a night, villas from $299.60; ubinbeach.celestialresort.com
* The Sultan,101 Jalan Sultan, has rooms from around S$185 a night. See thesultan.com.sg
* More information yoursingapore.com
Islands of calm
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