AHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh... My ass still hurts, probably from the hot action I've had this afternoon. I feel penetrated, erm, by the seat of the bicycle I rode in Pulau Ubin earlier on.
Today's trip at Pulau Ubin was another typical one, except that there were talks all over about the 93.3 DJ who fell there while cycling and lost many of his teeth. Most of the shopkeepers of the bicycle rental shops warned cyclists of the dangerous slopes at some parts, citing the 93.3 DJ's unfortunate mishap as a real-life example of an accident that took place there recently. At the same time, I overheard a bunch of girls gossiping about the same incident. After a quick lunch at one of the eating houses there, Laibao and I rented our bikes and we wasted no time moving off. Our first destination was the Pandan Garden.
The moment we reached a clearing in the garden, mishap struck. The chain on my bike came off from the gear, bummer! After some tinkering with the grease-coated mechanism, we managed to get it fixed. However, our hands were soiled with disgusting black grease, and we had to find a way to get it cleared off without touching our bags to get tissue paper. So, we had a smart idea. We saw a scarecrow nearby which seemed to be wearing clean gloves, and we wiped our hands on the poor scarecrow's gloves!
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Poor, poor scarecrow
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A communication tower
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A peculiar-looking shack
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We spent quite a short time there, before returning to the village and then taking the southern route instead. We headed to the beach where we once saw an eagle, as we've never had the chance to go beyond that trail due to rain the previous times. Weird, that it would usually rain once we reached that point. However, the weather was clear, or perhaps hot, today. As we cycled a short distance into the unexplored trail, we discovered that it was actually a dead-end. We went back to where we came from, and headed towards the German-Girl Shrine this time for a short break. I was hoping to buy some cold drinks there, but unfortunately, the shrine does not sell cold drinks anymore. There were quite a number of dogs at the shrine. I was quite surprised at how well-kept their coats were, despite the rugged environment they live in.
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A huge spider we encountered along the way
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One of the cute doggies
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I love dogs
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Abandoned chopped logs
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We noticed that the trail actually continues beyond the shrine, so we decided to follow it to see where it would lead us to. Bad move. After we painstakingly maneuvered through 10 waterlogged pits, we encountered a dead-end. Therefore, we needed to make our way back through the 10 pits again, and by the time we were out, my socks were completely drenched.
Going by another path this time, we cycled towards the Marina Country Club resorts. As we were about to pass the resort, a group of women stopped me, asking if I could take a picture for them. After the photo-shot, Laibao suggested exploring the resort premises since it seemed open to public. Upon entering the gates, I already had quite a pleasant impression of the place - it seemed really beautiful to me. Basically, there was a bicycle cum drink kiosk, the chalets, an adventure course, a huge restaurant, a jacuzzi, and a huge lake in the center of it all. I had already expended all my drinking water, so I stocked up on my drinks at the drink kiosk. We found a sheltered bench and table, which we took a really long break on. Before we finally left the place, we decided to cycle one round around the lake to just have a closer peek at the facilities there. As we stopped at one point to take some photos, we caught a glimpse of some parts of a HUGE creature splashing in the water. HUUGEE!! However, when we tried to approach to have a closer look, it was gone. We started debating whether it was a freshwater dolphin or seal of some sort, or even an elephant. Bugged by my curiosity, I returned to the drink kiosk to see if I could find out more about the 'thing' we just saw. I was told that it was some kind of large fish imported from the Amazons, called the 'ju long yu' in Chinese. After some research, I concluded that it was the
Arapaima which we saw.
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Signs
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Canoes along the lake
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The bicycle/drinks/canoe kiosk
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A tent from nowhere
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The adventure course
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Tribal structures
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Another tribal structure
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Rock climbing tower
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Dragonfly along the lake
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BBQ pits
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Looks like we were finally getting tired, so we headed back to the village straight, which was already a long distance away. A few meters away from the village, the chain of my bike came off again. I decided to push the bike back instead of fiddling around with the mechanism and getting my hands dirty just for a few meters ride. After some washing up at the toilet there, we walked around the village for a bit. There was this kid who was doing something which caught our attention - he was catching earthworms at the beach. We approached him and watched - he was really good, catching like 4 to 5 worms on average over 1 minute. As we walked up from the beach, we saw these 2 cats digging holes, pooping, then burying their poop. Don't ask me why, but we actually enjoyed watching them poop, for some unknown reasons. Maybe it's just the funny expressions shown on their faces when they realize that people are watching them poop. I was so engrossed in watching them poop that I didn't snap them with my camera. However, I did catch some shots of a cat-in-a-bin.
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Licking his paws
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Hiding in the bin
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It didn't take long before we were on our way back to the mainland on the bumboat. It was already early evening by the time we reached Changi Point Jetty. I changed into a clean shirt at the jetty's toilet. We headed towards the hawker center with the intention of having a cool, refreshing drink there, but we changed our mind after we came face-to-face with the drink stall auntie with a HUGE attitude problem. We decided to make do with our plain drinking water instead. We took bus 2 to Bugis area as we planned to have dinner at a vegetarian restaurant called 'Luo Han Group' at Fortune Center.
Laibao had a number of things to get after dinner. We went to Sim Lim Square as one of the items Laibao wanted was an MP3 player. It didn't take long before Laibao got his MP3 player and our next destination was Marina Square. We took the route through Suntec, and along the way, we found this new fountain built somewhere near the convention center.
Upon reaching Marina Square, the shop which we wanted to visit was already closed, so we just walked around aimlessly to waste abit of time. Marina Square was even more packed than usual, probably due to the GST increase from tomorrow onwards. We slowly walked to the MRT station, which was also unusually crowded. When I reached Bedok bus interchanged, it was already 10+. However, I did not feel like going home yet, I decided to take the loop 225 bus service. The loop journey on 225 was shockingly short, lasting only 15 minutes at max. It was time to return home after I reached the interchange once again.
