What an awesome day we had today! We got quite an early start today, so that we could be out of the door to meet our bus. Not our usual double decker bus but one that I have affectionately named “The Party Bus”, which is a brightly colored, rented, scooby doo style bus that has been taking this particular class around Singapore for years. The bus driver, Mr. Lin, has what appears to be a well established relationship with both Dr. Dan and Dr. Orbach.  Today the party bus took us to Changi Village so that we could meet up with Ria Tan, a woman who has worked tirelessly to protect and educate others about what would be our first stop of the day, Chek Jawa.

Chek Jawa is one of the last undeveloped parts of Singapore, with rocky shores, mud flats, mangroves, and forested areas all still as wild and natural as they were years ago.  To get to Palau Ubin which is the island that Chek Jawa is on, we took a bumboat, which wasn’t the smoothest ride but was definitely very fun. There was tons of diversity on the island and many of us were very fortunate to have cameras to be able to document all the interesting animals.

After enjoying Chek Jawa we went to the National University of Singapore to listen to two lectures, one about South East Asia, its wonders and it’s flaws and the other was about Singapore and Chek Jawa. Both were very informative and gave us a lot to think about the future of the earth and its resources especially in countries like Singapore. Since the lectures ended at around 7:10 pm everyone was ready to get dinner, so we all headed out to a place called Thai Express, which was totally delicious and made for a great ending to a terrific day.