Ubin

Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,

The middle Tree and highest there that grew,

Sat like a Cormorant; yet not true Life

Thereby regaind, but sat devising Death

To them who liv'd

Ubin, or; The Kampung Paradise in Singapore that You Need a Boat to Get To.

One of the last remaining pockets of Singapore that remain embalmed in a past era. The houses are made of wood, there are no street lights (or not much), there are a lot of trees and telephone wires half rusted and half coated with moss. Getting on the boat is like getting on a time machine. You hop on from a shiny new terminal on one side and get off in what physically looks like backwater Malaysia, only you don't need a passport to get there.

Time moves more slowly there in more ways than one.

Some facts for the intrepid explorer: A small island roughly 10km sq off the north-east coast of Singapore. A small agricultural outpost of sorts, it was also at one point in time, a granite quarry. Both the farming and mining have subsided, and if not for the abandoned prawn ponds still dotting the landscape and the unmistakable red, upturned soil and granite boulders lying around, the island seems to have remained mostly undisturbed.

This is the point where I'm supposed to say something nice, like, maybe, an ode to the blue water, but happily, I am not going to try and embarrass myself.

Like any place of seeming unearthly beauty, Pulau Ubin is also a sinister death-trap. Cycling accidents including those of the fatal variety seem to abound. Seeing as there are no ambulances on the island nor first aid boxes at every corner, this is not very surprising. Also, given that the nearest entrance to Chek Jawa is a jungle trail that consists of bumpy, uneven and slippery slopes, one must be thankful for small miracles, such as everyone getting home unscathed. I myself got mud splashed, bird shit on the back of my shirt and what looked like paint and mud on both my elbows, and grease and scratches on knees.

That is actually trivial, but I wanted to complain about the bird shit.

The main point about Ubin these days do not however, seem very far from its previous purpose of mining and farming. Chek Jawa is an ecological haven. In one day, my family spotted 4 hornbills in two different locations, or maybe 8 if they happen to be different birds each time, a colourful pink and green pigeon, several noisy birds with fan-like tails, swallows, a waterhen, loads of tiny crabs and mudskippers, two schools of mud coloured fish and the cormorants.

The ghost of a jellyfish

Anthracoceros albirostris aka Oriental Pied Hornbill

This is not Chek Jawa. This is only a photograph

You can't really see the barnacles on the rocks in the picture, but there are actually a lot of them sticking on every available surface and the water is surprisingly clear. I can readily believe that there are starfish and sea slugs hiding around here. A pity that we missed the low tide.

Already, I want to go back there. And perhaps I will, another time, when the tide is low, and there is the scent of sea grass in the wind.