Cycling to Pasir Ris

It's Chinese New Year Day 2 and to combat against all the new year goodies and good food, my brother and I decided to challenge ourselves by cycling from home to Pasir Ris Park.


It involves cycling along several park connectors and above is the route we took.


After some distance of cycling we reached Siglap Park Connector where there was a part we had to cross an overhead bridge over PIE expressway.


Something underneath the overhead bridge caught my attention because there was a huge carpenter bee (Xylocopa sp.) flying around the flowers of this vine.


This flower actually belongs to Thunbergia grandifolia, common name, Trumpet Vine which originated from India.

According to the Garden Voices website, the carpenter bee (Xylocopa spp.) has established a monophilic relationship with this flowering vine. Monophilic means that pollination of this Trumpet Vine is almost exclusively carried out by carpenter bees. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to take a photograph of the bee.


Soon, I pushed my bicycle over the overhead bridge and crossed over the expressway towards the other side where the Bedok Town Park is. It was a hilly route though along the way before we reached Bedok Reservoir area.


Most of us know about Bedok Reservoir but I guess less of us realize there is yet another large waterbody across the road. It looks wild with many birds calls. Seems like a nice place and I wonder why it was left wild or unused since our country needs land or water body for reservoir quite badly.


There are some nice looking flowering plants around like this yellow flowers that look like candles in the air.

Update: Indeed they are called Candle Bush (Senna alata). Ria's Sungei Buloh page listed as Cassia alata but the current accepted name is Senna alata as Cassia is the old name for this plant. Thanks to Alex Yee for sharing all these!

Next we turned from Tampines Ave 10 to Tampines Ave 9.


And we hit the Tampines Mountain Biking Trail! I've not been here before and I cannot resist not going in to take a look.


And the inside seems to have good trails for mountain bikers to have a good time.


With some parts of the trail modified for more stunts to be carried out with your bike, not for me though.


I would prefer to bike myself in trails that look more natural.

We got out of the trail as soon as we entered because there was a longer way to go, yes, to Pasir Ris.


Following along the sides of Sungei Tampines, we were on our way to Pasir Ris Beach. There were many birds along the way like the egrets and kingfishers.


We were thrilled to make it to Pasir Ris Park and enjoy the sights of the mangroves there.


The mangroves leads to the sea off the shore of Pasir Ris where many marine life still thrives.

Soon, we headed back and stopped midway for breakfast at Ikea. We were recharged and sped back home for the later CNY visitation.

What a great CNY morning to cycle instead of stuffing ourselves with more food. Haha. Will try this route again.

If you are interested in cycling around Singapore with the park connectors, check out this Cycling Around Singapore page.