i'm in southeast asia with my 1913 bradshaw's handbook published at the height of european
imperialism my 100 year old guy book will leave me on a railway adventure through
archipelagos and peninsulas dotted with hills forests and paddy fields i'll tour
towering mega cities and magnificent mosques i'll encounter golden buddhas and jewelled temples
and experience some of the world's most spectacular and notorious railways as i travel
through the diverse nations of this vast region i'll learn how they asserted their independence
against the british french and dutch empires to become the economic tigers and dragons of today
my two and a half thousand mile exploration
of six countries of southeast asia that started in hong kong has finally brought me to singapore
singapore is a free port a great entrepreneur of merchandise
and a meeting place of representatives of almost every european asiatic and american nation founded
in 1819 by sir stamford raffles that was the entry in my bradshaws more than a century ago
welcome to singapore the only sovereign islands city state once britain's most
successful colonial invention and today one of the world's most prosperous countries
on this leg i'll begin in the central business district then travel to tuas on the west coast
i'll explore the historic neighborhood of chinatown
and visit marina bay which once lay beneath the sea
on my travels i'll soak up the street art of chinatown
i took 10 weekends to paint this mural while working as an accountant
you were not a professional artist then yeah i wasn't now i am i'll visit the birthplace of a
world famous cocktail hello guess what i'm going to order a singer possibly a singer foresling
and help to keep the nation's orchids in bloom isn't that beautiful
this tiny independent nation at the southern tip of the malay peninsula
is an astonishing asian success story in just 200 years it's grown from a swamp-filled jungle colony
into a center of international finance and trade
its multi-ethnic society of almost 6 million people
enjoys one of the highest living standards and the lowest crime rates in the world
here on the singapore river is where it all began
singapore is situated says the guidebook on two sides of a salt creek that empties into the sea
at the west head of a deep bay navigable for small boats vessels lie at the
one and a half miles long away from the town
bradshaw's was clearly impressed but today a thousand ships are in singapore at any one time
one leaves or arrives every two or three minutes and then there's all of this
with the second biggest port in the world after shanghai singapore is a maritime giant
i'm heading to its west coast where plans are afoot to double the port's capacity
this train is taking me to the mega port construction site towards singapore's future
they're building the new port at twas on five square miles of land reclaimed from the sea a
practice well established in singapore since the time of raffles it will be the world's largest
fully automated container port and i'm getting a sneak preview with senior director of engineering
tam y-wah mr town this is on a bewildering scale all of this then is land that you are reclaiming
from the sea is that right oh yes that's right we are constructing four fingers for the entire
transport development and this is finger two so this is a finger this is one of the four fingers
that we are constructing absolutely amazing and the sea wall sits out there and you just
fill in behind it is that how it works uh yes but before that dc was actually fabricated on shore
what does that look like that sea wall the sea was actually a k zone structure reinforced
concrete structures about 28 meters high and that's equivalent to a 10 story high building
and weighs about 15 000 tons and these caissons will be slotted in next to each other to create
the seawall will they absolutely and then the question must be why do you need to do this
our vision is to build a port that can actually increases productivity and efficiency
optimize the land use trenton singapore's position as a global hub port
this is the biggest port project in the world and the first phase will be operational in 2021
for a bird's eye view i'm going 90 foot up to the top of one of the massive concrete cubes or
caissons that will form the sea walls mr tom what an extraordinary sight and
this is what a completed caisson looks like yes absolutely this is a completed
case on structure and it's ready to be launched into the sea and what i can see here is that it
has a cellular structure it's largely hollow yes it is hollow for a reason because we need to first
and foremost floating away water so that it can sink into the sea these enormous caissons at first
actually float on the water do they yes that's right and then you sink it how we actually pumps
in rash materials displace the water out it will sink all the way down to the sea bay
this mega facility will replace four separate container ports and be fully operational in
2040. what will you do with the existing poor facilities transport will combine all
singapore's existing port operations at one site the consolidation of the container port
facilities will be part of a larger plan to free up land for redevelopment as a new district well
i feel like i've come to the right vantage point to see the future of singapore yeah thank you
this station raffle's place
the origin of this nation was the vision of one man i've come to the raffles landing site in the
central business district to find out about him from professor of asian studies john mixick john
what was it that stanford raffles does in 1819 well he walked ashore here in january and there
was a big house right where we're standing now which belonged to local chief and he saw maybe
100 houses and there were maybe a hundred families living on boats those were the sea nomad groups
and then there were maybe 20 or 30 chinese living a bit further upstream did you therefore need
anyone's permission to develop singapore they had to get first the permission of the local chief and
they signed a treaty very quickly and then they sent a messenger down into that real archipelago
got permission from the sultan to set up something here so he had to go through channels
sir thomas stamford raffles joined the british east india company age 14. while serving in penang
he made a name for himself by studying malay culture and rose to become governor of java
did he have good reason to think that singapore would make a good sequel
raffles actually had history on his side he'd collected this old book an old malay manuscript
called the millennials in english and that portrays singapore as the first great malay
trading port and so he thought they could revive it did work begin at once in building a port
instantly the main thing that he used to try and get people to come here was the duty-free aspect
and so that attracted thousands of people it's interesting this where did he get
the free port idea because that was clearly fundamental to its success yeah he'd already
come up with this idea himself he'd been talking to the local malay people down in java without
the dutch and one of the main gripes they had was that they had to pay all these taxes raffles very
enlightenedly realize that if they didn't squeeze them the volume of trade would increase many fold
raffos didn't live to see his port flourish dying of a brain tumor in 1826 on the eve of his 45th
birthday it's quite a controversial figure he was accused of incompetence and corruption in java
on the other hand he was a brilliant botanist and apparently he certainly knew his history was great
orientalist how do you sum up this extraordinary man he was very colorful everybody else looks like
just a great bureaucrat next to him he had a lot of business ideas which were ahead of his time
but he also had this very great interest in the local culture which was totally unique
in his period i'd like to understand how international trade first flourished here
so i'm heading to collier key for a trip along the singapore river with maritime expert donna brunero
hello donna hello hi michael very good to see you it's good to see you donal raffles comes at 1819
and pretty quickly they begin to build a port where do they do that actually
the development was here in the singapore river within a few years you're looking at
quite a large population up to 10 000 had moved from different parts of the region but you've
also got european traders coming in and they're trading what spices lacquerwood commodities
from the region and then you've got that great east-west trade so goods from india goods from
china as well and when do rubber and tin appear on the scene rubber and tin it's later it's more
towards the 1900s and this is where you've got the british really affirming their position in british
malaya and the rubber and the tin transported down by rail mainly and it shipped out of singapore in
the early part of the 20th century can be some idea then of what the port is like there were a
lot of complaints by merchants about how congested the river was so there was an investigation and
over about a three day period they surveyed the number of ships coming and going from the river
and in some six thousand ships at least it earned the nickname of being the liverpool of the east
my guidebook talks about a new port having been created outside the river where there
are long walls for the vessels when does that happen ah this happens more again the late
1800s where they talk about the creation of a new harbour and this was basically because when
you have larger sailing ships and steamships the river can't accommodate them the old harbor can't
accommodate so they develop what they call the new harbour and then goes on to be called keppel i'm
very intrigued that here in the financial district there's nonetheless a row of lovely old houses
what were they and how they've been preserved these are actually the old shop houses or go
down so warehouses around the 1980s the singapore river was really badly polluted
and there was this massive cleanup operation part of that was also the restoration of the buildings
and completely reviving the singapore river as a tourist destination
i'm ending my day at the city's iconic landmark named after the man who put singapore
on the map raffles mentioned in my bradshaw's guide one of the most famous hotels in the world
it's on beach road hard to believe that this building once looked out over the sea
all these skyscrapers beyond here are built on reclaimed land
welcome to raffle singapore thank you very much indeed pleasure to be here thank you
today a national monument the hotel opened in 1887 and was soon a byword for colonial luxury
counting among its guests film stars presidents and royalty
it's also the birthplace of the nation's world famous cocktail
hello hello welcome to the wrong bar guess what i'm going to order a single poisoning a single
porcelain how long have you been serving that it started to be served in 1915 created by nyang tong
boon the local bartender why do you think it's so popular why did it catch on so well it catches on
because the the drink reflects singapore the past and match perfectly with rafael's story
an exotic blend of gin bitters and the cures were mixed with fruit juices and grenadine
which gave it a distinctly feminine look it is thank you very much
at a time when it wasn't considered ladylike to drink in public
this pink drink enabled women to partake of something that looked very innocent but was
in fact rather wicked all the well-known international bar flies of drunk here
ernest hemingway joseph conrad sunset moorm noel coward charlie chaplin great lives
but none had a biography to compare with the man after whom this hotel is named stamford raffles
you free yeah i'm free yes sir try the time please okay no problem let's go
this morning i'm forsaking the modern metro for a mode of transport that evokes the age
of my bratwal's guidebook rickshaw is derived from a japanese word meaning
manpowered carriage colonials might have been hurried around
by elderly coolies no longer fit to work in the docks until modernizing singapore banned the
rickshaw in 1947. tourists can still get a whiff of empire in a tri-shore and it's going to be my
vehicle to understanding the three-quarters of the population that is ethnic chinese
when stamford raffles claim this island for britain chinese merchants and fishermen
already lived here after the colony was established further immigrants arrived
from china's southern provinces looking for work and they became the largest ethnic group
in the shadow of the city's skyscrapers lies the historic district of chinatown
the cultural heart of singapore's chinese community
artist yip yu chong is meeting me by a massive street mural which he has painted
yu chong hello i'm michael welcome michael what a pleasure glad to see you michael
what a wonderful piece of work thank you first of all tell me what is this wall this is the
back wall of the ten hawking temple ammo street this is one of the oldest streets in singapore
and what story are you telling here in your miura i've painted the story of the hawkins one of our
chinese dialect groups who migrated from china in the 1800s they traveled two weeks on the sea and
arriving in singapore it was an arduous journey and what are we seeing here now this scene depicts
how they settle down their hardships and they work as coolies and they built the first hospital
they built the water systems and this was how we lived in the past this was
the quarter of the chinese in singapore they were allocated this area yes the hawkins were
especially allocated by the british colonial government we come more towards the modern day
yes i have painted a lot of bun boats which have now all disappeared but i have also just posted
the current buildings when did you paint this mural in 2017 i took 10 weekends to paint this
mural while working as an accountant you were not a professional artist then yeah i wasn't now i am
yep yu-chong lived in a cantonese neighborhood here in the heart of chinatown until he was
a teenager yuchong what was it like for you growing up in chinatown i have very
fond memories my family lived on a street of the dead sago lane because there were
funeral palace coffee shop makers what were the elements of your culture did it revolve around
food music dance my family it revolves about watching cantonese opera yeah as a little boy
i actually went all around chinatown with my aunt to hunt for cantonese operas which were staged
under the tent how fantastic what happened to your house my house had been demolished in fact the
whole street was demolished many of these houses that you see here they're still around but they
have been converted into more like a business the people who have moved out of these houses
where did they end up my family were allocated a government flat like this a tall building
chong has kindly invited me to lunch at his mother's home on the 25th floor
about four-fifths of singaporeans now live in state-built high-rises like this one
the government's solution to limited space and a growing population
hello this is michael hello i'm michael this is my aunt hello mother oh what a pleasure hello
great honor to be here so very kind of you to have me here very very kind
this is our mid-autumn reunion that we hold every year the two reunions we do one is
chinese new year one is the mid autumn that's why you see all the lanterns oh yes yes yes
did you get your artistic talent from your mother or from your father from my dad from
your dad tell me about your time my dad used to use chalk to draw on the streets really crops of
people were surrounded to watch him draw was he a professional artist he was a fitter a shipyard
she was a seamstress and she was also a cook at a sushi counter
well you are you are a wonderful cook may ask what are you doing at the moment i'm studying
second year in university and what are you studying communications and new media yst
would you please say to your mother that it's been an enormous honor to come here and share her table
this autumn festival with your delightful family thank you so much
after a morning in one of singapore's liveliest neighborhoods
i'm on route to one of its most tranquil the guidebook steers me towards tangling
botanical gardens including part of the original jungle it's time to take a walk on the wild side
the singapore botanic gardens as they're now known
are a glorious 74 acres of tropical trees and plants
hello lawrence hi michael hello michael welcome to the singapore botanic gardens
thank you very much beautiful dr lawrence young deputy ceo of the national parks board is going
to tell me about their history lawrence here are we in a piece of original rainforest we are in
a piece of primary rainforest in singapore this is what singapore would have looked like before
we started to clear land for agriculture and developments this piece of forest is extremely
important to us because it is undisturbed also this serves as a place where we will collect
seed material that we can use to propagate and to reforest other parts of singapore
how fantastic stamford raffles was an amateur botanist did he create a garden here yes when
he arrived in 1819 he started the first botanic garden in singapore and his primary motivation
was to study crops potential spice crops not make clothes but that botanic garden only lasted till
about 18 29 and this botanic garden came in 1859 what has been the historic importance of this
botanic garden it started as a pleasure garden for the members of the agri-horticulture society
but in 1874 the society ran into financial difficulty and they asked the
government to take over and started to invite superintendents and directors from kew gardens
one of those experts was henry nicholas ridley he was appointed the garden's first director and
under his management he began to play an important role in the development of singapore in 1877
kew gardens gifted us 22 seedlings of rubber and as these grew henry greatly studied them and he
perfected the way to tap rubber without destroying the tree and that gave rise to the rubber industry
the other important contribution that this garden made to the economics of this region in the 1920s
was to learn how to germinate seeds of orchids in large numbers and it gave the ability to hybridize
orchids and it gave rise to the orchid industry that's wonderful history wonderful
the cultivation of orchids remains an important part of the work of the gardens the orchid garden
contains 1 000 different species and 2 000 hybrid varieties and singapore has become
one of the world's biggest orchid exporters wang lee kang is deputy director of the orchid garden
they king hey hi michael i'm sorry to disturb you uh i've never seen such a
beautiful display of orchids no it's one of the largest okay garden in this region
and it's one of the best in the world because of the wide variety of species and plants that on
display here what is it all having to do with this orchid so whenever the flowers faded it needs to
be removed and then new fresh flowers are brought in to be changed so that the visitor whenever
the visitors come here they always constantly see fresh new flowers on display that's wonderful may
i help you with that yeah okay let me show you as you can see this whole spray of flowers is already
gone so it needs to be removed you can cut at the bottom of the flower spray
what a huge amount of work because you have these arches all the way along and the orchids go all
the way above us yeah you need to trace this down yeah and if sometimes though if the whole whole
plant the flowers have been faded you can remove the entire plant and then you tie on a fresh one
and then you place it on this gap here arrange the flowers at the right
position so that the visitor can see that you just lie here
yeah it's not beautiful it's done
great effort goes into the preservation of the island's historic green spaces
but singapore's city planners are also determined to create new ones
this 250 acre nature park in downtown marina bay is built on land reclaimed from the sea
and every night its futuristic forest puts on a spectacular show
these gardens by the bay are said to contain 250 000 plants and these enormous tree light
structures that rise up to 50 meters are themselves covered in flowers and photovoltaic
cells and in the evening they erupt in a light show which is a must for every visitor
such vivid imagination such a big investment a great technical achievement a unique combination
of greenery and entertainment that is intended i think to put singapore ahead
next time i'll explore the world's biggest subterranean train depot
this looks like an underground city of skyscrapers and enjoy the latest
developments in urban farming is to singapore's food self-sufficiency
struggling to find a diagnosis of 15 strong team treat a seriously ill man
and big challengers as several people tend to a regular vista hospital at nine
you