Blogs from Pulau Ubin, Singapore, Asia

I've been thinking about the existence of the nation of Singapore. The whole country is built entirely on caloric surplus. Very little of what the country does, pretty much nothing, has inherent value for people, and it depends entirely on the caloric surpluses of the world allowing these inherently worthless and intangible things to be given extreme value. It's a very interesting route of thought to go down that leads to some difficult and unanswerable questions about much of modern society, and Singapore really epitomises this whole concept and idea. A lot of this thought is inspired by John Green's excellent new podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed which is inspiring and deeply troubling at the same time and mixes a positive tone with an extremely depressing one. Well worth a listen. It's certainly a complicated route of ... read more

Hi Followers and blog perusers, Today we woke early to have a nice breakfast of bananas on toast before heading out finally to Pulau Ubin. As its our last day we really wanted to get in as much as we could!!! We took the metro EW line to Tanah Nerah and then took the number 2 bus to the ferry terminal. Anyone doing this, the bus stop is right outside the exit for the metro and it's easy to find the right stop, they are every 10-15 mins and they terminate at the ferry terminal so no worrying about the stop. We headed down to the ferry ticket office and found you had to queue up till 12 people turned up then a ferry could leave, strange and it meant we waited about 20 mins to ... read more

PULAU UBIN (UBIN ISLAND), SINGAPORE. Thursday 1 March, 2012. Today we went to the nearby Metro station to find out how we could get to Changi Village. We were told by a very surly guy sitting in the Information Kiosk that we could catch a bus from a bus stop opposite the metro station and that it was not possible to get there on the train. We caught the first bus of the correct number almost immediately but had to disembark just as swiftly because we needed to have the exact change. After M had purchased an unwanted ice cream in order to secure the necessary correct money, we took the hour bus drive to Changi Village. This trip had been recommended to us by our good friends Richard and Patsy who we had met on ... read more

I woke up at 11 after the late night out. I decided to eat at a place near china town called Lau Pa Sat market. It had all types of food like most of the markets here. I later learned that Singapore enforces variety in ethnicity of shops in markets to promote diversity. Unfortunately the food I ate gave me a serious case of food poisoning! It hit me hard around 4pm with chills and a seriously upset stomach. I couldn't keep any food down after that. As you can imagine I didn't get much done on Saturday night :( Sunday started early. I didn't sleep well at all, but felt a bit better after lots of water and H-Two-0 (their version of Gatorade). I woke up to go bike riding in Palau Ubin, the coolest ... read more

Hey all! So yesterday I went to Puala Ubin, an island of Singapore off the east coast of the country. My school is on the West Coast of Singapore, so it took about an hour to get across to the other end of the country (which is a mere 18 miles long). Then about half an hour on a small "bumboat" to get to the Island. The Island represents what Singapore once was, as it was not colonized by Britain like the main Island of Singapore. Singapore is noticeably very wealthy with clean streets, fancy buildings, expensive shopping centres, and very advanced technology used on everything from the Public Transit stations, to the toilets and elevators. Puala Ubin on the other hand is entirely different. It is obviously very impoverished, and has a very raw appearance. ... read more