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 journey through southeast asia concludes in singapore
the only sovereign island city-state once britain's most successful colonial invention
and today one of the world's most prosperous countries
i began in the central business district before exploring the port of tuas
the historic neighborhood of chinatown and marina bay
on this leg i'll travel to the district of little india and visit the southern island of
sentosa before returning to the city centre and boat key on my travels i'll explore the world's
biggest subterranean train depot this looks like an underground city of skyscrapers enjoy
the latest developments in urban farming here's to singapore's food self-sufficiency
relationship and revisit one of britain's most humiliating military defeats they were very very
experienced in jungle warfare people were called unawares and so the city fell in just one week
please do not mean against this morning i'm heading six miles northeast of the center
to the district of taisen i want to get the inside track on the train network that's
carried me around the island the singapore mass rapid transit is a very extensive system
i was astonished to discover that it began operations only in 1987 that's more than 120
years later the my city london it runs partly over ground partly underground no surprise there but
in a crowded and environmentally conscious island there's no limit to the subterranean possibilities
at this vast nerve center i'm meeting group director yi boon chao good morning michael buncha
welcome to the world's largest underground depot thank you very much see you please
thank you this massive operation supporting three of the network's main lines lies 75 feet
below street level why did you feel you needed to build the world's largest underground depot
we are a small country land is scarce so we have to find innovative ways of making full use of
our land that we have so one way is to build infrastructure underground so that we can free
up space above ground for future development what sort of operations do you do with the
trains here the size of this deadpool is about 17 football fields we have 10 maintenance tracks we
do maintenance on the trains and we also check the planes every day here before we launch the trains
out and these trains are fully automated they do not require a driver these trains are fully
automated we just need to send a command from the control center to the train remotely the train
will wake up by itself check itself and uh prepare yourself for the launching and why did you move
to automated trains since 2003 we started this journey to having fully automated lines because
we anticipated there will be a manpower crunch in singapore and we are thinking of how how to
operate and martin lights with black manpower we also know that most of the incidents that
happens on the metros is because of human errors so by having fully automated lines it's so safer
for the operations so would you intend to have uh fully automated trains all over the system
one day in fact all alliance after 2003 is fully automated only two lines that were still men with
drivers are the north south and east west line but actually the drivers are there more to recover the
trains if there's a problem they actually don't operate the trains anymore when it's
running normally the network is already extensive stretching for 142 miles around the island with
139 stations and it continues to expand with a further 80 miles of track planned by 2030.
you want to get people out of cars onto trains yes because in singapore we started to notice
the roads are getting more congested and so by expanding our real network we can encourage people
to take the trains to go to the places they want to go instead of driving their cars this
depot's driverless trains are serviced by a giant computerized warehouse towering 75 feet above us
it holds around 000 boxes of parts and spares which are this looks like an underground city of
skyscrapers what is this thing this is our automatic storage and retrieval system
is the largest underground system that we have in singapore i can believe that hello my name's
michael great pleasure to see you you just dial up here and you get whichever part you want yes yes
so now the machine is starting to retrieve and the retriever is way up high
and this rushes towards us on a kind of monorail it's very fast isn't it
and here's your box say yes i hope it's the one you wanted
traveling back towards the city center the next stop on my tour will be a district known
as little india bradshaw's tells me that in 1911 the population of singapore
included 220 000 chinese 40 000 malays and more surprisingly 27 500 indians
the british monarch styled himself the emperor of india and whether his imperial subjects were
flattered or not quite a large number of them have pitched up here by one means or another
this neighborhood which fans out from the main serangoon road with its temples
markets and traditional craft businesses is strongly evocative of india colours to die for
mr jaya selvam has been making flower garlands here for over 30 years hello silvadon my name
is michael may i join you for a moment sure definitely that's beautiful work you're doing
there what are these garlands used for normally to honor people and special guests to welcome them
weddings even like going to prayers in temple everything you need flowers and
at the moment you're working with orchids yeah this is orchid our national flowers
and let me see how you do your knots just one loop on the down and the other two on the top
just pull the string you got a knot once you master the skill you are the king of it
thank you very much the national flower of singapore sure thank you sir thank you very much
i'd like to hear more about the history of this community from professor brian farrell brian
was a quarter within singapore for the indians planned by the british they didn't set aside a
specific community for south asians because in the earliest years in the 1820s they were a negligible
community the old guidebook tells me that in 1911 there were 27 and a half thousand indians
in singapore quite a high number why were there so many where did they come from well i think
the big influx was in the middle of the 19th century when a lot of them were brought over
as convict laborers to literally build the place i didn't know that singapore had been used as a
penal colony how did it compare for columbus with australia these were people who were serving out
sentences of finite terms so they weren't sent here to settle in most cases it seems as if no
one could be bothered to ship them home but singapore's booming freeport attracted many
more from diverse regions of india there was a fairly steady trickle all along the way from the
regions that are now bangladesh and east india the punjabi muslim community in there as well people
who came here to do business those who had already established money lending networks international
financing shipping serangoon road is one of the major roads leading out of town along which
development tended to grow and there was a drift of the south asian community in this direction
today indians are the third biggest ethnic group here after the chinese and the indigenous malays
making up nine percent of the population they are among the most singaporean of singaporeans
they remain diverse within themselves a healthy tamil a majority to be sure but there are also
muslim and sikh punjabi contingents and they've made a disproportionate contribution in many many
ways in the police and the armed forces in government in the business community
i would say that they have done very well here and are well at home here
at the far south of singapore i'm taking to the skies
this cable car is carrying me across the island of sentosa which is now noted for its amusement parks
but all the light at celoso which at the time of my guidebook was of great strategic importance
fort siloso was built in the 1880s
and sits on sentosa's northwestern tip overlooking the singapore strait
the harbour works says bradshaw's are defended by several forts with some powerful guns
and submarine mines although japan had been britain's ally during the first world war
defending the indian and pacific oceans against germany when he invaded manchuria
in 1931 singapore feared the worst and built bigger guns but they faced
towards the sea and were of limited value when japan overran malaya and invaded
from the north singapore fell in february 1942 one of britain's worst ever military disasters
to understand how events unfolded here i'm meeting author karen hoisington karen how do the japanese
forces succeed in reaching singapore i think there's only one word for the strategy which
is surprise yeah four o'clock in the morning the japanese bombers came through to malaya and
came into a brightly lit singapore bombing was so easy and they'd catch the singaporeans unprepared
britain believed that her strategic possession and foremost naval base singapore was impregnable
the british of course had all the guns facing this side but they actually were coming in from
the mangrove swamps on the north west one of the things that is hard for me to grasp
is that in those days a good chunk of singapore was actually jungle then yes it was very much so
they were very very experienced in jungle warfare people were called unawares and so the city fell
in just one week what did the japanese forces do to the population when they took over there was a
tremendous massacre they were targeting mostly the chinese people because of the animosity with china
the chinese were put in concentration camps to be massacred in mass graves
karen's relative elizabeth choi was working in a hospital along with her husband she risked her
life to help the allied troops incarcerated in singapore's changi prison she helped those pows
in changi with medicines they were starving a lot of tropical diseases every time an ambulance would
come with an ailing pow when the ambulance went back she would put a little package of medicines
tucked into the ambulance later on it was discovered that they could send cash and letters
any parcels from loved ones out there or people wanting to help them
but elizabeth was arrested by japanese military police in 1943 she was incarcerated for 193 days
there were 20 of them in one small cell and she was the only woman there
during her imprisonment was she mistreated she was electrocuted several times she was had the
water treatment she was slapped and beaten but every time when they had finished with
her she would go back to the cell with her head held high you know keeping her dignity
it's estimated that up to 50 000 singaporeans were killed
during the occupation following japan surrender in 1945 elizabeth received an obe for her bravery
when singapore was given back to the british she was invited by lady mountbatten to come
and witness the surrender she was invited to recuperate in london and she was even invited
to the coronation of queen letters both in 1953 so i think the british showed immense gratitude
it's a it's a wonderful story thank you she's a wonderful lady
it's my last day in singapore and in the heart of the financial center
i'm intrigued to discover a splendid old market hall
my brothers refers to perambulating restaurants and talks about an excellent market daily for
tropical fruit strange fish and green turtle and those two ideas come together in this place
which is known as a hawker center or a food port this one actually dates from the 19th
century there are lots in singapore there's common seating in the middle
and all the way around the perimeter there are competing food outlets selling singaporean
favorite dishes at modest prices is popular with everyone including city bosses i'm meeting
up with regular diner tan boon jin who's chief executive of singapore's stock exchange regulator
brunjie and i'm thinking amongst all these towering skyscrapers it is amazing that this
victorian hawker center has survived yes this place is called laupassad which means uh old
market it's an amazing juxtaposition as well because here you have the old physical market
and just next door is the singapore exchange where i work which is the financial marketplace
um tell me about the singapore exchange you're listing singapore equities but also forum ones
that's right so we are the most international exchange in the world 40 of our listings are
actually international listings i'm using a skype which is 100 years old and at this time
the port was the source of singapore's wealth yes indeed so we have been busy reinventing ourselves
from a free port to a manufacturing hub and today a financial services center today our
assets under management here in singapore is 2 trillion u.s dollars and our gdp per capita
back in 1965 when we were first independent was 500 us dollars and today it is 55 000 us dollars
55 000 percent 5 000 yes that is impressive and yet despite the giddy heights to which you have
risen you still pop in some time to the old hawker center nothing beats the coffee here just
i'm traveling eight miles north to the residential area of angmo kyo
in this country which is less than half the size of greater london space is at a premium could
the island's future growth be up in the air i'm visiting one of a new generation of urban
farms part of a government-backed drive to feed the nation go we ho is director of food supply
strategies at the singapore food agency we have the fact that singapore imports the vast majority
of its food is that a problem um we import more than 90 percent of our food but going forward we
want to try to raise our local production very substantially recently we announced that we're
going to try to grow as much as 30 percent of our nutritional needs locally by the year 2030.
how are you going to do that you don't have much land exactly so in singapore we're a very small
country so the land that we have available set aside for agriculture is actually only
less than one percent but we think it is possible using technology this being singapore i knew that
technology would come into it somewhere technology already enables us to produce 10 to 15 times more
compared to traditional farms today so you have indoor led lighting type vegetable farms you have
recirculating aquaculture systems top fish farms all of these can produce 10 to 15 more compared
to conventional vegetables and vegetables and fish farms today the government is spending
63 million singaporean dollars on advanced farming systems danielle chan of city ponix
is the co-founder of this one on a carpark roof danielle this is the strangest thing
i ever saw lettuce is growing in what look like drain pipes filled with pellets what's going on
this brewing system here is actually our aqua organic system using vertical growing tubings
to grow up to 25 different types of vegetable species so currently what you see here is our
geogeneal lattices now you talked about aqua so does that mean that water is moving through
these tubes yes it's actually able to filtrate the water as well as provide nutrients this moving of
water actually has one very good effect for our growing system you want to take a guess at that
you tell me okay so this actually prevents mosquito from breeding which is very very crucial
when you're growing uh vegetables in an urban area like this oh yeah absolutely now presumably
this is much more efficient than sticking them in the ground the amount of produce and harvest we
had is actually up to 70 more than uh traditional methods of growing we have the capacity to grow up
to about four tons every month four tons yes four tons of vegetables every month that is extreme yes
and why would you do it on a car park roof if you look at singapore we are actually going car light
a lot of the multi-story cars in singapore all these are underutilized well i'm very impressed
by the technology does it taste any good how about you try it wow what a beautiful display
okay you take a piece of green and then you take a scoop of all this berries whatever you like
a bit of yeah this is honey honey dressing wrap it up here's to singapore's food self-sufficiency
delicious fresh from the farm yes oh i'm having another
at the time of my guidebook just over a century ago singapore was still a colonial outpost
run for the benefit of britain its journey to independence was both rapid and remarkable
in 1959 singapore had a population of about one and a half million it was largely swamp and jungle
it was plagued by poverty unemployment slums gangs opium and racial tensions but in that
year a singaporean who graduated brilliantly in law from cambridge became prime minister his name
was lee kuan yew today singapore is one of the world's wealthiest and most orderly countries
to understand how this man credited as the founder of modern singapore shaped the nation
i'm meeting associate professor alan chong alan what an enormous pleasure thank you thank you um
lee kuan yew given his age must have experienced the japanese occupation of singapore what impact
did that have on him if you read his memoirs it was a life-changing experience you might
say it was even an era in which he came of age lee kuan yew was among the privileged few with
enough finance from the family office to be sent to the uk he ended up in cambridge that's where
you know his political sensitivities are further honed in terms of his networking with like-minded
fellow colonial subjects or nationalist leaders to be you start developing your ideas as to how
colonialism needs to be pushed back as singapore with malaya is moving towards independence what
role does lee kuan yew play lee kuan yew was the agitator extraordinaire he was a first-class
one-man propagandist he knew how to cut his sentences to grab people by the college in 1954
lee founded the people's action party and five years later when the british granted singapore a
large degree of self-rule he was elected its first prime minister with a landslide victory when he
became prime minister in 1959 what ideas did he have to push the british out you have to preach
some kind of gospel of equality you have to mobilize not only different ethnicities who
are pitted against one another by the japanese but also tuned to the nationalist propaganda from
their respective mother countries and lee kuan yew it had to maneuver to patch all this together
into a viable notion of nationhood the idea of one people regardless of wasteland religion singapore
became an independent sovereign state in 1965. lee began an ambitious program of industrialization
offering incentives to foreign companies and providing government subsidised housing
education and health care i met lee kuan yew once and he was laughing with me about the time that he
spent in britain in the 1950s he said i saw there you had a national health service it was all free
you had a welfare state it was all free he said i thought this is fantastic but i had an even better
idea when i brought it back to singapore i thought let's get everyone to pay just a little bit
this was a kind of joke but it was true wasn't it yes indeed all of us working singaporeans have to
contribute to this central providence fund and there are very strict conditions for withdrawal
of these so-called state and force savings you can only withdraw it for your children's education for
your own housing purchases for government approved trust funds and parents health care costs you
hit it for a very interesting point which is that singapore's success is partly due to an
authoritarian paternalistic attitude towards its people is that right and what do you think of it
exactly you're spot on lee kuan yew you know was uh a figure who despite his authoritarian
ways excited a lot of people the man left behind this ideal paternalism that worked
lee was prime minister for 31 years when he died in 2015 at the age of 91
a week of national mourning was declared and today his party continues to run singapore
is the modern singapore really the result of one man he had an excellent team working
alongside him in the cabinet the civil servants and of course you know what we call the pioneer
generation people in the 60s today during the first two decades of singapore's independence
who helped make lee kuan yew's vision a reality so the success of singapore needs to be shared
and lee kuan yew of course has earned his place in history as a grand inspiration
history is often driven by movements beyond the control of any person industrialization migration
even communism fascism and democracy but singapore was the invention of a single learned man stanford
raffles who alone saw the opportunity to revive an ancient port and modern singapore is the
achievement of another lee kuan yew who in his own words took his country from third world to first
world in a generation singapore is not the product of impersonal forces but of two visionaries
later the bright lights of the fair draw frankie boyle to the dodgems
he contemplates belonging tonight at 10 as his new tour of scotland bumps along from glasgow to air
next adventurers in desperate trouble saving lives at sea you