Biking in Singapore

What started out as kind of a joke has now become a bit of a goal...to bike in as many cities as I can. Hence, on Saturday Eric and I found a cute little bike shop with some colorful one-speed (almost like fixies) lime green bicycles. Our goal was to bike from Singapore to Sentosa Island because my guide book described it as a "great place to ride bikes."

From the map, I couldn't figure out exactly how to ride to Sentosa and the shop owner's directions weren't much better.

Owner: Just go straight and at the zebra stripes turn left. Then, just keep going straight. You can't miss it.

Knowing that I can have and have "missed" many things from vague directions like his, and also having no idea what "zebra stripes" are other than the black and white stripes on an African animal, I decided it would be better if he showed me on a map.

Me: Could you show me on the map, please?

After a few minutes of trying to locate his shop on the map, the man was able to draw a line on the roads we should take. Thank goodness he did. At the first intersection Eric and I had our  first "discussion" about zebra stripes. The intersection had 3 diagonal, yellow stripes crossing the road but they did not look anything like "zebra" stripes. Eric was sure we should ride to another intersection and I was sure these yellow lines were the aforementioned stripes albeit more for a tiger than a zebra. The map confirmed I was right.

The remaining 10 or so kilometers to the island were much less than "biker-friendly": three-lane highways, zero shoulders, construction, lots of traffic and trucks. The last part of the ride was like biking through the Lincoln Tunnel in NYC at rush hour. In other words there were tons of weekend gamblers and families anxious to get to the Disneyworld/Universal Studios/Las Vegas style resort island of Sentosa for their holiday entertainment. When the lane we were forced into because of the traffic ended up in the parking garage of Resorts International Casino with us sandwiched between giant coach buses spewing fumes from all directions, I wanted to cry.

Luckily a nice bell hop pointed to the winding circular driveway leading towards daylight and fresh air. We stand-up pedaedl our "fixies" up four levels of parking garage towards island paradise. Wiping sweat out of our eyes and adjusting to the bright sun-shine we finally found some slightly more "biker friendly" roads and explored the small island. We found a cove and marina filled with large yachts from around the world and a small board walk with families riding bikes and scooters. Finally, we understood what the guide books meant about Santosa being "biker friendly." There was a 2 km long boardwalk for a short stoll/ride where families were crusing on bikes or scooters.

I'm sure there are better rides in Singapore, but during our short stay, we definitely did not find them.