Did you know that Ubin’s island outline, a rebuilt drink stall and a tiny insect fragment can each tell a different Singapore story? These seventeen chapters follow documented discoveries across the North-Eastern Islands, especially Pulau Ubin, with Tekong considered through public scientific and civil-engineering accounts. Historical survey results keep their dates, research is separated from visitor access, and the focus stays on what makes these islands distinctive.
This article follows the official Master Plan 2025 North-Eastern Islands planning area. Pulau Ubin and Pulau Tekong are identified within that area in the current official planning map. Coney Island belongs to Punggol; mainland ferry facilities are not treated as island attractions. Tekong is not presented as a public itinerary.
Choose your discovery route
Explore land, stone and buildings, discover habitat design and botanical surprises, follow island field studies, or continue to research facilities, energy and island memory.
- 1. Five pieces of land, and stone that travelled
- 2. An English-looking house and much older stone objects
- 3. A drink stall became a hands-on architecture lesson
- 4. A kampong house and an orchard carry different kinds of memory
- 5. Pekan’s floating habitat has a very specific construction
- 6. Conservation design has catered for caterpillars and bats
- 7. Chek Jawa’s six habitats include a botanical identification puzzle
- 8. Mangrove restoration has involved reshaping old ponds
- 9. The mousedeer return depended on a convincing photograph
- 10. Tiny crabs and otter meals revealed another Chek Jawa
- 11. Mangrove flies and island snails produced small surprises
- 12. Hornbill cameras revealed life inside a sealed nest
- 13. A resort changed into laboratories and a living tree collection
- 14. Ubin’s power experiment paired a planted roof with storage
- 15. Tekong has both a fauna record and an island-making milestone
- 16. A frog introduction produced Ubin-born young
- 17. Island memory includes a shrine and an archaeological question
1. Five pieces of land, and stone that travelled
Did you know that Pulau Ubin was once five smaller land masses separated by tidal rivers? NParks explains that prawn-farming bunds helped unite them. The familiar outline therefore records a working landscape, not just untouched geography. Its account of kampong life also links the shortened name Ubin to jubin, the Malay word for tiles: island granite was quarried for that purpose.
The stone travelled much farther than village floors. NParks connects Ubin granite with Horsburgh Lighthouse, Fort Canning and the Causeway. Quarrying attracted a substantial Chinese workforce, including Kheks, while plantations introduced crops such as coffee, nutmeg, pineapple, coconut and rubber at different periods. Prawn farming, fishing and poultry rearing added other livelihoods. The last operational quarry closed in 1999. Those combined details explain why Ubin’s landscape contains industrial hollows, former cultivation and coastal ponds alongside regenerated vegetation. Its apparently quiet scenery carries several kinds of work within the same island. Read NParks’ island and quarrying history. See also the supporting official account.
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2. An English-looking house and much older stone objects
House No. 1 brings an unexpected Tudor country-house vocabulary to Ubin. URA records its construction in the 1930s as a retreat for Chief Surveyor Langdon Williams. The property includes the main house, an outhouse and a water tower. Its half-timber construction sits on a masonry base, and the builders used deliberately bent, irregular timbers rather than the straight members associated with many Singapore black-and-white bungalows.
The masonry mixes cut granite, brick and stone. Asymmetrical portions were arranged to suggest a cottage enlarged over time, so the apparently piecemeal appearance was itself a considered design. URA also records a real period fireplace, an especially unusual tropical detail. Conservation followed in 2003, and the restored building received an Architectural Heritage Award in 2007. Its later use as the Chek Jawa Visitor Centre gives this former private retreat a public interpretive role, while retaining a recognisably individual architectural character. Read URA’s House No. 1 conservation record.
Ubin also appears in a much older material puzzle. Foo Shu Tieng’s 2023 BiblioAsia article documents stone artefacts from Tanjong Tajam, including objects now held in Singapore museum collections. The finds were publicised in 1949, and an excavation followed that November. A later report said that the excavation had yielded nothing of interest. The surviving objects and the disappointing excavation result are both parts of the record.
The article reproduces a polished axe and other Ubin artefacts rather than relying only on a picturesque island legend. It also explains why their age remains difficult to establish: dating the rock would not directly date the moment someone shaped it. A possible further stone-tool find reported after a 2017 visit was still unconfirmed in the article. Ubin’s early past is therefore intriguing precisely because important questions remain open; these objects do not justify inventing a securely dated prehistoric settlement. Read NLB’s research on Singapore stone tools.
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3. A drink stall became a hands-on architecture lesson
Thirty-two NUS Architecture students joined the rebuilding of Ah Ma Drink Stall in 2018, supervised by Tan Beng Kiang. Their work began with site visits in August 2017 and interviews with the operator and her family. The old structure had been built by her late husband and son-in-law, but erosion had left it slanting and structurally unsafe. High tides sometimes flooded it.
The students did not simply deliver drawings. They helped clear the stall, moved furniture and signboards into safekeeping, and fabricated and assembled its timber structure. Ubin resident Philip Lim taught traditional carpentry and timber-construction techniques; professional engineers contributed expertise, and NParks provided funding and workshop space. Meetings also involved building and fire-safety agencies. NUS’s report records the students’ practical challenge of coordinating work on and off the island. Here, preserving a familiar stall involved learning local skills while satisfying contemporary construction requirements. Read NUS’s 2018 Ah Ma Drink Stall build report.
A separate NUS architecture studio returned to Ubin’s buildings and community in 2026. Students in Tan Beng Kiang’s design-research studio documented timber houses with three-dimensional scanning, interviewed residents and visitors, and worked with community stakeholders. Their investigation combined the measured buildings with social and cultural histories, rather than treating the village centre as an empty site awaiting a new scheme.
The studio produced six proposals for sensitive renewal of the village centre. The university describes ideas concerned with community infrastructure, livelihoods and low-impact architectural interventions. These were student design proposals, not an announcement that six developments had been approved or built. That distinction makes the project more interesting: Ubin was being examined at the stage where alternatives could still be discussed. Compared with the earlier drink-stall construction, the later studio shows another point in the same educational relationship, with documentation and listening preceding any physical intervention. Read NUS’s 2026 Ubin design-studio account.
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4. A kampong house and an orchard carry different kinds of memory
The official 2016 factsheet for Teck Seng’s Place makes a useful distinction between a real house and an interpretive story. The house belonged to Chew Teck Seng, who ran a village provision shop. His family resettled on the mainland in 2005. The factsheet describes the exhibition’s Tan family narrative as fictional, so those interpretive characters should not be mistaken for a documented biography of the Chew household.
The same factsheet introduced Ubin Fruit Orchard on a former resident’s orchard site. Its plan described about 350 fruit trees across roughly one hectare, representing more than 30 species and including uncommon durian and mango cultivars. The accompanying plant descriptions included familiar orchard trees such as breadfruit, binjai, bachang, chiku and jambu air. These are the programme’s dated design figures, not a fresh census of surviving trees. Together, the house and orchard preserve different evidence: domestic objects and interpretation in one setting, cultivated living plants in the other. Read NParks’ archived 2016 cultural-conservation factsheet.
The orchard’s student involvement continued beyond planting labels. NParks’ 2020 Community in Nature award booklet describes Nanyang Girls’ High School teacher Benny Koh Chin Seah developing a Nature and Conservation theme within the school’s Student Initiated Assignment programme. Working with Ubin officers, students prepared fruit-tree storyboards and participated in bird and bat data collection and tree tagging.
Their results were presented at Ubin Day in 2017 and 2018 and at the 2019 Festival of Biodiversity. The account also records 53 trees planted during the school’s 2017 tree-planting event on Ubin. This gives the orchard a particularly local educational history: it was a place where pupils produced interpretation and conservation work that others could encounter. The booklet’s dates help distinguish those completed school projects from any current programme or invitation. An orchard sign can therefore represent research, writing and repeated visits, as well as the name of a fruit tree. Read NParks’ 2020 Community in Nature school-award account.
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5. Pekan’s floating habitat has a very specific construction
Pekan Quarry’s floating wetlands began as a pilot in 2015. NParks’ current account records four large clusters with a combined area of 4,000 square metres. Their foundations use HDB-developed hexagonal modules made from high-density polyethylene. The modules interconnect, allowing planting platforms to form larger island-like shapes rather than remaining isolated pots on the water.
The details above the floats matter just as much. A central opening accommodates wetland plants; soil covers the surface, and floating mats soften the edges. Logs, snags and sandy patches provide different kinds of resting or basking surface. Heron nesting platforms were designed at different heights to respond to differing nesting preferences. NParks records wildlife using the installations, while the article makes no promise of a particular sighting. This is a documented expansion of usable habitat from a former quarry’s margins onto its water surface, with each added component doing more than making the platforms look green. Read NParks’ Pekan Quarry floating-wetland account.
The Sensory Trail Pond followed another route from working waterbody to habitat. NParks and Ngee Ann Polytechnic students combined four former fish-farming ponds into a single waterbody. The students helped design and implement the planting plan, selecting vegetation for the needs of wildlife rather than arranging a purely ornamental pond edge.
Grey Sedge, Singapore rhododendron and Rough Horsetail were among the plants named in the project account. The plan included shelter in which aquatic birds could hide, alongside salvaged fallen-tree snags that birds could use while resting or hunting. Those details give the project its particular character: the reused material was placed to perform a habitat function, and the planting offered concealment as well as visible greenery. The official account identifies waterhens, crakes, herons and kingfishers among the intended beneficiaries. The pond is thus a student-designed modification of an existing aquaculture landscape, not a water feature created without a previous working life. Read NParks’ Sensory Trail Pond account.
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6. Conservation design has catered for caterpillars and bats
Butterfly Hill’s planting programme was shaped by butterfly specialist Khew Sin Khoon’s advice. NParks describes more than 50 selected plant species, divided between nectar sources for adults and host plants eaten by caterpillars. The site was deliberately created as a conservation and display area, and its published record includes butterflies that had not previously been documented on the island.
The Dwarf Crow supplies one of its most memorable Ubin connections. NParks records that it was rediscovered on the island in 2002 after having been presumed extinct in Singapore. Common Birdwing and Common Rose are also mentioned in the hill’s account as subsequent island records associated with the planting effort. The page’s figure of around 140 butterfly species describes the site’s recorded attraction, not the number a visitor should expect to count in one outing. Its real achievement is more specific than colourful planting: the chosen plants serve different stages of butterfly life. Read NParks’ Butterfly Hill account.
Ubin’s species-recovery programme has also used purpose-built shelters. NParks describes tower-like bat houses with rough interior surfaces, giving bats something to grip. Six bat-box designs were placed in different habitats; three designs came from Republic Polytechnic students, and an ITE College East team constructed one of them. The published account makes clear that these were varied designs, rather than one standard box assumed to suit every bat.
For Asian Small-clawed Otters, artificial holts were installed in 2016 above the high-tide mark and given more than one entrance. NParks subsequently recorded a family using the holts in early 2018. Its programme also included native-orchid reintroductions whose establishment and growth were monitored. These are dated, species-specific interventions, and their locations need not become search instructions. The surprising common thread is the attention paid to details that a casual visitor might overlook: gripping surfaces, escape options, tidal level and evidence that the intended animal or plant actually uses the provision. Read NParks’ Ubin species-recovery account.
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7. Chek Jawa’s six habitats include a botanical identification puzzle
Chek Jawa brings six habitats together: sandy beach, rocky beach, seagrass lagoon, coral rubble, mangroves and coastal forest. NParks places them within a landscape of about 100 hectares. This is why calling the whole place a mangrove swamp loses important detail. The seagrass lagoon and rocky shore are part of the same local story, but they are different environments.
The visitor structures were added as part of a long-term management approach in 2007. NParks records coastal and mangrove boardwalk loops, a viewing tower and a visitor centre; aluminium was chosen for railings because of durability in the coastal conditions. These facilities allow interpretation of a sensitive landscape without treating every habitat as unrestricted walking ground. The planning decision also needs precise wording: reclamation was deferred in 2001 for as long as Ubin was not required for development. That is a significant documented decision, without becoming a claim that every future land-use possibility has been permanently settled. Read NParks’ Chek Jawa Wetlands account.
A plant associated with Ubin acquired a new scientific identity in 2014: Utania nervosa. The Singapore Botanic Gardens’ Flora of Singapore treatment identifies its type as a 1997 Ubin collection by Joseph Lai, preserved as one specimen across two herbarium sheets. The scientific name refers to its conspicuous leaf veins. Its description records 10 to 16 pairs of secondary veins, thick leathery leaves and crowded creamy-white flowers.
The same treatment lists an Ubin specimen collected as early as 1890. The species was therefore not a tree that suddenly appeared in 2014; botanical work clarified the identity of material collected at different times. The 2019 treatment also records it from Tekong, Tekong Kechil and, more recently, MacRitchie. That last detail prevents repeating an outdated assertion that Singapore records are confined to the offshore islands. Ubin remains central to the species’ naming history, with actual preserved collections anchoring the story. Read Singapore Botanic Gardens’ Utania botanical treatment.
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8. Mangrove restoration has involved reshaping old ponds
Robert Teo’s Ubin chapter in NParks’ restoration handbook describes a former Chek Jawa prawn pond whose recovery depended on changing its physical shape. The pond occupied about two hectares within a larger mangrove area. Historical aerial photographs showed it operating from at least 1969 to 1999. After farming stopped, mangroves began returning to shallower portions by 2001.
The restoration project started in 2005. Invasive alien plants were removed, bunds were lowered to restore tidal inundation and exposure, and excavated material was used to raise parts of the pond margins. Seedlings then established naturally in the altered areas. By 2017, mangrove vegetation covered about 90 per cent of the study site, while its deepest parts remained without mangrove growth. That uneven result is particularly revealing: the intervention did not turn every part of the former pond into identical forest. It improved particular elevations and water conditions, allowing natural colonisation without a mass sapling-planting programme. Read Robert Teo’s Ubin mangrove-restoration case study.
The later Sungei Durian project applied an ecological-restoration approach to another former aquaculture landscape. NParks’ November 2022 announcement describes roughly four hectares of ponds abandoned in 2001. Planned works included raising pond-bed levels, adding culverts to improve water and sediment exchange, and using gabion structures to retain sediment. The intention was to help mangrove propagules establish naturally under more suitable site conditions.
The announcement credits the ground-up Restore Ubin Mangroves initiative with recommending this approach and records OCBC’s support. It forecast around 8,000 naturally establishing mangrove plants, alongside a separate programme to plant another 1,000 saplings around Ubin over six years. Those are different components, not 9,000 trees already planted at one site. The release forecast completion in 2026; without a verified opening account, this article does not present the project as an available visitor destination. Its documented interest lies in the specific earthworks and water-flow changes proposed for those abandoned ponds. Read NParks’ Sungei Durian restoration announcement.
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9. The mousedeer return depended on a convincing photograph
Ubin’s Greater Mousedeer rediscovery unfolded through several stages of evidence. A 2006 report could not be confirmed, and an early sighting in the 2008 mammal study was initially discounted because a young wild pig might have been mistaken for a mousedeer. The researchers’ first confirmed sighting came in November 2008, but the photographs still lacked the features needed for decisive species identification.
A December photograph finally showed the chest and neck markings clearly. The 2009 paper explains the diagnostic distinction: Greater Mousedeer have five throat stripes, compared with three in the Lesser Mousedeer. By early March 2009, the study had recorded 100 sightings, and an adult with a juvenile provided evidence of breeding. Forty night surveys over seven months helped uncover what earlier surveys had missed. These are historical research results, not a present population estimate or an invitation to search for the animals after dark. The paper itself warns about disturbance and poaching. Read Chua, Sivasothi and Teo’s 2009 mousedeer study.
Another Ubin mammal study found an unexpected record of insect diversity in civet droppings. Researchers collected 482 intact samples between May 2013 and May 2014; 70 contained remains of grasshoppers, crickets or katydids. Microscopic examination identified 12 insect taxa, including six that had not previously been recorded on Ubin. The published study appeared in 2018.
The remains were informative because some hardened insect structures survived digestion. Researchers used identifiable wing, head, leg and other structures rather than simply counting every fragment as a different animal. The cricket Lebinthus luae was the most frequently identified orthopteran prey, and many identified prey were relatively large ground-dwelling forms. The local result joins two stories: what Ubin’s Common Palm Civets ate and which insects occurred on the island. It also explains why the samples were studied systematically in a laboratory; casual inspection would not have supplied the same level of identification. Read Fung, Tan and Sivasothi’s Ubin civet-diet study.
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10. Tiny crabs and otter meals revealed another Chek Jawa
A pilot study published in 2012 compared crabs in seagrass meadows at Chek Jawa, Changi and Semakau. The field sampling took place in August 2009, with 60 quadrats at Chek Jawa. That site produced 40 individuals from eight genera, the highest abundance and number of genera among the three sampled meadows. Many specimens were tiny, and small hermit crabs were particularly prominent in the overall collection.
Chek Jawa’s sampled meadow contained small-leaved seagrasses, whereas Semakau’s included larger canopy-forming species. The researchers considered whether plant structure could help explain differences in crab size and abundance, but treated this as a relationship requiring further work. They also noted sampling limitations: water remaining over Semakau’s meadow made collection harder. The paper therefore offers a precise local discovery without crowning a permanent winner. Under its particular methods and dates, Chek Jawa’s seagrass supported a substantial small-crab assemblage that a broad coastal photograph could easily conceal. Read Lee and colleagues’ 2012 seagrass-crab pilot study.
Chek Jawa was also one of four sites in a Smooth-coated Otter diet study based on material collected from August 2011 to February 2012. Researchers analysed 24 samples from Chek Jawa, within a larger set of 181. Its prey remains represented a more varied diet than the reservoir samples, where introduced cichlid fishes dominated.
For Chek Jawa, the study’s estimated bulk composition was about 91 per cent fish and 9 per cent prawns. Barramundi contributed a substantial share of the identified material. Those percentages describe reconstructed diet from the sampled droppings, not the proportion of fish living in the surrounding sea. The authors used bones and other remains to distinguish meals that observers had not watched directly. Their comparison links Ubin’s coastal setting to a particular feeding record, showing how the same otter species could exploit a different mixture of prey at a natural shore than at Singapore’s modified freshwater reservoirs. Read Theng, Sivasothi and Tan’s 2016 otter-diet research.
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11. Mangrove flies and island snails produced small surprises
A 2025 study used long-legged flies to examine Ubin mangrove quality. Its 2019 fieldwork sampled nine mangrove sites and one coastal-forest patch over three months, recording 74 species. The researchers compared flies using different surfaces, including mud, leaves and tree trunks, because these groups respond to different microhabitats. Their results described the sampled old mangroves as exceptionally diverse within Singapore.
The paper also reports that 46 per cent of the long-legged fly species considered had not yet been formally named. Unnamed did not mean unobserved: specimens could be sorted and studied before taxonomic descriptions were complete. The authors cautioned that a short survey captured common species more reliably than rare ones and recommended longer sampling. That qualification belongs beside the impressive diversity. The Ubin finding is an invitation to take tiny animals seriously, without disclosing sampling positions or suggesting that readers enter restricted or sensitive mangrove ground. Read Grootaert and Van de Velde’s 2025 Ubin fly study.
The 2015 Tekong land-snail and slug paper recorded eleven species during wildlife surveys. One particularly striking observation concerned the Singapore green tree snail: Tekong individuals had either yellow or white shells, while the then-recent Ubin population record involved white shells. The authors reported the two colour forms occurring together on Tekong as a previously unreported feature of that local subspecies.
Another small snail, Paropeas achatinaceum, represented a Singapore rediscovery after more than a century. Earlier Singapore specimens survived in London’s Natural History Museum, making comparison with a much older collection possible. The authors did not resolve whether that species was native to Singapore. They also emphasised that the mollusc work was opportunistic, not an exhaustive island survey, and some slug identifications remained provisional. The result is a set of careful, dated island observations, not a complete modern checklist or grounds for visiting restricted Tekong habitats. Read Tan, Lim and Chua’s 2015 Tekong mollusc study.
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12. Hornbill cameras revealed life inside a sealed nest
An Ubin hornbill study looked into a stage of bird life normally hidden inside trees. Researchers recorded fourteen breeding cycles from five pairs on the island between the 2005–06 and 2008–09 seasons. Natural cavities and artificial nests were observed with infrared cameras, allowing comparisons between events inside the nest and deliveries at its entrance.
The Ubin natural cavities in the study were in durian trees. Females sealed themselves inside, leaving a narrow opening through which males passed food. The recorded clutches generally contained three or four eggs, while cameras followed incubation and chick development rather than inferring every outcome from activity outside. The recording equipment required regular battery charging, and the researchers fell back on direct observation when equipment failed. This is a distinctive connection between Ubin’s cultivated-tree legacy, wildlife and field technology. The paper’s research locations are not reproduced here, and its breeding records remain attached to their historical study period. Read Ng and colleagues’ 2011 hornbill breeding study.
Blue-throated Bee-eaters supplied a different nesting surprise. NParks’ Ubin Tides Issue 10 explains that the birds had used quarry granite-dust piles before quarrying ended in 1999. When those piles disappeared, a former industrial by-product ceased to provide the same nesting opportunity. A recovery project later constructed seven mounds with different material mixtures to investigate the birds’ preferences.
During monitoring in 2021, staff found that bee-eaters had nested in the mounds, favouring granite dust and sand. The report records eleven nests with successfully fledged chicks by 2022, despite predation and some tunnel collapses. Staff used cameras, binoculars and more focused nest monitoring to follow the outcomes. The local connection is unusually specific: a conservation project drew on the nesting conditions once created accidentally by quarry operations. These are past monitored results, not current nest locations. Precise sites and approach directions are deliberately unnecessary to the story. Read NParks’ Ubin Tides Issue 10 nesting report.
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13. A resort changed into laboratories and a living tree collection
Ubin Living Lab reused a former resort rather than beginning on a blank site. NParks describes stakeholder suggestions being incorporated during planning. The first phase refurbished two buildings to provide laboratories, meeting and seminar rooms, a multipurpose hall, dormitories and basic first-aid facilities. A campsite and a mangrove arboretum formed part of the wider learning setting.
The completed second phase added a water-treatment system and a coastal arboretum with about 500 trees representing around 70 native coastal species. Those figures describe the published collection, rather than a fresh tree count. The distinction between the mangrove and coastal collections is useful: they have related educational purposes but should not be collapsed into one inventory. The centre’s documented activities span field studies, education, research and community outreach. Its unusual island role is therefore quite concrete: former accommodation buildings support people studying Ubin, while living tree collections provide reference material alongside the surrounding habitats. Read NParks’ Ubin education and research account.
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14. Ubin’s power experiment paired a planted roof with storage
EMA’s June 2022 announcement described two linked additions to Ubin’s micro-grid test-bed. A 285-kilowatt-peak solar system was to be combined with greenery in a solar green roof. The experiment would examine whether vegetation could lower temperatures around the panels and improve their performance. A vanadium redox flow battery was also proposed to manage mismatches between solar generation and electricity demand.
The release’s headline potential was 90 per cent of the Main Village’s daily electricity demand supplied through solar power. This was a forecast for that defined area, not a measured statement about every user on Ubin. NParks also planned to extend the network to thirteen more households. EMA placed these upgrades in the history of the micro-grid launched in 2013, which had served more than thirty residents and businesses previously reliant on individual generators. Ubin’s energy story thus includes an operating community network as well as a dated programme for testing new equipment. Read EMA’s June 2022 micro-grid announcement.
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15. Tekong has both a fauna record and an island-making milestone
Tekong’s public scientific record includes a substantial 2016 inventory of animals other than birds. Kelvin Lim, Marcus Chua and Norman Lim compiled eighteen freshwater fish species, fifteen amphibians, forty-five terrestrial reptiles and thirty-one terrestrial mammals. The paper drew together surveys, observations and earlier records, addressing groups for which the island had lacked a complete published inventory.
At that date, several Singapore records of lizards and one bat species were known only from Tekong. Other recorded animals were also associated with the mainland’s mature forest reserves. The authors described secondary forest developing on former agricultural land, alongside mangroves and freshwater habitats, giving the records an environmental context rather than presenting a simple species score. These totals belong to the 2016 publication and are not a current census. They show why Tekong is scientifically significant without providing animal locations, access instructions or operational information about the island. Read Lim, Chua and Lim’s 2016 Tekong vertebrate inventory.
HDB’s 7 September 2025 account reported completion of the main construction works for Singapore’s first polder at Tekong, adding about 800 hectares. The method created land below mean sea level and saved close to half the sand compared with conventional reclamation. Its companion public factsheet describes a protective coastal dike and a managed drainage system, both essential parts of making the lower land usable.
A further material-saving step reused some clayey soil excavated from the stormwater collection pond. Because the soil contained substantial water, the project used vertical drains and loading to help remove water and strengthen the ground before development. The factsheet also describes rock protection against wave action and vegetation used to help resist erosion. These are public civil-engineering details, not a visitor route. Completion of the main construction works is the precise milestone: it neither grants public access nor establishes that every subsequent activity on Tekong has finished. Read HDB and PUB’s September 2025 polder report. See also the supporting official account.
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16. A frog introduction produced Ubin-born young
A particularly encouraging Ubin update arrived in June 2026. NParks reported that the Cryptic Painted Frog had established a breeding population after conservation introductions begun in 2024. Tadpoles were introduced with help from the Herpetological Society of Singapore, and artificial water-filled microhabitats supported the project. Adult frogs were also translocated in 2025.
The announcement traces the evidence: tadpoles and eggs were observed in August 2025, followed by the first recorded Ubin-bred frog in October. A survey in April 2026 recorded 31 tadpoles in the artificial habitats, compared with twelve the previous October. Those are survey observations, not the island’s complete frog population. Young participants in NParks’ stewardship programme were also studying calls, using reference recordings to examine calling patterns and their relationship with breeding evidence. The release places the small frog within an unusually detailed local sequence of introduction, reproduction and monitoring, without requiring readers to know or approach its sensitive sites. Read NParks’ June 2026 Ubin conservation update.
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17. Island memory includes a shrine and an archaeological question
The German Girl Shrine preserves a distinctive commemorative tradition on Ubin. NHB recounts the story of a German girl said to have died while fleeing internment during the First World War. Its wording leaves the death narrative as an attributed account, rather than proving every event. The shrine’s existence, reconstruction and offerings are separately documented features of the place.
NHB records that quarry activity prompted relocation in 1974. Its description of the altar notes offerings of women’s accessories alongside several Chinese religious figures, and gives the shrine’s other name as Na Du Gu Niang. These details show how the remembered girl became part of a local devotional setting, rather than a story preserved only in an archive. They do not require endorsing claims of supernatural rewards. The shrine is best understood through the community tradition described by the heritage record, with care to distinguish that living cultural significance from uncertain details of its origin. Read NHB’s German Girl Shrine record.
Historical archaeology has presented Ubin with a different uncertainty: whether a wartime gun emplacement ever received its intended guns. Archaeologist Aaron Kao’s 2018 account describes the team’s first field season in December 2017 and the continuing archival research needed to interpret the remains. The title’s question was a research problem, not a claim that every purpose-built structure necessarily operated as planned.
The team found evidence of use elsewhere in the complex. Soot on an engine-room ceiling suggested that an engine had operated; surviving fittings and marks provided clues about electrical and communications equipment. Such traces supported partial activity while leaving the central question unresolved in that account. This is historical material, not a description of current defence operations. No site-entry directions are needed to appreciate the finding: Ubin’s surviving structures preserve evidence that can complicate the neat version of a wartime story, and the researchers were explicit about what their first observations had and had not established. Read Aaron Kao’s Ubin archaeological field account.
Continue exploring Singapore
For the longer timeline, read History of Singapore | North-Eastern Islands. For a separate practical guide, continue to Things to do in Singapore | Pulau Ubin. Return to the Singapore hub or explore the How X Works hub.