The Elephant, Frog and Pig...

Hey peeps,

Alright, I did promise some out-of-the-usual shelling posts, and so I will. Exams ended like 3 weeks ago so I managed to squeeze in two trips to Pulau Ubin during the marking days... :D Legend has it that 3 animals, a pig, an elephant and a frog, once challenged each other to swim across the Johor Straits. To cut the story short, they all failed terribly... and drowned. eventually, the pig and elephant formed the two main islands of what we now call Pulau Ubin. The frog, despite being a water-borne creature, eventually also died and formed Pulau Sekudu, or Frog Island. (Fyi, Pulau is the Malay term for "Island") So yea... Anyway, Sekudu is out of reach by the public and hence, we only toured the Eastern and Western Island. :) A ride around the entire island, on a bicycle, would take about 6 to 7 hours, which is of course dependent on how many breaks you choose to take. Shelling wise, I would have to apologise. I INTENDED to shell on the first trip, but tragically it rained when we finally reached the Jetty... :( And on the second trip, we had almost no time to shell... :( But anyway, the short 5-minute shelling experience was an eye opener for me... so stay tuned to find out why!

 We proceeded westwards... Which is usually unexplored. Here's a little stream to enjoy... You rarely find these on mainland Singapore. No shells here though. :/

 And the first river... Lined with numerous mangroves. Did I ever mention that despite being that little red dot on the map, Singapore hosts half of the 51 recognised, true mangrove species in the world! So protect your mangroves S'poreans!!!

 Right in the middle of the tidal river... This ecological formation is unique, in the sense that the river is filled only during high tide...

 On the top of Ubin Hill... Almost NO ONE was there, as no one was interested in climbing up 100+m... But the view is breath-taking... How often do you see this in Singapore? :D

 And to end off the day... a break by this lovely pond... :) Anyway, these photos are just snippets of where we went. We also visited the Bike Park at the far west, facing Punggol and Yio Chu Kang. We TRIED to visit Mamam Beach but it was CLOSED due to coastal erosion... Real sad eh? And to top things off, I had a great fall that left me with 12 scratches on my right leg and 1 week of humiliation from my friends (They gladly assumed that I was engaged in a cat fight... -.-" )

 And the Jetty... Low tides like these make me sooooo happy... :3

 And if you look closely, you'd find SHRIMPS in this tidal pool! (The spoon probably came from one of the restaurants nearby...)

 And a MELONGENA SHELL!!!

 Ok, so quickly, these are some of our finds: CHAMELEON NERITE

 WAVED NERITE

 BUTTERFLY/SURF CLAMS

 ONE-TOOTHED TROCHUS

 TIGER MOON SHELL

BLACK MUSSEL and DUA TOW

SO there you have it! Have an enjoyable weekend! :D

Punggol Point, Aftermath of the Monsoon

Hello Everyone,

Upon seeing the short non-rainy window on sunday, and after convincing my father that the weather was great, and after consulting the weather and tide guru, which showed an approximate 1.0m low tide, we managed to reach Punggol Point...

 So here, it's obvious that the the skies are really really cloudy... a foreshadow of a rain maybe? :P

 The usual scene: the black boulders and sand. The tide was receeding at this time... Was on the verge of rejoicing when I noticed a number of people, bending over and picking up "something"... Wanted to approach them but they didn't seem friendly so I scrapped the idea...

 The monsoons seemed to have washed up tons of mangrove seeds! The beach was littered with them! Took a rooted seed home to try my luck at growing a mangrove at home. :P

 Now, this is an interesting one. Remember fighting over that white, oval-shaped thing in your Ice Kachang? Yup, its the ATTAP CHEE or NIPAH PALM. The ATTAP CHEE (CHEE = Seed on Hokkien) actually comes from this fruit that you are looking at. The white thingy is actually embedded within this woody seed pod. So, if you ever see any of these do try to grow them! :D

 There were also lots of BEAD ANEMONIES. The squirt water when you touch them!

 A badly eroded cowrie that was possibly a OVUM COWRIE. Would have been a beauty if it wasn't eroded...

 These few men were actually collecting VENUS CLAMS and GREEN TUA TOWS... They actually collected a huge plastic bag of them... tragically, they were not the only ones searching for the animals...

 Look! some of the common residents did not fail to disappoint!The GUAM FALSE LIMPET was the most common of the 3 (or 4) shells in the photograph.

 A BURNT MUREX! What a rare visitor! We usually do not see these shells along this coast... The last time i saw one was in BINTAN (do refer to my previous few post on Bintan... :) ) Tragically, he's really eroded... (Sorry, addressed it as a "he" for fun's sake! )

Another unusual visitor, the SURF CLAM. They are usually found in high densities along East Coast Park or Changi Bay...

 And our local representative shell!!! The SINGAPORE KEYHOLE LIMPET (Diodora singaporensis... :) )

 Oyster-farmers harvesting oysters along the rocks... This is good if you actually look at the density of oysters along this coast... totally freaky

 The sun sets... Dark arrives...

 And a DOG CONCH! Another injured (I mean, eroded) citizen of our shores... Btw, they are edible. :)

 Johore Industrial Region... There"s also Serangoon Island in the background...

 Punggol Point jetty... Usually the setting off and returning point for those going to OBS (Outward Bounds Singapore) ... I've been there! ;P

 

Well, although it did not seem like a really good trip, at least I managed to obtain some specimens... :) Hope that the next trip will be fruitful!

Changi East Trip

HHHHEEEELLLLLLLLOOOOOO!

I am extremely tired and worn out from where Dad and I went to today. Yup, since you've seen this title, I went to the extreme east of Singapore. The coast of Changi East is uninhabited ant the beaches are pristine, althought eh water may be slightly murky. In any case, it is by far the BEST PLACE TO SHELL in Singapore but there's a catch, you would need to find your way in first. So, as people wo have never entered this region before, we decided to follow google maps to enter the forest. I would have to repeat that we did not expect the trail in to contain swamps, huge lallangs, prickly creepers, and anything that you will never expect. In summary, the entrance to the coast was to BASH THROUGH THE FOREST. (We did eventually find an easier way to exit but by then it was too late.) So in any case, here is the whole recap of what happened today...

 So here it is. We begin by parking the car at the SAF Yacht Club. According to google maps, we were supposed to follow along the army training camp for a short distance and then later turn right. This is the scene when we first enter the forest. There is a huge expanse of tall grass. This does not look like singapore but it is. It was about 9,30a.m. when the photo was taken.

 This is the forest. Doesn't this remind you of like a scene in some WuXia movie or like one on vampires or something. Further down, we would hit a Casurina forest, indicative if the coast.

 We detoured around and somehow or rather ended up in a large expanse of lallang. At this point I would like to say that it is rare to find any grass in Singapore that is taller than your ankle but these guys were TALLER THAN ME! (Btw, I am 170cm tall :P )

 Initially, we saw this patch of sea  lettuce and thought that the coas was not far away... We were hell wrong. It was actually a swamp land in which while trying to navigate across, I fell in and lost my glasses... Luckily Ah Pa found it after 15 minutes.. :)

 And all of a sudden, this huge Attacus Atlas Moth just flew from the Lallang beside me. The Atlas Moth is the moth with the world's largest wingspan and its silk can be woven into clothes. In Singapore, it is rare due to habitat loss. This is the second time i've seen such a creature...

 The canal. Apparently, this place is restricted but we could see tons of fishes in the water, mostly Mizambique tilapia i guess.

 Nice red flowers.

 And eventually, after bashing through all the way, we finally reach the coast. See? It is empty... I guess there is no place in Singapore by which you can be left aone except in your room or somewhere which requires 2 hours of hiking before reaching it.

 And since now is the start of Summer (well, technically) we have the flowers blooming along the coast. Beautiful. The morning glory was still in bloom when we reached the place.

 A scallop shell. There were tons of them littering the shore....

 Ah Ha! A frog shell and flat clam!

 And here you have 2 variegate fig shells! We eventually found like 20 of them...

The sand wall, I guess its colonised by birds. :)

Precious finds of the day: 2 Orange Ornate Olives, Oliva iridans :) One from me and one from Ah Pa. :)

Purple Diphos Shell, Diphos sanguin, 西施舌紫云蛤科 in Chinese. these guy look different from those I got from Kuching 2 years ago.

Here is the whole day's haul. It is one pail full but most of it are the Figs and Dog Conches (Gong Gong)...

A Marbled Scallop, Laevichlamys squamosa I think...

Moon Snails! I found like half a bucket of them lying on the shore. The species here are the Lined Moon, Powisianus Moon and Calf Moon

A Japanese Bonnet Shell, Phalium bisulcatum. I found this species in Kuching too.

Donax Sp. I call them butterfly shells but they are actually surf clams. There were millions o them and a few live ones too! I would have collected more if those pesky sandflies did not bother me so much...

And finally, a Sunburst Carrier Shell! I have never had any of these in my collection and this will be my first! :)