The last bumboat back to Changi Point departs at 7:00 PM. As the boat pulls away, you look back. The island is already dissolving into shadow, a green memory on the edge of the world’s most successful city-state.
"People ask me why I don't move to the mainland," he says, spitting a stream of red betel nut juice onto the dirt. "I say: Why would I? My son is in a HDB flat. He locks his door. He doesn't know his neighbour. Here, my door is always open. The jungle is my air-conditioner." singapore pulau ubin
Step off the wooden jetty at Ubin Village, and you’ve left the "Fine City" behind. There are no traffic lights, no air-conditioned malls, no MRT trains rattling beneath your feet. Instead, there is the crunch of laterite gravel, the lazy flap of a stray dog’s tail, and the distant, rhythmic thwack of a parang chopping coconut husks. The last bumboat back to Changi Point departs at 7:00 PM
Ah Huat points to a wild boar snuffling under a durian tree. "That's my neighbour," he laughs. While the elderly residents provide the soul, it is the volunteers and eco-tourists who provide the island’s modern purpose. Ubin is now Singapore’s most important biodiversity hotspot. The Chek Jawa Wetlands at the island’s eastern tip is the crown jewel. For decades, the government planned to reclaim Chek Jawa for military housing. But when a survey in 2001 revealed an astonishing diversity of marine life—carpets of sea squirts, rare seahorses, and the elusive dugong—a public outcry froze the plans. "People ask me why I don't move to
The Singapore government has repeatedly promised to "conserve" Ubin for as long as possible. Plans for a "Ubin Park" have been floated. But the island faces existential threats. The population is aging and shrinking. Storms are eroding the coastline. And the mainland is always hungry—for land, for housing, for memory.
Meet , 74, a retired fisherman whose family has lived on Ubin for four generations. He sits on the porch of his wooden house, repairing a shrimp net.
The quarrymen are gone now. The last mine shut in the 1990s. But their legacy remains in the island’s topography. Today, the flooded quarries—most famously Pekan Quarry and Ubin Quarry —are breathtakingly beautiful. Kettles of tea-green water sit inside sheer rock walls, framed by ferns and strangler figs. Dragonflies patrol the surface like tiny helicopters. If you stand still enough, you might spot a monitor lizard gliding into the depths. At its peak, Ubin housed over 2,000 people. Today, fewer than 40 remain. These are the orang pulau —island people—living in the last true kampong (village) in Singapore. There is no running sewage. Electricity only arrived in the 1990s, and many homes still rely on diesel generators or solar panels.
