Singapore Day 2

After actually getting up in time for breakfast here at Betel Box, for our second day in Singapore we decided to take a cycle to and around Pulau Ubin Island. Here we could give the bikes a good run to check any issues that may have arisen after the re-build before the cycling really begins in Malaysia. We headed to a local bike shop (as I needed a new washer for my brake) and made our way to the Coastal road which we’d stay on all the way to Changi Ferry Terminal where we’d cross…or so we thought. Annoyingly about 10km/s along we ran into some road works which stretched along the rest of our entire planned route. Finding an alternative route ate up a chunk of time and things really started getting hot standing around in 30 degree heat!

When we arrived after taking a much longer and less scenic route a good two hours after leaving our hostel, water just wasn’t cutting it so we bought a couple of 100 Plus’ to see us over to Pulau. In now 33 degrees after carrying the bikes down stairs and loading them onto the boat, I can’t describe how good the sweet, salty and lemony drink was (full of electrolytes and carbohydrates for quick and easy absorption!)

Once we got onto Pulau, after what seemed like 5 minutes of cycling, we turned off onto the Mountain Bike trail which took us onto a sudden steep section. As if our morning hadn’t already gone to plan, Stu’s chain snapped. Not ideal! But shooing away baby monkeys interested in my bike for an hour or so wasn’t so bad while Stu created a new GCN hack (What’s a GCN hack!?) to compress the links back together by tightening the bottle cage bolt down onto the links.

After a good cycle around a mostly untouched part of Singapore which I highly recommend, we built up some more energy at a seafood café for the ride back in the form of rice vermicelli, bamboo fish (which we ate too quickly to picture), stir-fried vegetables and spicy chilli sweet-potato leaves (washed down with some more 100 Plus). After cycling 45 miles I’m not entirely sure why we chose to walk 3 miles each way to get to East Coast Lagoon Food Village later in the evening, but the Satay Chicken and coconut water was well worth it!!!

GCN hack!

GCN hack attempt 2…that worked!