Singapore is an island-city state. Do you know that it has 63 satellite islands/islets ? As one can tell from the following map Jurong island, Tekon island are among the larger satellite islands of Singapore. The most famous satellite island of all is Santosa, which is directly south of downtown core, the red arrow pointed island. Santosa is famous for its ocean front homes and Universal Studio amusement park.
Last Sunday, August 8th, Lily, Nicholas and I went on an island hopping cruise trip with our friends Michel, Debra and Ester. The island hopping trip was on three islands south of Santosa, the circled islands in the following map. The three islands are St. Johns, Lazarus and Kusu.
City vista from afar, fauna, floral and beach, plus the tranquility of the islands, made the small islands a perfect place for weekend getaway.
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| Islands of Singapore |
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| the three islands we hopped on |
The Excursion
We boarded the cruise, from Singapore island cruise and ferry services, a ferry, at the Marina south pier and it took us about 30 minutes to get to our first stop at St. Johns island. We walked along the beach and hiked on the trails on St. Johns, seeing monkeys, exotic plants (more details later) before walking to Lazarus. These two islands are connected by a causeway. We spent most our time at Lazarus on the Lazarus island beach, wading ocean water, swimming, and having a picnic lunch. We saw some more monkeys on the island. Near 2pm we boarded a cruise for Kusu island, Lily and I got off to see tortoise sanctuary and more tropical plants, the rest of the gang stayed on the ferry, and returned to the main island earlier than scheduled.
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| The cruise and view of Downtown core from ocean |
Note that there is no restaurant on the islands. The tourists have to bring their own food and drink for picnics. Despite in the middle of the ocean, breezes on and off, it is still hot and humid, remember to bring enough food and water/beverage, especially water, at least two bottles of water per person. Also bring some snack. The other caution is to bring bug repellent - there are bugs on the islands.
Downtown Vista
Looking north from the islands, I had a totally different sense of downtown. The high-rises are small, the crowds are away and the noises are filtered by the distance. The city is only a backdrop to the ocean and the natural world.
The small non-commercialized islands are a perfect sanctuary for wildlife and people.
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| View of Downtown core from St. Johns |
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| Sentosa ocean front residential buildings |
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| A sanctuary from busy city life |
Monkeys on St. Johns and Lazarus
As we enjoyed the tranquility and tropical plants in a wooded area right off the beach on St. Johns, I heard some hoarse noise from some tall trees. It sounded like a bird call. I looked up, and with help, I saw a monkey in a tree. It is long-tailed macaque monkey according to Singapore national park website. The monkey I saw did have very long tail.
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| Long-tailed Macaque |
After we rested in a shelter for a few minutes, looking at the far away skyline at downtown core, and tropical plants, we went back on trail to look around. I heard the same hoarse monkey calls again. A long-tailed macaque male monkey, easily identified by its genital, came down to a shorter tree, and very close to us. While the monkey and us looked at each other, two more monkeys came down from tall trees, a male and a female. More interesting things happened next.
During descending, the two monkeys paused and mated! Then as one male monkey descended to the ground, the other male monkey wen to check the female monkey out, and they mated right there!
We stayed under the trees for 15 ~ 30 minutes, taking a lot pictures. That's how we saw what we saw. Eventfully monkeys and us had enough of each other. We moved on to hike.
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| The long-tail macaque posed for a picture |
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| A male long-tailed macaque with its balls and penis exposed |
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| three monkeys - two male, one female |
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| a male monkey descended to the ground and sitting on a concrete slab |
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| A male monkey (left) and female monkey |
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| Mating |
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| Making faces or yawning |
Flora
It was a very beautiful morning, blue sky with patches of white clouds. With two biologists in the group, we had some fun discussions about the plants. One big tree drew my attention, I saw scale like features on it, and wondered out loud. Debra, a biologist told me that the features are
epiphytes, a kind of air plants, which rely other plants, e.g. big trees for support. Epiphytes have no attachment to the ground soil, and they are not parasitic either. They get their nutrients from air and rain.
Then we spotted some blooming trees, which have two distinctive colors of flowers - bright yellow is the flower, and red is the sepal which carries the flower before it blooms. Sepal is typically green. Here it is red, which made the flower and tree special. It has a funny common name mickey mouse plant.
A unique observation at Lazarus island was rattan and vines climbed all overs a few big trees by the beach and formed a hill slope.
A palm tree on Kusu island has two levels of palm, they perpendicular to each other in palm orientation.
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| On the trail to Marine Institute |
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| The hiking group |
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| fish poison tree with exotic shaped fruits |
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| Epiphyte |
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| Mickey mouse plant |
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| Rattan and Vines form a "hill slope" |
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| The lower palm is 90 degree to the upper palm |
The beaches
The beaches at the three islands are pretty good, but few people were on the St. Johns beach, which is right by the pier. I guessed that the beach is kind of too exposing. The Lazarus island beach is very popular, many people sunbathing, swimming there. There are good shade from trees near the beach.
We went there near lunch time, wading in the water or swimming. There was a weather front coming in, fortunately it brought some cool breeze and only a handful drops of rain.
Lily and I went to Kusu island by ourselves, the rest of the group went home ahead of schedule. Kusu island claimed to have tortoise sanctuary, which I thought was a sanctuary for sea tortoises. But it was not, it is sanctuary for some domestic turtles. An interesting thing was to see tortoise fighting for fed fishes and once a tortoise got a fish it ran for the water while others would try to steal it! A more interesting and exciting thing here was that we spotted a big blue fish by the sea wall
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| the St Johns' beach viewed from the corridor to the ferries |
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| Lazarus island beach |
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| Chill out in water |
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| weather front |
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| weather over Lazarus Beach |
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| Tortoise eating fish |
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| Sea wall at Kusu island beach |
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| A great family outing |
It was great family outing for both families. I am itching to kayak around these and other satellite islands. We will be back!
