Edwin Koo / New York Times News ServiceA man relaxes on the rustic island of Pulau Ubin, just a 10-minute boat ride from Singapore. With no running water or electricity, the island is home to only a few residents, who fear that Singapore’s inexorable growth will eventually bring development to their quiet retreat.

After cycling a half-mile along a soggy clay track that sliced through a corridor of rubber trees, tailed by an electric-crimson-colored dragonfly, arches of bamboo creating a canopy, I emerged by a small, silty lake. A dilapidated jetty reached out into the water, a mint-green fishing boat loosely tied to it; a splintery, whitewashed wooden sign nailed to a sea grape tree announced “Cold Drinks.”

But there wasn’t a soul in sight, only a dozing dog that roused itself, momentarily, at my presence. Such are the simple, solitary pleasures of Pulau Ubin.

This 4-square-mile island, formerly thrumming with granite quarries (Pulau Ubin is Malay for Granite Island), is only a 10-minute boat ride from its motherland, Singapore, but the gulf between the two couldn’t be more pronounced. While the Lion City, which marked its 48th year of independence last month, has grown rapidly in the last five decades, Pulau Ubin, which has no electricity or running water, is like a land that time forgot, stuck in the 1960s, when newly independent Singapore was a scattering of low-slung, stilt-housed villages. And for that, many Singaporeans are thankful.

Compared with the glass-clad skyscrapers, air-conditioned shopping malls and rush-hour-traffic-choked roadways of Singapore, Pulau Ubin is a grounding antidote to urban existence. This quality is its attraction, judging by the arrivals — about 2,000 each weekend, and a handful of French families, British backpackers and Singaporean youths looking to temporarily change scenery on weekdays — who come to experience a long-forgotten Singapore.

From Ubin’s jetty, reached by bare-bones wooden vessels called bumboats, and tiny main village, a few paved roads fan out to coastal campsites, dirt paths, lotus ponds or beautiful wetlands. The most striking constant is the lack of noise. Apart from the odd muted roar of a 777 landing in Singapore, sounds are limited to the crowing of red junglefowl, the chirps of the scaly-breasted munias, straw-headed bulbuls, Oriental magpies and collared kingfishers, or the wind rattling candlenut, jambu bol and nipah palm leaves.

But despite the unspoiled character of Pulau Ubin, there are ripples of concern among the holdout residents who doggedly champion the island’s anachronistic lifestyle. In January, the government published “The Population White Paper: A Sustainable Population for a Dynamic Singapore,” projecting that the city-state’s populace could hit 6.9 million by 2030 (it is currently 5.3 million), requiring 25 square miles of additional land in a country only 3½ times the size of Washington, D.C., possibly through developing “some of our reserve land.”

Two months later, the island’s householders received a letter from the government’s public housing body, ominously titled “Clearance Scheme: Clearance of Structures Previously Acquired for Development of Adventure Park on Pulau Ubin,” again raising the specter of development. In July the government quashed any rumors, stating, “There is currently no development plan for Pulau Ubin. Our intention is to keep Pulau Ubin in its rustic state for as long as possible, and as an outdoor playground for Singaporeans,” and that the earlier letter was notification of a census survey, not an eviction notice, and “could have been more carefully worded. “

After the restlessness of Singapore, Pulau Ubin’s gentle wilderness is a relief. I biked to Chek Jawa Wetlands on Ubin’s southeast coast, a preserve that incorporates six types of ecosystem (including coral rubble, coastal forest and mangroves, all visible from a boardwalk); it is home to the piercingly vocal oriental pied hornbill, has a Tudor house for a visitors’ center, and a 70-foot viewing tower that once climbed, clichés aside, will make a visitor feel like the king of the jungle.

Cycling west, I spotted an elderly couple milling around outside their tin-roofed home. Ahmad Benkasim and Sapia Bentitayeb have been married 50 years (Benkasim has lived on the island for all of his 70 years), and their love of Ubin is evident.

“Here we have everything, rubber, durian, jackfruit,” Benkasim said. “In Singapore you have what … steel? There it is hot and noisy. Here, you have peace, and at night it is cool. We have three children in Singapore, but still like to be here. This is our house.”