Pulau Ubin: Chek Jawa

After lunch, we hired a van to take us to another site - the Chek Jawa wetlands on the southeastern end of the island. Back in school when I was on the kayaking team, I noted that the water in this area was full of sea grass, and I wondered what lay beneath. It was only in the early 2000s that the biodiversity of the area became more widely known, and efforts began in earnest to preserve the area.

The van ride took ten minutes. We started out exploring the visitor center, which is housed in a restored Tudor-style house that once belonged to a British family. When I was a teenager, I encountered this house in its dilapidated state. After that, we walked out onto the coastal boardwalk. We saw a family of pigs foraging along the shore, and some monitor lizards. After the coastal boardwalk, we joined a second boardwalk through mangrove. The highlight of this area was a viewing tower that gave us a panoramic view of the wetlands, and Pulau Tekong and the Malaysian state of Johor in the distance. During my military service, I did my basic training in Pulau Tekong and I gave an involuntary little shudder when I saw the island.

After the wetlands, we made our way back to the jetty and back to Singapore Island. As our boat pulled into the terminal, we spotted another Atlas Obscura site - a large hand shaped sculpture called The Inscription of the Island. Incidentally, one of our Geography fields trips when we were teenagers brought us to that same site, but that was long before the sculpture was installed.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/inscription…

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